By Patrick La Roque
I shut down my phone last night. Doesn't happen very often so I'd forgotten the key combo. Had to dig in the settings for that one. My iPad is off as well, nestled between two books on my desk. The computer is silent; no fans, no whirrs, and no glare hitting my retinas everywhere I turn. It's early, still, but already minutes seems looser, elasticized by the sudden disappearance of markers. This is a dispatch from my first self-imposed analog day. As in, few electronics or screens, no multipurpose devices. I'm writing this on a typewriter, after filling up two pages in a notebook. I also took pictures of a dead houseplant a few moments ago—they’re on the card but I haven’t looked.
I'm not wearing my watch.
So far, so good.
There’s an unusual sort of anxiety in the air, like you've forgotten something but don't quite know what it is. Thoughts pop into my head, ideas I’d normally record on a machine, to check, or note, whatever. But I have to stop myself and there’s a sudden jolt, as my brain reassesses, unexpectedly. This is years of conditioning, challenged. An entire workflow upended. Every time it happens there's a micro-panic while my mind scrambles for a solution, searching for its bearings, trying hard to settle. And it does. It does.
…
No metrics. Today will not exist. To all those apps, I'll be a non-entity for the next 24 hours, a blank placeholder between streaks. Nothing out there will know that I drank water, and meditated, and spent time working on a post on a 1960s machine with mechanical arms banging and smacking and splashing ink on a letter-sized piece of office paper. My existence today will leave no trace. A precipice. Null and void.
What I do now, I do from Outside. I could be an unknown force fomenting a quiet revolution away from prying eyes. There is no word count, no time tracking.
This day will not be logged.
