The Pull Toward Analog

As the world grows increasingly digital, I feel a pull in the other direction. A pull toward analog. Old school.

A newspaper.
Vinyl records.
Physical books.
A mechanical watch.
Pen and paper.
Postcards instead of text messages.

None of this is a rejection of technology. I love technology. I’ve always loved it. I love systems and thoughtful design and the quiet satisfaction of a tool that works exactly the way it should.

And yet lately I feel overwhelmed by the screens.

Everyone is on the phone. Kids. Adults of all ages. Even infants—handed glowing rectangles like digital pacifiers.

Me.

More and more services are “app only.” More and more spaces are cashless. “I’m sorry, we don’t take cash. Only tap-to-pay. “ Argh. Even menus—at restaurants that would have once printed them on weighty paper as part of the experience—are now digitized and accessible only by scanning a QR code laminated to the table, or propped on a little stand like a tiny altar to efficiency.

The glow of screens greets most faces before the sun has had its chance to say good morning.

Ubiquitous devices that draw us away from the here and now. I saw a small version of this recently at a restaurant. Two couples sat at the table next to us. One couple was describing a museum they’d visited—in Scottsdale, I think—speaking about it with real enthusiasm while the other couple listened, genuinely engaged. Then, without missing a beat, the storyteller reached for his phone—presumably to pull up the website or photos—and the guy listening said, plainly, “You don’t have to pull it up to show me.” It wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t rude. It was just…clear. Like a small boundary placed gently on the table: we’re here. We’re in it. Let’s not let the glow hijack the moment.

I don’t say any of this as a scold. I’m not writing from a moral high ground. I’m writing from the middle of the same world. I’m typing this on a computer, listening to music streamed into my house. I’ve lived inside the algorithm like everyone else. I’ve watched the convenience become normal and then, without anyone asking, become mandatory.

That’s part of what I keep coming back to: it’s not the digital that bothers me. It’s the default. The sense that “this is how it’s done now,” and if you don’t want it, you’ll need a justification.

Speed, and the vanishing of memory

There’s a conundrum here, and it’s one we created ourselves. We crave new-fangled. We crave speed. We crave immediate knowing.

No longer are we content to sit racking our brains trying to remember where we’ve seen an actor before. We go straight to IMDb or the Google machine. The curiosity still exists, but the pause has disappeared. And the pause mattered. The pause was where memory flexed. The pause was where conversation meandered. The pause was where we had to tolerate not knowing for a minute.

I was an early adopter of Evernote when it was being celebrated as our “digital brain.” I loved the idea. Still do, in theory. But sometimes I wonder what happens to a life when nothing needs to live inside it anymore—when every fact, every thought, every note, every photograph is outsourced to a device that is always within reach.

A brain can be supported by tools. It can also be replaced by them. Those are not the same thing.

The paradox of loving tech and craving distance

This might be my particular paradox: I love learning about new tech and systems, but the more ubiquitous they become, the more I find myself rearing back. I’ve always had a contrarian streak. The “everyone is doing it” argument has never moved me much. Peer pressure doesn’t do a lot of work on me.

And still—there are moments when even I can feel the social pressure baked into the design.

I went through a period where I reverted to a flip phone because I felt overwhelmed by smartphones. Friends teased me about it, and fair enough: it was a choice. But it was also a kind of relief. It was quiet. It was a return to a simpler contract with my attention.

Then there’s the whole blue bubbles versus green bubbles situation—an entire social status system built into the color of a text message. It’s absurd. It’s also real. Apple created a walled garden with iMessage and, implicitly or explicitly, taught its users to equate Android with some sort of smartphone peasantry. Even with the promise of better cross-platform messaging, it’s still a mess—one more reminder that convenience often comes with hierarchy hidden inside it.

And yes, I hear myself. I can already feel the irony dripping off the page. Here I am: a guy who handed over too much money to Apple, talking about “walled gardens” and communication protocols.

Welcome to the human condition. Contradiction is not a bug. It’s the operating system.

My small rebellions: sound, time, and things that don’t need Wi-Fi

A couple of years ago, I researched and purchased a turntable, receiver, CD player, and speakers that are not connected to the internet. I wanted an analog listening experience. Not because streaming is evil. But because the friction felt nourishing.

You don’t “skip” through vinyl the way you do through Spotify or Apple Music. You commit. You place the needle. You listen to a whole side. You stand up, you flip the record. It asks something small of you—and in exchange it gives you a kind of attention that the digital world rarely asks for and rarely rewards.

Shopping for vinyl is its own adventure, and yes, I grumble that I’m paying three times the price for records I used to own. But part of the point is that it’s not optimized. It’s not a subscription. It doesn’t deliver itself to me in two hours. It requires going to a store, browsing, being disappointed, being surprised, leaving with one record you didn’t know you needed. It’s slower—and somehow, because of that, it feels like life.

There’s something similar with mechanical watches. I recently sold an Apple Watch Ultra—the second time I’ve bought and sold that watch. I’ve also purchased and sold (or given away) other smartwatches: Garmin, Fitbit, Polar. I can’t tell if I’m restless or if I’m searching for the “perfect” device, the one that will finally make me feel in control of time, health, focus, sleep, steps, stress, and whatever else the dashboard says I should be monitoring.

Meanwhile, three mechanical watches sit patiently in a bedside drawer, waiting for time on my wrist.

A mechanical watch does one thing. It tells time. It doesn’t nudge me. It doesn’t congratulate me. It doesn’t judge me. It doesn’t demand to be charged. It doesn’t pretend to improve my life through data. It just keeps time—quietly, faithfully—like a small metronome for the day.

And some days, that feels like enough.

Marketing, pushing, and the exhaustion of being “on”

This analog longing shows up for me most sharply in the realm of social media.

My wife occasionally gets frustrated with my love/hate relationship with it, and I understand why. Social media is a way to keep people informed. It’s a way to promote my classes and workshops. It is, in a basic sense, part of the modern marketing ecosystem.

But I get tired of the ecosystem. I get tired of pushing. And I get tired of being pushed.

In my mind, a website and newsletter should be enough. Field of Dreams. Build it and they will come. I understand that’s not how it works anymore, at least not reliably. The world runs on “push”—push content, push urgency, push offers, push your personal brand, push your face into people’s mornings.

The culture has a little too much Glengarry Glen Ross in it for my nervous system. Always be closing. Always be optimizing. Always be tracking.

And that’s not the life I’m trying to live.

I’m trying to find my way to inner peace and help other people relax. I’m trying to offer something healing, not sell something relentlessly. I’m not pretending I’m above commerce—I run a business. But I’m wary of anything that turns my life into an endless funnel.

Sometimes I wonder if my pull toward analog is really a pull toward dignity. Toward choosing what gets access to my attention. Toward making room for quiet without having to justify it.

Not a cliff. Just a choice.

I don’t want to become some new-age Luddite. I don’t want to pull a Thelma and Louise, careening off a cliff into Analog Canyon. I’m not inviting anyone to abandon their phone, bury their laptop, and start churning butter.

I just want a little more space and freedom around the fact that I desire analog sometimes.

I want to be able to choose pen and paper without making it a manifesto. To wear a mechanical watch without it being interpreted as a statement. To buy vinyl without pretending it makes me morally superior. To use cash when I can. To read a physical book because I like the weight of it in my hands, the smell of the pages, and the way it doesn’t glow at me.

And I simply want room to change my mind.

That’s the part that matters: permission. Nonjudgment. A softer grip.

Because the more “digital by default” becomes the water we swim in, the more I value the moments when I can step out of the current—quietly, without drama—and remember that the point of a tool is to serve a life.

Not the other way around.