Or, Why I Sold My iPhone.
These days, just about everyone you see on a train station platform, in an airport, or even crossing the street is staring into their palm. Were hardly ever where we are anymore because were busy checking in with our digital devices.
I feel safe in saying that 95% of the things I looked up mid-conversation last year werent of any lasting use to me. When travelling, I either spent ages trying get a signal and wait for something to download, or the roaming charges were so prohibitively expensive that I didnt dare use data on a foreign network.
As a self-employed person, my attention is very important, and Im growing increasingly angry about how easy it is to have vast beaches of time slip through the hourglass while browsing and checking in.
“Checking in” gets to become a twitch reflex. Any spare moment can be filled with checking the news (“Get angry about something you cant influence”), reading about the latest technologies (“Your thing is obsolete; heres a new one to buy”), or following others social media conversations for no particular reason. True, connecting with other people is nice, and I like being in touch with folks from hither and yon, then and now.
Still, though, theres something toxic-feeling about it. Checking in feels an awful lot like checking out, like when you shake your head and realise you dont really know where the last half-hour has gone. And reading someones updates isnt like sitting across from a person, having a coffee together.
When I was a kid, I used to spend all day drawing. My God, if I swapped my browsing-time now for drawing-time, Id have a whole other career!
At the end of so many days now, I lament the lack of anything to show for my time because I spent so much of it interacting with the computer. And life feels so different, so much healthier, when I lift my head, look around, talk to real people, do my own thing instead of following what zillions of other people are doing.
I grew to hate my iPhone, and when I was in Canada at Christmas I refused to interact with it (Cmon! Look it up! Check something! Fill your time with me!). Instead, I asked people on the street for directions. I engaged with the world instead of fumbling to get out and squint at my little sliver of tech.
Last week I sold it. Used, with a screen full of dust, it still sold on eBay for more than a months rent.
My solution isnt exactly the paragon of virtuous disconnection, because it involved a lot of purchases, but the things I bought feel like they get me out of the constant stream of connection and consumption: they do what they do, thats all theyre meant to do, and I wont need them to do more. (The iPhone, on the other hand, was designed as a portal for consumption — buying songs and apps, each new years model fixing annoying features of the previous one.)
So heres my setup:
1) My day-planner. A while back, I switched from using software for my project management and scheduling. Digital appointments got lost in synching, and I had to make an effort, to dig, to see anything or enter anything.
I can physically tell where I am in this, and I can order my thoughts it my own natural way. Plus I made it. Its mine in many ways.
2) A proper camera. Im a crap photographer; I accept this. I havent got the eye. Still, for years Ive been pursuing the convenience of converged devices that do everything, and my experience is that, in the end, they do a bit of everything, but badly. All the phone cameras Ive had too rubbish photos.
So I got myself a real camera. And its shockproof, waterproof, and dustproof. Hallelujah to that last item, cause all my stupid smartphones got dust under their screens.
3) A phone, just a phone. I got a phone designed for old people. It does calls and text messaging. Thats it. I will never expect or need it to do more.
I was considering Johns Phone, a really stripped-down phone — just buttons on a rectangle — but then I saw a picture of one in situ, and its a brick, bigger than an iPhone. Im happy that killed it for me, because, in practice, not having text messages would have been a problem. Thats how most of us communicate here in the UK, unless we really, really have to make a call.
4) An iPod. Yeah, I know, this seems contradictory, but I do like to listen to music while I write or walk, so I didnt want to lose that — and I didnt want something that was about buying content or reconfiguring it overmuch, so the new iPod Nano was perfectly suited to my needs. The screen and the capacity aside, this is basically like my first MP3 player. My needs in that regard wont be changing, so this should do indefinitely.
5) A typewriter. Ive been toying with the idea of using a typewriter for a while, and I finally took the plunge. Will I actually write novel-pages on it? Im not sure. But it feels great to write on this, and I love the idea of a single-purpose thing that doesnt have any other tasks running in the background for me to switch to.
When it arrived, it had some problems. At first I was gutted, thinking Id have to send it back, but then it occurred to me that this is a machine. I can flip it over, I can open it up, and I can see what its doing. And if its not working, I dont have to throw it out — I can fix it.
First I fixed the space-bar, and was overjoyed to see the carriage moving along as it should. Then, yesterday, I fixed the bell (actually important, otherwise you get stuck at the end of the line mid-word). I even managed to get the model paint (or whatever it was) off the hood.
So now I have a brand-new East German typewriter from 1959. And it has a deliciously bad industrial smell, an oily smell like the workings of a streetcar.
Technology can be great: Its enabled me to do work I love without having to be on-site to do it, being able to print my own books has changed my life, and my husbands family was able to participate in our wedding via Skype — stuff like that. But it can also be an insatiable life-stealer, so this is all one step toward getting that in balance with the things I want to be doing.
