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Now that I’ve divested myself of my job and my smartphone, I ostensibly have more time to write; the problem is that my intellectual muscles have atrophied. I struggled to use my free time well; my brain is conditioned to operating amidst constant connection and chaos. Free (relatively) of connection — off the smartphone grid — leaves this gaping hole in my consciousness. Instead of instinctually feeling creative, I instinctually feel that something is missing.
This is a challenge that we will face: the two part challenge of not only disconnecting, but reimagining, reconfiguring our being in the space created by this disconnection.
We don’t realize what technology, or certain deployments of technology, are doing to us: they are displacing all of our instincts, our ideas, our creativity.
My first night with a flip-phone, I struggled to find a friend’s apartment that I had been to several times —and I got angry: I felt lost about being lost. The issue wasn’t spending an extra ten minutes walking, it was feeling like I no longer understood how to navigate without Google Maps; which was essentially true — I had lost the ability to navigate without Google Maps.
Yesterday, with just my flip-phone on me, on a humid, sunny day, I felt an intense euphoria starting around 4pm, really, for no particular reason. I was just sitting in a park, writing in my…
