1/25/26 - I think technology is neat but.....

Work demands that I spend copious amounts of time on my phone. Well, the gig work I do right now does. By trade, I work in lower level tech support/customer service, but currently I am unemployed due to some woe is me style hooey. Since I started doing gig work primarily, I have noticed how much time I spend on my phone. Too much time, so much that I am sick of it. Which really is a damn shame.

I remember the novelty of technology, I remember the wonder I felt when I held my first smartphone. That feeling of connection to the world constantly at my fingertips. Like many others, I took the previous disconnect for granted. I felt that I was never alone, and that brought me comfort. Now, I feel like I can't get a moments' peace from the constant notifications. I can't get a moments' peace from my own compulsion to check for those notifications.

All this to say, I miss when tech excited me. I miss when the internet was a place to go, not a feeling that you can not escape. I think it's important that we make use of our ability to be informed quickly. I think it's important that we don't take for granted our interconnectivity, our interdependence made manifest. But how can we live in this beautiful new world if we don't have the contrast of disconnect to appreciate what is there in front of us?

I know so many other people are following suit and ditching their unaesthetic advertisement rectangles for flip phones that they may have romanticized through old anime and movies. They're putting cameras and gameboys in their pockets again. Bringing pen and paper. Maybe even calculators. That, has a certain undeniable romance. I think so many of us have been on this side of our technological garden of eden that the grass on that other side of the fence is looking so vibrantly green that it is too hard to not take that brightness as a sirens call.

I realistically can't put my phone down now. My livelihood depends on it and... I think I might just be too addicted. But my hope is to simplify things. Carry tools and toys with me again and maintain them rather than just have their equivalent with me in the form of an app. This community is hopefully a form of external accountability, and is also going to serve as a diary for myself and anyone who chooses to humor this idea. If anyone reads this, I sincerly thank you. If anyone wants to share their own experiences with Decentralization, by all means, please contribute.