On Saturday night, we watched a movie set in 1970, and the spot-on art direction gave me a comforting sense of nostalgia for the period, the homely simplicity of everything.
This inspired me to spend all of yesterday pretending it was that year — which meant not using any technology that hadn’t been invented yet.
Okay, the heat pumps were running, our house has solar panels, I drove our electric car, and I made popcorn in the microwave and ate that while we watched a television that’s connected to an infinite stream of content choices.
But you and I both know what really mattered: the devices. I kept mine turned off for the whole day, and I got so much done!
Good-intention project materials that have been sitting in my basement studio for months suddenly turned into finished objects. Time elongated, and my day felt centered on me, instead of me being caught in the orbit of an infinite galactic garbage island.
It was a workout for my mind, which kept reflexively wanting to turn on the dopamine firehose whenever I hit an in-between moment. But instead, I read, worked on things, and — heavens! — paid attention to my family.
I want to make a practice of this — not as ascetic self-flagellation or one-upmanship, but just because it felt really healthy and was so darned nice.
(Well, except I’ll make it 1976, because I actually have memories of that, and it’s before my imagination got swallowed whole by Star Wars.)