Season Opener: Dealing with Hard Feelings

I must give a warning to My Analog Life readers. After cutting my phone’s screentime to 30-60 minutes a day. All but eliminating social media. Cutting dopamine highs in other activities. I have become less cagey. I have become more focussed. I get more joy from meaningful activities yes.

But I’m not necessarily much happier.

There are many hard feelings we must face in life. It is indeed, just part of life. We will face solitude, grief, breakups, betrayal, disappointment, regret, embarrassment, resent and so on.

Historically we’ve cried alone, with soft shoulders and with our communities. Today, the easiest thing to do is reach for the closest form of disassociation. Often, the *doomscroll* on social media. 

It’s tempting. I’ve been there. I’ve witnessed my closest do it when I needed their help. It’s an unwelcome, and unfortunate, invasion of technology (namely social media) into our lives in a way that does not benefit us. No amount of hours scrolling will help you process these emotions. It just stuns and zombies you for a bit.

Loneliness

When I finally let myself sit with my own thoughts and existence. Something strange and upsetting came over me, the realisation of my own quite intense loneliness.

You see, once you cut out all the meaningless distractions, the cheap thrills and unlimited scrolling. I was left, quite literally, alone and bored at my house. Coinciding with my housemate going away for a week and resigning from my job. The solitude and boredom was intense. But I’ve come to realise that boredom is good, and we must sit with it to ultimately be creative.

This fate may await you if you take the bold-step of cutting out the crap of being a tiktok zombie, reading the news just to ragebait yourself, flicking next-next-next-next on entertainment to chase the ghost of being entertained.

With that in mind I wanted to write a few words on preparing for this possibility.

We are increasingly alone because of a structural destruction of a) the social contract, b) communities and c) societal purpose. If you take one thing away from this season opener, be it this:

Do not blame yourself for your solitude, for the atomisation of society was not your fault

In other words, if you find yourself lost, alone and bored when pursuing a more analog life know that some of these issues are structural. That doesn’t mean we can’t work to fix them, but go easy on yourself because it’s going to take a while for us to build new ways of connecting and meaning in the 21st century. Secondly, with this in mind, the solution to solitude I believe will be found in nurturing both our purpose and existing communities, or creating new ones. And that’s something I’m trying to do with this blog 🙂

That’s it. That’s the blog for today. I’m going to leave some notes below on the societal issues we face, but its additional. This season will focus on societal structures that are becoming digitalised, and not for our benefit. I’ll write a critique, and what we can do about it.

…

Some words on our structural issues.

a) the social contract and purpose

Pretty simple really. People used to work hard so their kids would have a better life than them. Economy was growing, hard work, savings and house buying was good. Accumulate wealth. Help the next generation. Work hard in your youth, get taken care of in your older age.

Unfortunately we now have an inverted pyramid for demographics. Quality of life is going to get worse each generation, taxes will go up and hard work doesn’t pay anymore. Climate change continues to accelerate. Shame that. This isn’t a political blog. Point in mentioning this? If I could afford my own house, kids, marriage, small business, holiday home etc I probably would have been working towards them rather than vegetating out to Instagram reels in my mid 20s. In other words, social media addiction I believe is often a symptom of not feeling like one has a purpose in society other than renting, consuming and paying tax.

Reality check? I have no agency over demographics. But I do have agency over vegetating to Instagram reels. My elders were right about one thing: complaining only gets you so far. Better to take action. Putting down social media has left me feeling like some of these things are more within reach, despite the structural issues.

b) loss of community

Growing up I went to Sunday School and was confirmed into the Catholic Church, I was even quite religious until my dad died. Although superstitious may be the correct word, for I was already questioning the line of the church at a young age. Today, I hold the Christian church(es) in lots of suspicion as I developed a more nuanced understanding of power, patriarchy, politics and people in my early 20s. But this blog is not a criticism of the church, I only mention the church for one obvious reason.

The loss of the church as a central hub has had a devastating effect on our sense of community.

I do not clamor for a Christian revival, but I think it’s clear as day that we have very few/no spaces where people meet their fellow residents; form inter-generational connections and friendships; understand their local community and its issues; form mutual-aid networks and altogether commit to meet at the same time each week for a bonding lesson in cohesion and guidance.

That’s a real loss. And I’m not sure how to resolve that. Mandated community town halls each week? or a return of the church in a new form?

Tip of the day.

My Analog Life is about small things mostly. You probably don’t even think about your browsers default new tab page. Readers, we must take a cynical eye to everything we do on the computer.

The first is what I had before. ‘Useful articles’. More often than not they are just sneaky adverts and time thieves. I installed an extension that cleans it out and just shows me pictures of mountains.