One of the things that was interesting at the men’s retreat was that it sort of self-selected for a group of people that are interested in sort of… minimalist cell phone choice. Just in those who I interacted with where the subject happened to come up, there were are least 2 guys who were rocking flip phones, a few using the Lite Phone, and, I think at least one other similar phone. You don’t come across those very often just day to day (or at least I don’t).

I had tried a flip phone awhile back and I couldn’t do it – could be I chose poorly, but it was just way to hard to find information in old texts – plus not being able to use certain loyalty apps etc was a bit of a bummer (though I’d have dealt with that ok if not for the text thing).

I replaced that with a phone from Unihertz called the Jelly Star (if you google that, you can see what it is). I really love the phone – it’s awkward to talk on apart from using speakerphone or a headset because of the fact that it is so small, but honestly I send messages via typing way more than I actually use it as a phone. The typing is a bit awkward too, it’s a very small keyboard on the screen and so using the swipe feature is imperative. It’s not TOO annoying most of the time. And, it’s super easy to carry around, play music on, etc. Every now and again it does get super slow and need a reboot, but I’ve been using it long enough now to know I’m sticking with it till it stops working – and then I’ll probably get a newer version of it, or else something similar.

Another great thing about it – the reactions that you get from people when they see it. For instance, at Sheetz yesterday morning I held it out to the guy so he could scan the QR code in my loyalty app, and it just sort of broke his brain – he didn’t know what to do and jsut ask “what is that?” It’s funny to me to see that reaction. You also just get comments like “oh wow that’s a really small phone” – some sort of comment happens most of the time. But there’s nothing better than those moments when someone can’t even comprehend what they’re looking at.

It’s interesting that the way people think of phone has changed so much though, because back in the 00’s, pre-iPhone, small phones were where it was at, everybody wanted the smallest phone they could get. It didn’t confuse them why your phone would be so small, they’d just see if and love it. Now everything is basically an iPhone and relatively the same size and shape, etc. Anything that isn’t that is just kind of weird.

Anyway, I highly recommend it. If you get yourself one of these minimalist phones, you’ll break that terrible mindless phone usage habit you probably have, and as a bonus when strangers see your weird phone you can see their reactions to it. I find it entertaining, anyway.

In the last month or so since I posted, I’ve continued on with my flip phone. I haven’t changed anything else really “smart-device”-wise, but I have been trying to intentionally do things in my free time other than watch TV or play a game on the computer, and in particular lessening the latter. I’ve not cut it out entirely, I’ve spent some time playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which has been a lot of fun, but I’ve tried to limit that to one or two sessions a week.

At first the main thing I inserted into the extra time was reading. Between spending a week at the beach (always a place I do a lot of reading) and the extra time I’ve spent on it otherwise, I finally completed Rhythm of War, meaning I’m all caught up on the Stormlight Archive. I’ve started a couple more books since then, one fiction book and one non-fiction, and hoping to keep a good pace going. When I finish this post, I’m going to go do a bit of reading to that end.

In the last few days, I started messing around with my guitar for the first time in many years. At first I just took it out of the case and fiddled around a bit, but also went ahead and ordered some things to get it in better shape. The strings on there were probably overdue to be changed out back when I had last played it, and, like I said, it’s been years since then, so I ordered some strings, some oil for the fretboard, and a couple other things. Everything had arrived by the time I got home from work yesterday, and so upon getting home I got it cleaned up and restringed and had a good long session getting to work on relearning things. There’s a ton I’ve forgotten and my calluses and finger strength aren’t what they need to be, but stuff is coming back to me as I play.

I’m not going to overcommit myself such that I burn myself out, but for now I’m saying every day get it out and mess around a little bit – 30 minutes or something like that. Should be easy. Same for reading. They’re just things I need to make sure I do. If I spend more time, great. Both yesterday and today I spent a couple hours, basically until my fingers were hurting. They sting a bit as I type this, but, I’m just reminding myself that’s a good thing… the calluses will come!

The other personal adjustment since I last blogged is the diet I started about 3 weeks ago (I’m in the latter half of the 3rd week now). That’s been going pretty well. It’s basically just calorie counting via the Lose It app. I’ve found that I have an easier time doing that than the slow carb thing I used to do. The last time I did that, I just found it too restrictive. I like to be able to have something with carbs in it if I really want to. Anyway, I’m roughly 10 pounds down since the start, and I’m generally not feeling like it’s too horrible. The hardest bit of the diet so far was a work lunch meeting yesterday where I had to say no to a free dessert – and watch other people eat said dessert – and you know, also order something reasonable for my meal. Honestly though, apart from feeling a little bit hungry throughout parts of the day and in the late evening, it’s not been bad.

My next adjustment will involve adding a bit more to my daily routine. I have two things I want to add, and I’m not yet decided whether I will start them both at the same time, or do one and then start the other a week or so after. Those things are stretching and some sort of exercise.

I’m going to make myself do the thing I don’t really want to and set my alarm for earlier so that I can do those things before work. I think starting out the day with some stretching and exercise will be good. So, the stretching will for sure start this weekend, and the exercise may or may not start with it. When I start the exercise, I think at first I might alternate days jogging and walking. Then before too long I need to get back over to Soldierfit a few times a week after work. A big plus to the exercising will be I’ll be able to add some more calories into my meal plan – because I’m already getting the defecit that I need- the exercise isn’t to help with weight loss, it’s for health generally.

I’d like to think I’ll make more time for blogging as well, so I don’t find myself posting when I suddently realize it’s been a month since I last posted and decide to post again for that reason a month from now.

In any case, I hope to have more progress to speak of in the coming weeks.

Oh yeah, and the flip phone continues to serve me well. There will be a development there soon as I decided to change to something else that will better suit my needs while still serving my goals of not spending very much time on my phone, but I’ll tell you a bit about that next time – which will hopefully be in the next week or so.

Just over 2 weeks in, I continue unabated.

I decoupled all my work related stuff from my iphone and moved it to my work iphone. I can’t get rid of it, because you know.. work. But it sits in my laptop bag and is only used for work related things during work hours.

In my personal life, my iphone sits in a corner until such time as I finish removing accounts from my Authy authenticator app over to my yubikey. I’ve moved a few of the ones I use more frequently already – I’m going to move the rest in the next couple of days, before I head off for the beach this weekend. Truthfully I’ve not touched the phone at all since about a week ago when I saw the battery had died and I hooked it up to charge. Once I get the authenticator stuff off it I might put it in my desk drawer for a bit to make sure I don’t discover I forgot something before I sell it on ebay or somesuch. Sure, the screen is finicky, but someone will probably be willing to pay something for it despite that.

I also plan to roll back the other smart devices in my life – ditch my Amazon Echo devices apart from my FireTVs. I might get rid of the cube eventually because it has the always-listening Alexa – the stick for the tv in my bedroom requires me to hit the button. At any rate, I don’t plan to stop using streaming services, so I’ll be using some sort of device for that. As I may have mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I don’t intend to get rid of ALL technology in my life, just to roll back.

I have several smart lights that tie into Alexa, but once the Echos are gone they will function as normal lights when I flip light switches. My Alexa-enabled coffee maker will work fine just as a coffee maker as well – I basically never use that functionality anyway – pro-tip: don’t buy one, it’s a waste of money. Then there is my smart lock, which I also rarely use because it’s on my front door I almost always enter my house through my garage. And that’s pretty much it on the “smart” front.

I had wondered if my iPad use might go up with getting rid of the iPhone. While I’ve not actually checked the screen time to compare before and after, it definitely doesn’t feel like I’ve been using it anymore than I was. If it’s gone up, it’s only been a marginal amount. I’m pretty pleased with that. I’ve found that having the stupid flip phone makes it easy to not distract myself by looking at a phone when I’m sitting with people or out and about. Texting isn’t that bad, but definitely I keep myself from writing any diatribes to people.

My next step after that will probably be a temporary thing, like eliminate computer usage apart from what I have to do for work for a month. When I’ve done similar things with like a particular app/website, such as Facebook, in the past,I’ve found when I come back I spend less time doing it. I could do with spending less time on that stuff. If I’m feeling really ambitious I might say no tv/movies either – basically eliminate screens entirely for that month. We’ll see – I’ll have to pick a month.

Beyond that I’m not sure of the best steps. Some of what I’d like to accomplish would probably involve moving. But finding what I’d like to find would probably be a bit of a challenge. I’d like to live in a community with a decent amount of walkability – or maybe bicyclability – but that isn’t like… in a city. I don’t know if it exists in the world today. But it just seems weird to me that so little of what I do is near to me – and I have to get in a car for awhile to do most of what I do.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep the updates coming – and I have a couple other ideas of things to write about that I just need to take the time to sit down and write. With any luck I’ll get myself to do it before too much longer.

I’ve been listening to a lot of videos and podcasts recently about how the advancement of technology is increasingly disconnecting us from the natural world. It’s something that I’ve thought about before, but recently it’s been increasingly at the forefront of my mind.

Something about the way that I live just doesn’t seem normal. By the standards of modern society it actually is quite normal. I do work on a computer, sometimes in an office, sometimes from home (that latter part having only recently become normal). I live in a house, in a small development with a bunch of neighbors who mostly do the same. I sometimes talk to a couple of my nearest neighbors, but for the most part I am unfamiliar with them. Most of what I do is on a screen, whether for work or pleasure, or for educational purposes.

Technology improves our lives in many ways. It’s not that it is inherently a bad thing, but much of the time I think we find ourselves being enthralled by it. Scrolling through Twitter endlessly, searching for an argument with some anonymous person. But is it a person? It very well may not be. One irony of the internet is that when we interact someone there, we may do so forgetting that a real person is on the other end of our cruel words – but we also can’t be sure that the things we’re seeing posted were actually written by humans at all – bots increasingly muddy the waters of online discourse. (See the “Dead Internet Theory”: https://youtu.be/9WB5grLMXkU)

That’s unnatural. How are we meant to come to a common understanding if we can’t even know that we’re engaging with something real? Aside from that, the internet has connected people with fringe beliefs into communities that justify those beliefs. For example, flat earthers. Pre-internet, those who truly believed in a flat earth were less numerous than they are post. The spread and pervasiveness of pornography has increased tremendously, never more than a few clicks away when temptation strikes. It creates a world where the fake is easier than the real. The advancement toward virtual reality threatens to move that line even further. Why do work to better your life when you can just load up whatever life you want and pretend it’s the real thing?

There’s also the simpler matters of disconnect from nature. We wake up to alarm clocks to get to a job at a particular time, which really has no bearing to anything meaningful. Whether the sun has risen or set has very little impact on us. Our time is so arbitrary that for large portions of the year we pretend that if we change the time on the clock for one hour we are somehow creating an extra hour of daylight (I did the math, the sun stays up the same amount of time either way). Just the other day someone was telling me that she can only eat meat because she’s convinced herself it comes from the grocery store. Most of us know next to nothing about working the earth.

I don’t know how to get to something approximating “normal” as I conceive it. But a start is to take small steps and experiment with reducing or eliminating certain types of technology. For me, going “all the way” has some serious challenges. I work in Information Security – that is going to necessitate a certain amount of exposure to computers. But, it’s also not necessarily about taking it all the way – just getting closer and learning what technology I can have a healthy relationship with, and what I can’t.

My first experiment is a simple one. My iPhone’s touch screen recently started glitching out, becoming increasingly difficult to use. At first I started to look toward replacing it with a new one, but then I recognized an opportunity. Do I need a smartphone? Is my relationship with a smartphone a healthy one? I honestly think the answer to both questions is no. And so 3 days ago I pulled the sim card out of my iPhone 11 and placed it into a Nokia 2780 flip phone. It’s a much simpler phone, and let’s be real, it’s still pretty technological, but it’s a real step back from current technological advancements. No scrolling through Twitter or news apps. No watching videos (ok, technically it can but the experience is terrible). Sending text messages is far less convenient. Abandoning a cell phone entirely would make it very hard to live in the world today, so this is also a good example of what I want to achieve generally. Roll back to the maximum amount I can without creating serious hindrances in my life.

Maybe I’ll keep at it. Maybe I’ll fail. Like I said, it’s an experiment. I could decide I can’t stand not having a smartphone and pick up the iPhone 15 when it comes out in 2 months. But, I think it’s worth the attempt.