analog

Lately I’ve wanted to be more creative in the physical realm versus digital. Over the past few months I have made a tangible shift in habits and possessions at home, unloading the unnecessary to make room for the analog.

I started an analog notebook. It’s a fuchsia Moleskine notebook, and I am filling it with pressed flowers, photos taken on instant film, and my words.

I have a homely, stately little Smith-Corona typewriter now, purchased from a nice woman who had owned it since high school in the 60’s, and I incorporate its use into my analog journaling. My daughter was so taken with my typewriter that we bought its fraternal twin just a few weeks later. She uses it to write her biology homework, of all things. It can get pretty loud in our house when we’re both typing away.

More and more often on the weekends and in the evenings I’ve insisted on vinyl and reading instead of mindless TV blaring in our sole living space.

I’ve been slightly obsessed with bifurcated sleep patterns for about two years, loving the idea of breaking my night’s sleep into two distinct blocks with meaningful, analog-y stuff in the dark middle, and am so tempted by the idea of an unplugged home (without veering too close to the edge of the ridiculous).

I know that this yearning for what used to be does border on pointlessness (from the New Yorker, The Pointlessness of Unplugging). But for me, one who spends all day staring at computer screen for a living, I need to spend whatever hours are left around the edges of work NOT looking at screens.