Offline

As I start this card, I’m headed into my third Old-Timey Weekend. But I’ve also been extending it beyond that to a much more offline existence in general.

Basically, I’m pretending computers don’t even exist on nights and weekends.

This has been good in a three-fold way:

Let’s get the negative one out of the way: By being "online", I mostly mean "consuming the opinions of other people". That didn’t always used to make me feel bad. But during the 2020s (particularly 2024 on), that’s changed. I truly feel frustrated and depressed after spending too much time consuming opinions. And when I chime in with my own opinion, it both amplifies the feeling and leaves me feeling raw and exposed on top of it. For this reason alone, being offline is a clear winner.

Now for the positive: I have never regretted spending my time reading a book. Even a mediocre novel or less-than-stellar self-help book. More about that here: Less online reading, more book reading.

It took getting off the computer entirely for days at a time, but I’ve finally rediscovered my love for doing projects with my own two hands. Making silly little things with cardboard, making art, putting together little model kits, fixing broken things, etc.

It feels good! And it feels like I have time again.

There’s something about having an Internet connection that makes it feel like I’m always behind. Take that connection away, and now I have time to do the things I want to do. Wild stuff.

And it’s not like I was actually on the screen the whole weekend before. It’s that I wanted to be doing things on the screen or, worse, felt like I should be doing things on the screen in order not to fall behind. In retrospect, that sounds nuts. What made me feel like that?

My house is full of stuff. Projects and items teeming with years worth of good intentions.

In a world where computers don’t exist, I suddenly have time to dig those things out and…​ actually do them! It’s kind of amazing. Is this how I used to live before ubiquitous broadband? Incredible.

So what about the massive backlog of on-screen projects I’ve got? Well, I certainly haven’t forgotten about that. In fact, it bothered me a lot for the first week. And then a little less the next week. And now I’m pretty cool with it. I’m doing a little bit on those in the mornings. Sometimes a bit on lunch breaks. It’s going to be even slower than before, but slow and steady really does win the race as I wrote in Finishing Things.