“Switching to a flip phone” is one of my favorite genres of internet essay and you of course brought so much depth and beauty to it. Thoroughly savored this one—thank you :)
I re-read this today, Nia - Thank you (7/31). The line, "If we know ourselves, we might have to be ourselves . . ." was what touched me. I find this to be is so true. I know in an earlier part of my life, when I would go backpacking (as a teen or young adult) I'd get dropped off, leave a basic itinerary with someone, and wander off for days at a time. There was no way to know what was going on and no way to contact anyone. In contrast to our ever-connected world now, I am so aware of how special that was, even though it wasn't special at the time - it was "just the norm." I used to bring books to read in the evenings, or I would take a post-dinner stroll.
I found so often, after returning, that not much in the world changed while I was gone. Most importantly, I found that much of what happened wasn't as significant as I was told it should be in the newspaper, news, or radio. Often, after a week in the wilderness, I would consciously walk across the city to get to friends' homes (I lived in Seattle during these years). Of course I couldn't always do this, but for about a month after coming home, I would do this. It forced me to manage time differently and plan in the walking time which slowed life down. Perhaps I was simply trying to capture and maintain what I experienced during my time in the woods.
Thank you for this essay and the audio portion as well. Congrats on changing your phone situation. A tool is never just a tool. They change us - how we think, how we live and the decisions we make about these things.
There is so much truth in all of this, Sean. Your decision to walk across the city to friends' homes as a way to slow life down and maintain that time in the woods really caught my attention. How much energy we have to put into each of those decisions when ease and speed are essentially forced onto us. There is not much in my life I'm more grateful for than being able to get into the wilderness on a regular basis and be reminded of what it is to be alive and connected with life. But I want to be better about maintaining some of that mentality when I come back.
And yes, a tool is never just a tool. I've been surprised by some of the changes since giving up my phone. There are some urges I no longer have and don't miss, like taking photos all the time just in case I might want to use them for something. I need to be a little more conscious of taking *some* photos, but that means I have to think to bring my camera, and it kind of feels good to make that a thing that I'm doing instead of just having it alongside any walk I happen to take.
Ah. Very thoughtful writing. Refreshing, back to Nature, voluntary simplicity, Re-wilding ones own life. Each such Substack a cabin and meadow in the mountains where we migratory beings can land gratefully, tarry for awhile, then wing Sime n. My cabin was in the high mountains of Colorado, far from the Front Range. No cell phones, no TV, no telecommunications at all. One had to drive 20 miles to a small town in the valley to use a payphone.
But it sufficed. We are social beings and seek community. But some of us have some hermit blood in us. You seem one such.
I think it best for our type to shun the cities so much as one can. There are too many of us in those places and we, by nature, do not prosper as herd animals. But increasingly we have little option economically. The privatization of the commons helped lead to this sorry pass.
Thank you! What a lovely thought, each Substack its own cabin and meadow in the mountains ...
Your cabin in Colorado sounds perfect. At least for me -- yes, hermit blood. It's not for everyone, it's true. Plenty of people find nothing attractive in this life, or even fear, and that's okay. I think it's healthy for us to cultivate an ease with the company of our own selves, but it's much more difficult for some than for others.
I'm in a city for the week, and do feel that. Not just the herds, but too much concrete, too much noise. We need those places where all we hear and feel are the trees, water, and animals ...
I'm thinking more and more about switching to a dumb phone or at least a dumber phone. I've already hit the "no notifications but calls and texts" phase and it's in grayscale at least 50% of the time. The only social media I have is the Substack app. I deleted Apple News but still have the NYT and the Atlantic so am not safe from news, though no notifications does help. I also still have my web browser and way too many other apps...so a long ways to go but maybe getting there?
When I had the smartphone, I grudgingly put Apple News back because people would send me news links I couldn't open. Having no notifications *does* help. Or did!
I wouldn't want to tell anyone else what choice to make or how to go about it. For me, I really wanted to release myself from the pull of that particular device, and I have to say that the effect is stronger than I expected. Even checking my phone for texts is less of a pull than it once was, which I think has a lot to do with the design as well as knowing I can't see gifs or photos, and can't open links (when these come, I have to go through a clunky two-step process to forward them to my email so that I can see them, which makes looking at them a far more intentional act). It helps that all my phone does for notifications is one low "bing" when a text comes in, if I have the sound on, and otherwise there's a simple asterisk next to the time telling me something came in. It doesn't trigger nearly the limbic response that the red numbers on a non-grayscale smartphone do.
Texting does take a long time, though. And I like texting and using emojis and gifs! I do miss that. But I kept iMessages linked to my email, so I can access that stuff -- but at certain times of day when I'm on my laptop, not constantly.
Thank you for taking the time to share all this! It's super helpful. I hadn't thought about leaving iMessages linked to my email. That's super smart. I'm curious-do you use WhatsApp or FB Messenger or anything like that? I could go without Messenger and just see messages when I log into FB, which I now have set on all devices to be available 30 minutes max per day. But I really do use WhatsApp a lot for communication. I could "encourage" my US-based peeps to migrate to texting me (and getting shorter and fewer replies!) but I also have friends and family who live elsewhere. Maybe go back to email with them? It's all definitely a journey and I'm not quite sure where I am on it yet. I just know I'm on the phone too much and even getting the few notifications I do often distracts me from what I'd truly rather be doing and also stresses me out
I just realized my mom uses iMessage on her iPad linked to her email only. It gets wild on my phone bc I also have her phone contact which is android, but on her end it's seamless bc her iPad was never linked to a phone. So even with glitches I can see making that switch work. The WhatsApp issue, though, is vexing! I have a WhatsApp app on my laptop, but it only works if it's also linked to a phone. If I get a chance I will have to pick the brains of my more tech-savvy friends for ideas. If they come up with anything good, I'll be sure to share it here 💕
All of this! And if you find out anything more about WhatsApp, I'd love to know. It's so widely used it's hard to persuade people to switch to something else.
I didn't know leaving iMessages linked to email was an option. Found out by accident because I was having trouble unlinking it from my phone number! It's still being a little weird and I don't know why. People on Android don't seem to have a problem and this phone service runs about the same.
WhatsApp was actually a much bigger deal. I have family in Russia and that's how we communicate. I've tried to get them to switch to Signal but haven't had much luck, so for now we're using email. It *is* a journey. It would help if WhatsApp worked on iPad but for some unfathomable reason it doesn't. That particular problem kept me from letting go of my phone completely longer than I intended, and it's still not a problem I've found a solution for, though I did read somewhere you can use a WhatsApp web client?
Oh, how many times I have done dishes by candlelight in the van. There’s something so lovely about it— something that just feels right. I love those photos. I love the sounds of the birds in the recordings. I love the way you show up in the world.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Antonia. What it means to get away from digitalization is such an important topic to contemplate. I much appreciate your real-life experience/contribution.
Everything about this sharing of observations between you and us is holy somehow because you declare that you wrote this in absence of technology. As if our minds are already wired to process technology as unnatural and disconnected from the mundane reality of existence, more like a forced contraption of digital dream that we trot in and through without much memory of who we really are. Ohh how I love this essay Nia and how I am going to come back to this again and again and again in moments of distress, to the willows and pines, cranes and hawks, flowing streams and rustling wind - that is where we belong. 💜
"digital dream" -- Swarna, my friend, how beautifully you know how to shape the richness and complexity of life into words that feel like food and water! I really, really wanted to share those blue butterflies with you. They seemed like the closest thing I could come to fireflies, though I saw them in the heat of the day and bold sunshine. I couldn't get a close enough look to identify them in a field guide (the closest picture I saw was of a butterfly unfortunately extinct; that was depressing), but they looked a lot like the one in the photo at the top of this article: https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/blue-butterflies/
Nia that butterfly looks ethereal. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how beautiful our planet is and what magic she manifests. I feel grateful to live on this floating rock and breathe her air, dwell in our shared love for her and exist in her glorious world beside each other. My hearts feel full with all that you captured here, the hours of brewing coffee, the reading of field guides, the gurgles of stream passing through, the slivery blue butterflies hanging over the buttercup.
It is strange isn’t it that as much as I long for it, I also feel like I have already experienced it because you experienced it and brought back this beautiful imagery, and that is how interconnected the world is. Our separation is just an illusion, a long drawn dream that only gets more complicated with the advent of ego’s myriad distractions like technology. If we drop our egos, we are all children of the cosmos like the fireflies and butterflies looking for each other in wilderness wanting nothing more than finding each other and coexisting as they help the ecosystem in their defined ways.
Watching a full Moon linger in the sky the other night, I felt the same -- as I''m sure you know! Even yellowish due to wildfire smoke, She was so beautiful I wanted to stay up for hours rather than go back to sleep. 🌕
You know, you're right, sometimes I read something rich and immersive enough that I don't need to be there because it feels carried within me. I hadn't thought about it that way. You always make my mind open further -- like a butterfly's chrysalis! Our separation is an illusion. Maybe this is how we keep bringing our interconnectivity into visibility. It has always been there; we just need to feel our way through its tangible threads.
Here’s to the moon drinking the wildfire and lingering through the night’s veil to remind us of the waxing and waning nature of our worries and anxieties. And to our opening minds and hearts to the interconnectedness of our lives within this beautiful planet, the only home we will ever know. 🌍🌕🦋💜
You're reminding me of the three gorgeous summers I spent leading a trail crew in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness just over Lolo Pass from Missoula. It was a 26-mile hike to Moose Creek, the ranger station at the heart of the wilderness, and we spent more than three months there. Mail and groceries by mule. No devices of any kind. I wrote 120 poems one summer, scribbling notes on the trail (when I was too tired after crosscut and axe work to write full sentences) and then writing and reading nonstop for the four days off back at Moose Creek.
It was idyllic, yet I've often struggled with the idea of disengaging so thoroughly from the modern world -- and whether I actually did. My food still came from the grocery store in Kooskia, Idaho, and I cooked my couscous and oatmeal on a high-tech camp stove. I was also single at the time, with no children, so I was rich in time. As a father of three and a divorcee, I don't have the same freedom. And if I had it, I'm not sure I'd want to isolate quite so much. At age 48, I'm pretty grateful for improvements in sleeping pads and breakthroughs like hammock tents. That rock in the hip holds no appeal for me :)
But this is a lovely reminder of Thoreau's dictum that we don't ride upon the railroad, it rides upon us. It does seem like freedom requires a constant vigilance against intrusion. The ultimate freedom from technology with the way that you write now, with paper and pencil, must be freedom from silently narrating your own life as a status update or tweet. This is perhaps the most pernicious intrusion into creative life, that everything around us becomes a potential post, that even in the quiet of our hearts we feel the need to pull private moments into public poses. I'm not sure if I've answered this question for myself, but is it possible to fight that intrusion successfully while still using technology?
Growing windy by now, but I have rather appreciated Facebook during two major life transitions -- leaving my faculty position and moving to a place where I knew no one but my in-laws, and then navigating a second disruption with divorce. I needed that input from family and friends in Iowa and Montana to know that I had support networks, that I wasn't truly alone. There's a delicate balance between solitude and isolation, and in-person community is a big part of how I'd like to fill the space that social media currently occupies. Yet I can't deny that there is something real about my virtual community. It does sustain me in certain ways, even if I ought to exercise more restraint with posting every snapshot from my batch of garlic pickles to vacation updates.
Final question: what has been the impact on your writing life of shifting from devices to paper and pencil? That's a no-brainer for me with poetry. It's a much harder transition for longform prose.
"...that everything around us becomes a potential post, that even in the quiet of our hearts we feel the need to pull private moments into public poses." Oh my, that's loud in my ears!
I feel both seen and called out at the same time. Thank you for this specific observation. It's one that I'm negotiating on the daily and who's to say how successfully or unsuccessfully. Also "to pull private moments into public poses" is a killer turn of phrase! Respect.
Oh, Joshua, what a wonderful short essay of its own to read. I love this and hope that you'll expand on the ideas more in a space where a wider audience can read it. There is so much here to think on and discuss. (Also, I LOVE sleeping in a hammock and my older sister has become a complete devotee to hammock tents and hammock sleeping bags, especially after her years in the military.)
"This is perhaps the most pernicious intrusion into creative life, that everything around us becomes a potential post, that even in the quiet of our hearts we feel the need to pull private moments into public poses." This has become a persistent question ever since social media became so widespread, I think. The tension for me is somewhat contained within your last question: I am also 48, and my writing was attached to pens, pencils and notebooks before the internet became ubiquitous. I remained attached to writing on paper, often by candlelight. It's the *attention* that feels somewhat freed for me now. Writing drafts in a notebook hasn't changed too much, but there is a pull to "just check" (news? messages? something I might have missed on YouTube) that is no longer there. It's more of a release than I'd expected, to be honest.
And I have to say, as much as I dislike the Facebook world and those who run it, the early days of FB got me through my early days of being a mother. I lived in a rural area of upstate New York far from any possible support networks, and I used to say that Facebook was kind of like a coffee shop for me. I couldn't go to any real coffee shop and meet friends to talk about meaty subjects, but by going into FB and chatting with them, it felt something like. And there's all the connection with family overseas that I was never able to have growing up.
And you led trail crews! I am stiff and slow in my crosscut and Pulaski work, but working volunteer trail crews in the Bob is one of the highlights of my year now that my kids are older.
How interesting. I can take meaningful notes for essays longhand. But I cannot (yet) compose longform work in that way. However, you are reminding me of a conversation I once had with a student who was struggling to write first drafts of poems. We tried all manner of prompts and exercises, and nothing worked until I asked him how and where he was trying to write. Turns out he was trying to compose poetry at his computer, in his dorm room, with his roommate playing Call of Duty in the background. He removed himself from that environment, chose a quieter one, and wrote the first drafts longhand. Problem solved.
Maybe it was Sharon Olds who claimed that poetry was more tactile than other genres, that it needed to come out through your actual arm. I've found that to be true. I also do a lot of editing *while* writing, which works better with verse on a legal pad than with prose.
That is really interesting. I had never heard that about poetry before, but it makes sense. I only started writing poetry within the last year, and have only written it longhand. Not only that, but I prefer to write it with a fountain pen -- the kind you have to dip in ink every few words -- or pencil, neither of which I use for any of my other writing! It never occurred to me that it almost might be a different mental/creative world within ourselves and needs different physical environments and mediums.
Though now I'm wondering what kind of poetry would come out of hearing someone playing Call of Duty while you're writing ...
How delightful to read this. I lived year round at running creek (9 miles downriver from Paradise, and about the same up river from Shearer— 24 ish up from moose creek), for five years in the early 1980s when I was in my early 20s. My then husband was the Packer at moose creek. The friends I made in those years- Moose Creek people ( trail crew and others), and the few still alive who also lived upriver at that time— are still dear friends. Though I now live in a town, that place shaped me hugely, and the way of life still influences my day to day existence in more ways than I can fathom. Not least learning what a rare treat it is to be utterly out of contact for days— even weeks at a time and only grocery shop two or three times a year.
Still—glad to live walking distance from grocery store and library now as I was not then.
Thanks for the reminder Joshua and huge congratulations Antonia for your perseverance and commitment. Admiration always for all you do.
Moose Creek people are the best! Perhaps you knew my friend Connie (a wilderness legend), as well as about her mysterious disappearance.
Shearer was a terrible place to stay; so many mice in that cabin! And always rainy when we stayed there. But hiking out of Ditch Creek by the Selway Lodge, and jumping off the bridge to cool off, was unforgettable. I'd love to hear more of your Moose Creek stories if you'd like to continue via email or chat.
Also agree about walkability. I meant to ask Antonia separately if she knew this resource, but I'll mention it here, that I loved teaching Jeff Speck's TED Talk on walkable cities as solutions to economic, environmental, and epidemiological problems. At the time, I lived six blocks from my office (walkable, though I biked) and half a mile in all directions from at least five playgrounds. So walking was what we did as a family there.
I cannot tell you both how delighted I am to read this connection between you two! I feel these threads of ... something, between times and places, tramping these wilderness areas and knowing these places in the ways that few other people are fortunate enough to have access to.
And Jeff Speck! He blurbed my book. I was just talking with another writer about him this morning (Micah Fields, whose book "We Hold Our Breath" about Hurricane Harvey in his native Houston, though he now lives in Helena, where his wife is from, I recommend). Speck's work is absolutely invaluable and he's a generous person with his knowledge and expertise. His book Walkable Cities is well-tattered on my shelf. What an incredible thing that you also taught him. 🚶🏻♀️
So. many. thoughts! Thank you is the best place to begin - for prodding and poking my thinking and feeling. Even if I believe I've done a lot of thinking about precisely these topics, the real effort has been in writing past and over all the feelings that are wrapped up in my own use of tech tools and how they impact our current lives. Your essay pulls back some of those layers for me, often uncomfortably so. There's a whole range of emotions bubbling up while reading, some of which I would not actively choose to call forth, yet here they are.
I want to sit with those emotions for a bit before saying more. My appreciation for both your craft and care are again bolstered by what you've accomplished in this essay and the process leading up to it.
I wish we could go for a long walk together or sit in a Viennese cafe and talk over it for hours!
(Also while I was spending seemingly endless hours all day every day this week on a task force rewriting the state's ELA standards, I had an opportunity to quote you--about how schools are so often asked to make up for society's failings [not that exactly; I pulled up your phrasing from our interview together], and it was very much appreciated.)
Unfortunately, I need my phone to perform my job. But I'm finding me time to be alone without it, with my thoughts, whether outside or at home with a cat on my lap. And it is good.
"a technology isn’t a thing. It’s a philosophy, a structure used to change the way humans live and work together and with the rest of life." I will think more on this!
I lead a different kind of life most of the time in Washington DC, but I do try to keep in mind some similar lessons I learned from the book Code, which I read in Library School. Code — as in computer code, as in legal code — dictates most modern lives, but those choices are human choices. We can always make different choices, write different code, if we so choose. It’s good to be reminded of what life can be like if we did.
I thought for a moment you were talking about "Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media," but am guessing this is something different if possibly related? We can make different choices! Or at least remember that it's possible to create a society where more people have more freedom of choice. Good reminder.
Another beautiful essay raising difficult questions about the choices we make.
I agree with someone below that each novel technology is not just a philosophy, but an ideology. Or at least a particular statement of an ideology. I also agree with the thought that, perhaps, the phone's ability to serve very specific individual needs offers the possibility that it need not - at least not entirely - serve the ideology of ceaseless consumption. My phone certainly helps me maintain communication with my kids and friendly relationships (includng with you).
The question is (well, may be, I am not that certain about this) whether the phone can serve a culture of collaboration and sustainability - which is certainly can in practical ways - WITHOUT underutting that culture. Or maybe to put it another way: Can we use our phones mindfully?
I think it's possible. It's partly our own use but much more about the way they're designed. It's well-established that many apps are designed to be addictive (like the "infinite scroll" that I think Twitter usually came out with, and the "like" button from Facebook, both of which tickle dopamine needs), and there are other design aspects that the people at the Center for Humane Technology have discussed, especially within social media but also things like how notifications show up in red and how smartphones themselves are shaped a lot like cigarette packages.
There is no reason it *has* to be this way except for profit. And I like many aspects of the internet! When I was growing up, we called my father's family in the Soviet Union maybe once every few years and even after the Iron Curtain came down it was a minimum $10 a minute. Now we can have video calls almost for free and it's awfully nice to be able to stay in touch with family that way when visiting isn't an option.
I’m early on the path of notification deficit, no texting notifications, and app limits, etc..
That said, with my subconscious desire to rid myself of the constant barrage of work notifications across 4 different apps, I completely missed a meeting today because I put my phone on silent from the start of the day and flipped it on its face on the table.. The boss obviously isn’t happy, but how can you explain an honest mistake?
It might be! All of our minds probably do. It is immensely frustrating to be asked to be available in that way, without rest, but then so battered by notifications and requests and what people think is urgent (which usually isn't) that the only way to get work done is to ignore all of it. Which then means missing things that are actually necessary. Bosses *should* be able to understand that but how often do they?
Wow. I regularly think about the fact that technology is never “just a tool.” It changes us and will continue to do so. Thank you for this essay and for leading on this…it is inspiring, Nia.
“Switching to a flip phone” is one of my favorite genres of internet essay and you of course brought so much depth and beauty to it. Thoroughly savored this one—thank you :)
Haha, I know what you mean, Mia (I meant to link to one that I read a few weeks ago, which had a fun wandering around London theme) -- thank you!
You’re my hero.
Ha! Well, you partly made it possible. It was taking your photography course that got me thinking about it a lot more seriously. ;)
I re-read this today, Nia - Thank you (7/31). The line, "If we know ourselves, we might have to be ourselves . . ." was what touched me. I find this to be is so true. I know in an earlier part of my life, when I would go backpacking (as a teen or young adult) I'd get dropped off, leave a basic itinerary with someone, and wander off for days at a time. There was no way to know what was going on and no way to contact anyone. In contrast to our ever-connected world now, I am so aware of how special that was, even though it wasn't special at the time - it was "just the norm." I used to bring books to read in the evenings, or I would take a post-dinner stroll.
I found so often, after returning, that not much in the world changed while I was gone. Most importantly, I found that much of what happened wasn't as significant as I was told it should be in the newspaper, news, or radio. Often, after a week in the wilderness, I would consciously walk across the city to get to friends' homes (I lived in Seattle during these years). Of course I couldn't always do this, but for about a month after coming home, I would do this. It forced me to manage time differently and plan in the walking time which slowed life down. Perhaps I was simply trying to capture and maintain what I experienced during my time in the woods.
Thank you for this essay and the audio portion as well. Congrats on changing your phone situation. A tool is never just a tool. They change us - how we think, how we live and the decisions we make about these things.
There is so much truth in all of this, Sean. Your decision to walk across the city to friends' homes as a way to slow life down and maintain that time in the woods really caught my attention. How much energy we have to put into each of those decisions when ease and speed are essentially forced onto us. There is not much in my life I'm more grateful for than being able to get into the wilderness on a regular basis and be reminded of what it is to be alive and connected with life. But I want to be better about maintaining some of that mentality when I come back.
And yes, a tool is never just a tool. I've been surprised by some of the changes since giving up my phone. There are some urges I no longer have and don't miss, like taking photos all the time just in case I might want to use them for something. I need to be a little more conscious of taking *some* photos, but that means I have to think to bring my camera, and it kind of feels good to make that a thing that I'm doing instead of just having it alongside any walk I happen to take.
Wonderful. Love hearing your voice and the bird songs. ❤️❤️
Thank you, Victoria! Hope you got some of this rain we got washed with today. 🌧️
We did! I loved it.
Ah. Very thoughtful writing. Refreshing, back to Nature, voluntary simplicity, Re-wilding ones own life. Each such Substack a cabin and meadow in the mountains where we migratory beings can land gratefully, tarry for awhile, then wing Sime n. My cabin was in the high mountains of Colorado, far from the Front Range. No cell phones, no TV, no telecommunications at all. One had to drive 20 miles to a small town in the valley to use a payphone.
But it sufficed. We are social beings and seek community. But some of us have some hermit blood in us. You seem one such.
I think it best for our type to shun the cities so much as one can. There are too many of us in those places and we, by nature, do not prosper as herd animals. But increasingly we have little option economically. The privatization of the commons helped lead to this sorry pass.
Thank you! What a lovely thought, each Substack its own cabin and meadow in the mountains ...
Your cabin in Colorado sounds perfect. At least for me -- yes, hermit blood. It's not for everyone, it's true. Plenty of people find nothing attractive in this life, or even fear, and that's okay. I think it's healthy for us to cultivate an ease with the company of our own selves, but it's much more difficult for some than for others.
I'm in a city for the week, and do feel that. Not just the herds, but too much concrete, too much noise. We need those places where all we hear and feel are the trees, water, and animals ...
I'm thinking more and more about switching to a dumb phone or at least a dumber phone. I've already hit the "no notifications but calls and texts" phase and it's in grayscale at least 50% of the time. The only social media I have is the Substack app. I deleted Apple News but still have the NYT and the Atlantic so am not safe from news, though no notifications does help. I also still have my web browser and way too many other apps...so a long ways to go but maybe getting there?
When I had the smartphone, I grudgingly put Apple News back because people would send me news links I couldn't open. Having no notifications *does* help. Or did!
I wouldn't want to tell anyone else what choice to make or how to go about it. For me, I really wanted to release myself from the pull of that particular device, and I have to say that the effect is stronger than I expected. Even checking my phone for texts is less of a pull than it once was, which I think has a lot to do with the design as well as knowing I can't see gifs or photos, and can't open links (when these come, I have to go through a clunky two-step process to forward them to my email so that I can see them, which makes looking at them a far more intentional act). It helps that all my phone does for notifications is one low "bing" when a text comes in, if I have the sound on, and otherwise there's a simple asterisk next to the time telling me something came in. It doesn't trigger nearly the limbic response that the red numbers on a non-grayscale smartphone do.
Texting does take a long time, though. And I like texting and using emojis and gifs! I do miss that. But I kept iMessages linked to my email, so I can access that stuff -- but at certain times of day when I'm on my laptop, not constantly.
It's all a journey!
Thank you for taking the time to share all this! It's super helpful. I hadn't thought about leaving iMessages linked to my email. That's super smart. I'm curious-do you use WhatsApp or FB Messenger or anything like that? I could go without Messenger and just see messages when I log into FB, which I now have set on all devices to be available 30 minutes max per day. But I really do use WhatsApp a lot for communication. I could "encourage" my US-based peeps to migrate to texting me (and getting shorter and fewer replies!) but I also have friends and family who live elsewhere. Maybe go back to email with them? It's all definitely a journey and I'm not quite sure where I am on it yet. I just know I'm on the phone too much and even getting the few notifications I do often distracts me from what I'd truly rather be doing and also stresses me out
I just realized my mom uses iMessage on her iPad linked to her email only. It gets wild on my phone bc I also have her phone contact which is android, but on her end it's seamless bc her iPad was never linked to a phone. So even with glitches I can see making that switch work. The WhatsApp issue, though, is vexing! I have a WhatsApp app on my laptop, but it only works if it's also linked to a phone. If I get a chance I will have to pick the brains of my more tech-savvy friends for ideas. If they come up with anything good, I'll be sure to share it here 💕
All of this! And if you find out anything more about WhatsApp, I'd love to know. It's so widely used it's hard to persuade people to switch to something else.
I didn't know leaving iMessages linked to email was an option. Found out by accident because I was having trouble unlinking it from my phone number! It's still being a little weird and I don't know why. People on Android don't seem to have a problem and this phone service runs about the same.
WhatsApp was actually a much bigger deal. I have family in Russia and that's how we communicate. I've tried to get them to switch to Signal but haven't had much luck, so for now we're using email. It *is* a journey. It would help if WhatsApp worked on iPad but for some unfathomable reason it doesn't. That particular problem kept me from letting go of my phone completely longer than I intended, and it's still not a problem I've found a solution for, though I did read somewhere you can use a WhatsApp web client?
Oh, how many times I have done dishes by candlelight in the van. There’s something so lovely about it— something that just feels right. I love those photos. I love the sounds of the birds in the recordings. I love the way you show up in the world.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Antonia. What it means to get away from digitalization is such an important topic to contemplate. I much appreciate your real-life experience/contribution.
Dishes by candlelight in the van! That. sounds so magical. Thank you, Holly, for sharing this in return. 🕯️
Everything about this sharing of observations between you and us is holy somehow because you declare that you wrote this in absence of technology. As if our minds are already wired to process technology as unnatural and disconnected from the mundane reality of existence, more like a forced contraption of digital dream that we trot in and through without much memory of who we really are. Ohh how I love this essay Nia and how I am going to come back to this again and again and again in moments of distress, to the willows and pines, cranes and hawks, flowing streams and rustling wind - that is where we belong. 💜
"digital dream" -- Swarna, my friend, how beautifully you know how to shape the richness and complexity of life into words that feel like food and water! I really, really wanted to share those blue butterflies with you. They seemed like the closest thing I could come to fireflies, though I saw them in the heat of the day and bold sunshine. I couldn't get a close enough look to identify them in a field guide (the closest picture I saw was of a butterfly unfortunately extinct; that was depressing), but they looked a lot like the one in the photo at the top of this article: https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/blue-butterflies/
Nia that butterfly looks ethereal. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how beautiful our planet is and what magic she manifests. I feel grateful to live on this floating rock and breathe her air, dwell in our shared love for her and exist in her glorious world beside each other. My hearts feel full with all that you captured here, the hours of brewing coffee, the reading of field guides, the gurgles of stream passing through, the slivery blue butterflies hanging over the buttercup.
It is strange isn’t it that as much as I long for it, I also feel like I have already experienced it because you experienced it and brought back this beautiful imagery, and that is how interconnected the world is. Our separation is just an illusion, a long drawn dream that only gets more complicated with the advent of ego’s myriad distractions like technology. If we drop our egos, we are all children of the cosmos like the fireflies and butterflies looking for each other in wilderness wanting nothing more than finding each other and coexisting as they help the ecosystem in their defined ways.
Watching a full Moon linger in the sky the other night, I felt the same -- as I''m sure you know! Even yellowish due to wildfire smoke, She was so beautiful I wanted to stay up for hours rather than go back to sleep. 🌕
You know, you're right, sometimes I read something rich and immersive enough that I don't need to be there because it feels carried within me. I hadn't thought about it that way. You always make my mind open further -- like a butterfly's chrysalis! Our separation is an illusion. Maybe this is how we keep bringing our interconnectivity into visibility. It has always been there; we just need to feel our way through its tangible threads.
Here’s to the moon drinking the wildfire and lingering through the night’s veil to remind us of the waxing and waning nature of our worries and anxieties. And to our opening minds and hearts to the interconnectedness of our lives within this beautiful planet, the only home we will ever know. 🌍🌕🦋💜
You're reminding me of the three gorgeous summers I spent leading a trail crew in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness just over Lolo Pass from Missoula. It was a 26-mile hike to Moose Creek, the ranger station at the heart of the wilderness, and we spent more than three months there. Mail and groceries by mule. No devices of any kind. I wrote 120 poems one summer, scribbling notes on the trail (when I was too tired after crosscut and axe work to write full sentences) and then writing and reading nonstop for the four days off back at Moose Creek.
It was idyllic, yet I've often struggled with the idea of disengaging so thoroughly from the modern world -- and whether I actually did. My food still came from the grocery store in Kooskia, Idaho, and I cooked my couscous and oatmeal on a high-tech camp stove. I was also single at the time, with no children, so I was rich in time. As a father of three and a divorcee, I don't have the same freedom. And if I had it, I'm not sure I'd want to isolate quite so much. At age 48, I'm pretty grateful for improvements in sleeping pads and breakthroughs like hammock tents. That rock in the hip holds no appeal for me :)
But this is a lovely reminder of Thoreau's dictum that we don't ride upon the railroad, it rides upon us. It does seem like freedom requires a constant vigilance against intrusion. The ultimate freedom from technology with the way that you write now, with paper and pencil, must be freedom from silently narrating your own life as a status update or tweet. This is perhaps the most pernicious intrusion into creative life, that everything around us becomes a potential post, that even in the quiet of our hearts we feel the need to pull private moments into public poses. I'm not sure if I've answered this question for myself, but is it possible to fight that intrusion successfully while still using technology?
Growing windy by now, but I have rather appreciated Facebook during two major life transitions -- leaving my faculty position and moving to a place where I knew no one but my in-laws, and then navigating a second disruption with divorce. I needed that input from family and friends in Iowa and Montana to know that I had support networks, that I wasn't truly alone. There's a delicate balance between solitude and isolation, and in-person community is a big part of how I'd like to fill the space that social media currently occupies. Yet I can't deny that there is something real about my virtual community. It does sustain me in certain ways, even if I ought to exercise more restraint with posting every snapshot from my batch of garlic pickles to vacation updates.
Final question: what has been the impact on your writing life of shifting from devices to paper and pencil? That's a no-brainer for me with poetry. It's a much harder transition for longform prose.
"...that everything around us becomes a potential post, that even in the quiet of our hearts we feel the need to pull private moments into public poses." Oh my, that's loud in my ears!
I feel both seen and called out at the same time. Thank you for this specific observation. It's one that I'm negotiating on the daily and who's to say how successfully or unsuccessfully. Also "to pull private moments into public poses" is a killer turn of phrase! Respect.
Thank you! I do my fair share of live narrating my life as potential status updates :)
Oh, Joshua, what a wonderful short essay of its own to read. I love this and hope that you'll expand on the ideas more in a space where a wider audience can read it. There is so much here to think on and discuss. (Also, I LOVE sleeping in a hammock and my older sister has become a complete devotee to hammock tents and hammock sleeping bags, especially after her years in the military.)
"This is perhaps the most pernicious intrusion into creative life, that everything around us becomes a potential post, that even in the quiet of our hearts we feel the need to pull private moments into public poses." This has become a persistent question ever since social media became so widespread, I think. The tension for me is somewhat contained within your last question: I am also 48, and my writing was attached to pens, pencils and notebooks before the internet became ubiquitous. I remained attached to writing on paper, often by candlelight. It's the *attention* that feels somewhat freed for me now. Writing drafts in a notebook hasn't changed too much, but there is a pull to "just check" (news? messages? something I might have missed on YouTube) that is no longer there. It's more of a release than I'd expected, to be honest.
And I have to say, as much as I dislike the Facebook world and those who run it, the early days of FB got me through my early days of being a mother. I lived in a rural area of upstate New York far from any possible support networks, and I used to say that Facebook was kind of like a coffee shop for me. I couldn't go to any real coffee shop and meet friends to talk about meaty subjects, but by going into FB and chatting with them, it felt something like. And there's all the connection with family overseas that I was never able to have growing up.
And you led trail crews! I am stiff and slow in my crosscut and Pulaski work, but working volunteer trail crews in the Bob is one of the highlights of my year now that my kids are older.
How interesting. I can take meaningful notes for essays longhand. But I cannot (yet) compose longform work in that way. However, you are reminding me of a conversation I once had with a student who was struggling to write first drafts of poems. We tried all manner of prompts and exercises, and nothing worked until I asked him how and where he was trying to write. Turns out he was trying to compose poetry at his computer, in his dorm room, with his roommate playing Call of Duty in the background. He removed himself from that environment, chose a quieter one, and wrote the first drafts longhand. Problem solved.
Maybe it was Sharon Olds who claimed that poetry was more tactile than other genres, that it needed to come out through your actual arm. I've found that to be true. I also do a lot of editing *while* writing, which works better with verse on a legal pad than with prose.
That is really interesting. I had never heard that about poetry before, but it makes sense. I only started writing poetry within the last year, and have only written it longhand. Not only that, but I prefer to write it with a fountain pen -- the kind you have to dip in ink every few words -- or pencil, neither of which I use for any of my other writing! It never occurred to me that it almost might be a different mental/creative world within ourselves and needs different physical environments and mediums.
Though now I'm wondering what kind of poetry would come out of hearing someone playing Call of Duty while you're writing ...
Haha -- the answer to your last question: not much. The environment was not friendly to any kind of poetry, it seemed.
😂
How delightful to read this. I lived year round at running creek (9 miles downriver from Paradise, and about the same up river from Shearer— 24 ish up from moose creek), for five years in the early 1980s when I was in my early 20s. My then husband was the Packer at moose creek. The friends I made in those years- Moose Creek people ( trail crew and others), and the few still alive who also lived upriver at that time— are still dear friends. Though I now live in a town, that place shaped me hugely, and the way of life still influences my day to day existence in more ways than I can fathom. Not least learning what a rare treat it is to be utterly out of contact for days— even weeks at a time and only grocery shop two or three times a year.
Still—glad to live walking distance from grocery store and library now as I was not then.
Thanks for the reminder Joshua and huge congratulations Antonia for your perseverance and commitment. Admiration always for all you do.
Moose Creek people are the best! Perhaps you knew my friend Connie (a wilderness legend), as well as about her mysterious disappearance.
Shearer was a terrible place to stay; so many mice in that cabin! And always rainy when we stayed there. But hiking out of Ditch Creek by the Selway Lodge, and jumping off the bridge to cool off, was unforgettable. I'd love to hear more of your Moose Creek stories if you'd like to continue via email or chat.
Also agree about walkability. I meant to ask Antonia separately if she knew this resource, but I'll mention it here, that I loved teaching Jeff Speck's TED Talk on walkable cities as solutions to economic, environmental, and epidemiological problems. At the time, I lived six blocks from my office (walkable, though I biked) and half a mile in all directions from at least five playgrounds. So walking was what we did as a family there.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city?subtitle=en
I cannot tell you both how delighted I am to read this connection between you two! I feel these threads of ... something, between times and places, tramping these wilderness areas and knowing these places in the ways that few other people are fortunate enough to have access to.
And Jeff Speck! He blurbed my book. I was just talking with another writer about him this morning (Micah Fields, whose book "We Hold Our Breath" about Hurricane Harvey in his native Houston, though he now lives in Helena, where his wife is from, I recommend). Speck's work is absolutely invaluable and he's a generous person with his knowledge and expertise. His book Walkable Cities is well-tattered on my shelf. What an incredible thing that you also taught him. 🚶🏻♀️
So. many. thoughts! Thank you is the best place to begin - for prodding and poking my thinking and feeling. Even if I believe I've done a lot of thinking about precisely these topics, the real effort has been in writing past and over all the feelings that are wrapped up in my own use of tech tools and how they impact our current lives. Your essay pulls back some of those layers for me, often uncomfortably so. There's a whole range of emotions bubbling up while reading, some of which I would not actively choose to call forth, yet here they are.
I want to sit with those emotions for a bit before saying more. My appreciation for both your craft and care are again bolstered by what you've accomplished in this essay and the process leading up to it.
I wish we could go for a long walk together or sit in a Viennese cafe and talk over it for hours!
(Also while I was spending seemingly endless hours all day every day this week on a task force rewriting the state's ELA standards, I had an opportunity to quote you--about how schools are so often asked to make up for society's failings [not that exactly; I pulled up your phrasing from our interview together], and it was very much appreciated.)
Unfortunately, I need my phone to perform my job. But I'm finding me time to be alone without it, with my thoughts, whether outside or at home with a cat on my lap. And it is good.
I miss having a cat on my lap. 🐱
"a technology isn’t a thing. It’s a philosophy, a structure used to change the way humans live and work together and with the rest of life." I will think more on this!
📞⏱️🔌
I lead a different kind of life most of the time in Washington DC, but I do try to keep in mind some similar lessons I learned from the book Code, which I read in Library School. Code — as in computer code, as in legal code — dictates most modern lives, but those choices are human choices. We can always make different choices, write different code, if we so choose. It’s good to be reminded of what life can be like if we did.
I thought for a moment you were talking about "Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media," but am guessing this is something different if possibly related? We can make different choices! Or at least remember that it's possible to create a society where more people have more freedom of choice. Good reminder.
Another beautiful essay raising difficult questions about the choices we make.
I agree with someone below that each novel technology is not just a philosophy, but an ideology. Or at least a particular statement of an ideology. I also agree with the thought that, perhaps, the phone's ability to serve very specific individual needs offers the possibility that it need not - at least not entirely - serve the ideology of ceaseless consumption. My phone certainly helps me maintain communication with my kids and friendly relationships (includng with you).
The question is (well, may be, I am not that certain about this) whether the phone can serve a culture of collaboration and sustainability - which is certainly can in practical ways - WITHOUT underutting that culture. Or maybe to put it another way: Can we use our phones mindfully?
I think it's possible. It's partly our own use but much more about the way they're designed. It's well-established that many apps are designed to be addictive (like the "infinite scroll" that I think Twitter usually came out with, and the "like" button from Facebook, both of which tickle dopamine needs), and there are other design aspects that the people at the Center for Humane Technology have discussed, especially within social media but also things like how notifications show up in red and how smartphones themselves are shaped a lot like cigarette packages.
There is no reason it *has* to be this way except for profit. And I like many aspects of the internet! When I was growing up, we called my father's family in the Soviet Union maybe once every few years and even after the Iron Curtain came down it was a minimum $10 a minute. Now we can have video calls almost for free and it's awfully nice to be able to stay in touch with family that way when visiting isn't an option.
I’m early on the path of notification deficit, no texting notifications, and app limits, etc..
That said, with my subconscious desire to rid myself of the constant barrage of work notifications across 4 different apps, I completely missed a meeting today because I put my phone on silent from the start of the day and flipped it on its face on the table.. The boss obviously isn’t happy, but how can you explain an honest mistake?
Maybe my mind is telling me it needs a break..
It might be! All of our minds probably do. It is immensely frustrating to be asked to be available in that way, without rest, but then so battered by notifications and requests and what people think is urgent (which usually isn't) that the only way to get work done is to ignore all of it. Which then means missing things that are actually necessary. Bosses *should* be able to understand that but how often do they?
Wow. I regularly think about the fact that technology is never “just a tool.” It changes us and will continue to do so. Thank you for this essay and for leading on this…it is inspiring, Nia.
It does indeed! Thank you, Sean. 😊