Days are still warm, but evenings have started to get chilly. Summer has clearly turned indian. Kids are back in school, tutors’ lesson-plans have been published for students to consider and the general holidays are done.
Hasn‘t it been a great time to disconnect, reflect, read and write?
After multiple strange months, three lockdowns and a social climate of general outrage, dystopia and unrest, I had big plans back in July, when I started preparing the stack of books to devour under the sun.
I swapped some of them on a regular basis, while fine tuning their covered subjects: Fiction or rather non-fiction? Favourites to re-read or more just-delivered, new stuff to dive into?
Rather surprisingly, and similar to my choices of clothing, the prepared big and heavy pile has been broken down into three books for five weeks of travelling. I packed Precht‘s book on Artificial Intelligence, Pörksen‘s sociological take on the Collective Irritability of Today‘s Media and for the fiction part, Septentrion by Calaferte.
It is not about the choice, but the act of choosing
This is clearly not a special choice, whereas the act of choosing was radical, at least for me and for that moment:
All the precise thinking and planning, the weighting of pros and cons were thrown out of the window, kicked out of the door and not to be considered anymore. I just did it… and it felt great.
Being in a certain elan, I have consequently decided to completely follow the Digital Minimalism thought during my travel and its different stages:
I left my computer and tablet back in the office in Paris and turned my „smart-phone“ data-plan off, making it just a normal phone. I unfortunately needed it for the necessary sanitary QR codes to visit museums in Italy and to read the menus in the now paperfree beach bars of Ibiza.
I did not post, nor did I check any posts. I read on paper and wrote things by hand. I put down words, probably not to be ever read again by myself, as well as by others. I did and still do not care about that!
I was very productive and prepared six months of amazing work ahead in my head, with my hands, while walking on my feet, eating and drinking with my mouth and smelling with my nose… None of this work is yet available; neither in a newsfeed, nor on the networks that are social or cloud-based. This creation, the work was and truly still is in the clouds!
I refuse and focus, therefore I am
It was neither one of those so-called digital detoxes, nor was it a trip to find myself. I have completed an active and conscient inventory, of all the stuff I have and do, of all the stuff I think I need to have, the things I could do et cetera.
These thoughts with no strings attached have somehow morphed into a act of deliberate refusal and conscious focus. I just needed to leave my digital devices at home for four weeks, to learn and fully realize what #nofilter really means.
Welcome back and let‘s continue to learn…