The future is analog

Nº 014

I spend most days staring at a screen. I wake up in the dark, make my coffee, and sit in the same chair in front of the same glow. The computer hums like a tired appliance, as if it knows what’s coming. I open windows. I open tabs. I start clicking. The day begins before I do.

My work lives on the screen. I edit stories for the newspapers, fix grammar, trim quotes, and try to keep the news tidy. During slow mornings, I watch the cursor blink and feel it waiting for me to move. I copy an email into a draft. I rewrite a lede. I scan for names, dates, and mistakes. Basic stuff. The screen pulls me in without asking whether I want to go.

Then there’s MEDIUM. Press releases, announcements, grants, calls for entry. A gallery doesn’t run on wishful thinking. It runs on copy, deadlines, and small pieces of text that fill the gaps. I move between tabs and shape another paragraph. I grab a photo, resize it, place it on the site. I read the words out loud to check the tone. The work is steady and endless. The computer sits there, bright and patient, ready for more.

When I finish the news and the gallery work, I might edit some photos. Digital cameras spit out clean files that wait for me in Lightroom. I crop a scene from a downtown location. I nudge the color. I adjust the exposure when the shadows feel too heavy. I sit still. The photos sit still. The room feels sealed shut.

Between all that, I doom scroll. I skim feeds without thinking. My thumb moves on its own. I check one app, then another. I watch strangers argue about things I don’t care about. I see a photo of a friend’s dinner. I let the glowing squares fill up the empty parts of the day. It feels like noise.

Most days, I am online from the moment I wake until the moment I fall asleep. I tell myself it’s normal. It’s the job. It’s the world we built. But the truth is that it wears me down. There’s a thin layer of fatigue that sits in the back of my mind. I feel stuck, like I’m running a USB-C cable from my face into the computer and hoping it will teach me something. The hours blur. The days slip into each other. The work gets done, but I’m not sure I get anywhere.

I know this pattern didn’t appear overnight. It grew. One task at a time. One habit at a time. Editing a photo turned into checking a feed. Checking a feed turned into wandering through apps without purpose. I tell myself it’s research. I tell myself I need to stay current, which is what journalists say when they don’t want to admit they’re bored and restless. The computer doesn’t push back. It keeps me tethered.

Lately, I’ve started to ask what this screen time is doing to me. I don’t feel burned out as much as I feel dulled. When I sink too deep into the screen, the world outside looks flat. A drive around town feels like moving through a photograph I forgot to edit. The sky is bright, but I can’t feel it. The trees shake in the wind, but it’s faint. Cars pass, but they might as well be props. My senses don’t wake up the way they used to.

There’s a pattern here, and it’s not new. I grew up in latchkey afternoons with no supervision. I learned how to tune out the world with a TV or a Walkman. The habit still sits in me. I go toward the glow because it feels familiar.

So now I’m asking a simple question. What happens if I turn the screen off? What if the future is analog?

Part of next year’s plan is to create more time away from all of this. Offline time that’s not an afterthought but a real part of the day. I want to pick up my film cameras again. Not because film is better. Not because it’s pure. But because it forces me to slow down. I know the files come back digital. I’m not asking for no more screen time. Just less.

Writing by hand feels like another way back. I keep thinking about getting a typewriter. Something old and loud with keys that punch the room with every thought. A typewriter doesn’t care about tabs or windows. It waits for you to strike it. The sound fills the room. The smell of ink drifts up from the ribbon.

A notebook works too. Pen on paper. The lines bend as the page curves up. My handwriting shifts with my mood. I like the look of it. The computer hates mess. It cleans everything before I understand what I was trying to say.

I wonder if unplugging will fix anything. I’m not chasing some perfect lifestyle where the phone stays in a drawer, and the laptop stays closed. I don’t need purity. I want balance. I want space for the senses to return. When everything happens on a screen, I lose the shape of the day. Hours become pixels.

Maybe the solution is simple. Spend more time in the world. Spend less time in the feed. Touch things with texture. Listen to actual sounds. Step outside when I feel the urge to scroll. Walk through the yard.

If I want to feel less stuck, I need to move through the world again. If I want to feel less numb, I need to unplug long enough to hear my own thoughts. Maybe the solution isn’t the film, or the typewriter, or the notebooks. Maybe the solution is attention.

Next year, I plan to try. To walk more. To look more. To shoot slower. To write without a cursor. To let the world in. I want the glow of the screen to be one light among many, not the only one.