Well, I did it.
I (mostly) used 2002 technology for a whole month. I carried around a little boombox and listened to books on CD (“Device Free Weekend” (three stars) and “A Wrinkle in Time” (not finished yet)). My weekly average phone time was less than five minutes because I was only calling and texting. I kept my poor husband awake with a book light and a physical book. I watched an hour of TV a day, slowly making my way through all four seasons of Abbott Elementary. I read fourteen books (I would share my goodreads but…it’s embarrassing so I won’t).
It was not easy, but I did it.
When I woke up this morning, the world felt the same as it did yesterday. I woke up The Baby, took him to school. I came home and ate breakfast at the dining table while reading a physical book. I drank my coffee. It was a quiet start to the day, just like I’ve been having.
I ran the Roomba and sighed in relief as I walked across a floor that didn’t embed tiny pebbles or small bits of food in my bare feet. I plugged in my kindle for my nighttime reading. I worked out with my youtube lady and actually sweated. Truthfully, in August, I exercised but it was mostly half-hearted flailing. I am hard to coach, especially when my coach is myself.
Within the first minute of opening the app, Instagram welcomed me back with open arms by showing me a person from my personal life that I definitely do not want to follow, an annoying ad, and an alarming post about the ICE presence in Dallas. On my facebook feed, a high school acquaintance posted pictures of himself in the hospital with long, too-detailed explanations of what was wrong with him, sandwiched in between posts from people I don’t know with explanation marks and capital letters about the state of the world. I could feel my shoulders tensing as my heart rate ticked up. I didn’t visit Reddit today at all. Just the thought of it felt overwhelming.
What am I keeping from the month? Well, for the past month, I moved my laptop into the desk in the guestroom, away from the spot where I sit on the couch, and my phone lived on the kitchen counter. Keeping my tech spread out through the house made me work harder to use it. I couldn’t sit on the couch and binge episodes while also farting around on my phone or online shopping. Focusing on one thing at a time helped me be more mindful about how and when I was reaching for technology.
I also really appreciated capping my daily TV intake to one hour. With DVDs from the library, I didn’t have to watch ads and I could play one episode at a time so I was in control of how much I was watching. I didn’t lose a whole afternoon to four episodes of Project Runway.
I did not miss social media. I missed seeing what friends are up to but there’s so many other things crowding out that social aspect that it has become almost unusable to me. Alas, I need a following to prove to agents and publishers that people read my stuff so I must use it. But I want to use it responsibly, with purpose. I think I’m going to try checking it once in the morning and once after dinner and that’s it.
My original hypothesis was: Technology has made some things easier, but it has also had more insidious effects on my life.
I can safely say that is true. I don’t want to be a Luddite and throw the technological baby out with the bathwater. Technology frees up time, it helps us connect with one another, and it does make things easier.
But I didn’t realize just how big a part it was playing in covering up what was going on with me internally. I was using TV and social media to numb the part of me that actually listens to what I need. In the absence of the distraction, I was able to get to the heart of things so that I can actually begin to heal, instead of burying the hurt beneath layers of distraction.
I didn’t realize just how loud things are and how often we’re being sold to. Between TV, podcasts, and influencers, corporations are peddling their wares at every turn. It’s so intrusive, like the annoying people that comb the aisles of the grocery store trying to sell you internet.
I just…want to live a slower life, a quieter, more contemplative life. I want to be more purposeful about how I spend my time and energy. I hope that I can find the right balance, but my track record isn’t great. In a month, will I be up to my old tricks? I hope not.
The most unexpected part of the experiment for me was how I responded when I acted outside the parameters of the experiment.
Last week, after that support group meeting, I came home and jumped on my laptop and spent an HOUR googling what’s wrong with me. I needed to understand it and fix it right then and there. That evening, I reflected on my illicit use of Google in that way. In the not so distant past, I would have flogged myself for my sin, felt guilty, and branded myself a failure. Instead, I chose to be curious. Hmmm. I wonder what need I was trying to meet by doing that.
That gentle curiosity felt good, natural, caring. Today, I caught myself in the car, swiping open my phone to check my email, to look at my blog stats, to do…what, exactly? . None of those things are forbidden anymore, not today, but I found myself asking the question, Why? Most of the time, the reasons were dumb. I was bored. I needed something to do with my hands. I wanted external validation. When I realized that the reasoning was faulty, I shrugged my shoulders and slid my phone back into the purse.
Outright banning technology from my life would be backwards and stupid, but I feel like placid curiosity is a good way forward.
Adios, 2002.
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