I'm de-smartphoning my life
Look, the title is a little misleading. Obviously I can't get rid of my smartphone. No one uses SMS anymore, call and text plans are more expensive, and people just use mobile apps to communicate plus a lot of my work requires me to have a smartphone. So I can't just ditch it.
But what if instead of having everything available on my smartphone, what if I decentralize the features that I use and have separate physical items for them instead of an app?
You may ask, why am I doing this? Simple, smartphones are distracting.
It's the endless notifications, it's the algorithms, it's the curation of things, it's the never ending marketing being shoved towards me that I do not like. Sometimes I just want to take a photo, listen to music, or just write something down in my notes and then I get a notification that brings me to another app that requires me to open another app and then a notification from another app and then you realize that you've already spent 10 minutes scrolling past reels and Facebook posts that you're never going to engage with but somehow spend your time staring with your brain turned off.
I also had an epiphany a couple of months back where I realized that I have been too over reliant on my smartphone. I get that technology is meant to make things more convenient for us but sometimes it's getting too convenient to the point that I'm starting to lose the experience that makes us human.
I wanted to grow a Calamansi tree and instead of grabbing a pot of soil, planting a seed, or going to a local nursery, my immediate reaction is to look for video tutorials on how to do it which is insane to think about but is also an absolutely normal thing for a person to do nowadays.
And you might say, "maybe that's just a you problem?" Maybe, but it's a problem either way and I want to do something about it.
So I started thinking back on how I used to live before, before smartphones existed and how I can emulate the feeling, how I can bring back the joy of learning, creating, and exploring the internet. Tech has been an integral part of my life so I wanted to bring back my excitement for tech as well.
The journey started when I got gifted an Anbernic RG35xx by my brother which is a fantastic handheld console that plays retro games. Owning this console made me realize how much I enjoy gaming again, gaming has been very miserable recently cause of how much unnecessary bloat is in games right now. Micro transactions, constant updates, ads, and a lot of anti-consumer practice and being able to play games and focus on how fun games are is just sooooo refreshing. I played Harvest Moon for hours on this thing and it also introduced me to another game (and another console, the PICO 8) called Witchcraft TD and it's honestly one of the most addicting games I've played in a while purely just because of how fun it is!
You can try out Witchcraft TD here:
Next thing I removed from my smartphone is notes and reminders, it's probably the easiest one but it takes a lot of focus to do that solely cause of muscle memory and even today I still tend to forget to use my notepad and my whiteboard. My partner also got a calendar/whiteboard that attaches to our fridge and she uses that to track a lot of stuff which is pretty cool. Most people nowadays just download apps or pay for apps that helps them track stuff, some even build their own apps (well they don't really, they just ask AI to build one for them but, you know what good for them) when all it actually takes is a marker, a calendar, and paying attention.
Let's talk about cameras, I love them. I've always been a camera nerd ever since I was a teenager and I've always loved photography and the whole creative process from composition to the lights to the technical stuff that goes inside the camera. I love it. And for me the whole point of taking photos is to freeze that moment in time and be able to capture that specific memory. Every photo is a memory, and every memory is special. When smartphones started having better and better cameras, I felt like people have taken the convenience for granted and just started taking photos of everything, and photographs started having less and less of a value. Photos stopped becoming memories and started becoming erm.. products? Idk, you get what I'm saying, it's just become less about the memories and more about what can I post today to keep my followers updated.
I didn't have a lot of challenges keeping my phone and camera separate, I don't really use my phone to take photos anyways. The only problem I ran into is taking photos/videos in public spaces since people (especially in malls here) don't really like it when you film with a professional looking camera so I got myself an Osmo Action 4. It's not the latest version of Osmo Action Cameras but it's good enough for how I use it, so now I can film and take photos in public and avoid getting attention.
Having your phones and your cameras separate makes you stop and think before taking a photo instead of just snapping and posting anything right away.
I also enjoy finding weird cameras, I'll share some of these weird cameras on a different blog post one day but it's another fun reason to avoid using your camera app.
Not too long ago we went to Baler, and the drive to that place was insanely long we spent more time in the Van than being in the beach. That meant that I had a lot of time in my hands to listen to music.
With everything that's been going on in my life, I realized that I rarely had the time to listen to music, like actually listen, like focus on what I'm listening to instead of just having something play in the background while I'm working or while I'm doing my chores. I used to travel to work before and because of the traffic, I had time to listen to music but when I started working at home, I just hadn't had the time to do that. There have been albums that I've already listened to before but actually listening to them at the back of the van on the way to Baler with nothing else to do gave me a newfound appreciation for them. Some of the albums I've listed to were Threesome by Baby Boys, LIVE, RAFF, LOVE Acts I and II by Raffaella and Adult Romantix by Winter. It's the first time I've thought about the details in the instruments and the amazing production that went into these.
So a couple of days ago, I decided to get an iPod, but iPods are hard to find nowadays, they're expensive and a lot of them in the second hand market are scuffed, have defective batteries, some are even just downright unusable. I found an alternative called the Innioasis Y1 and it's not a 1:1 experience to getting an actual iPod but it's pretty close. There's a couple of things you have to do to make it work like how you want it to, theming it up, customizing mp3tags, and more, but it's what people who writes blogs like these like.. tinkering. So I did that and once I got everything set up, I loaded my files from bandcamp, and it's one of the best things I've ever bought for myself. I now am able to listen to music when working or when just lying down without the distractions and notifications and the hellish algorithm of my smartphones.
Oh and one more rant, I hate how these streaming services plays random music that I don't even listen to when I'm listening to albums I picked and curated, I've tried all of them, Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube. All of them does that, what's up with that?
Anyways I really enjoyed having my own tiny music player, and the best part is, I get to use wired headphones plus it also plays FLAC files.
Having all these experiences separated from my smartphone feels liberating, it feels like you have the freedom to decide how you want to do something instead of listening to the suggestions of whoever corporation runs the apps and the device you are using. And I think more people should do that. Smartphones are convenient, sure, but I think they've been way too convenient that it takes the human experience away. It takes the fun out of creation and even the appreciation things and I think that sucks. If we're all here just existing listening to whatever the corporations decides we should consume and doing what they want us to do, life will continue to feel more and more empty that it feels now. Which is why I decided to take the less convenient route and live a more fulfilling life.
So what's next in this pretentious journey? I'm thinking getting a separate alarm clock and instead of watching YouTube video essays maybe go back to reading books again. I'm also interested in looking for more hobbies that are physical like maybe going back to dancing or getting into a new sport.
I know that after writing this I'm still going to work and sit on the computer and do a lot of things digitally but I'm hoping that when I'm off work enjoying life.. I'm actually enjoying life.
How about you?
-A