Taking Life Offline

Growing up, I loved SyFi and thought a lot of the connected devices and virtual reality was pretty cool. I looked forward to the future. I have a smart phone and don't know what to do with myself if I have to wait five minutes without it or Google every random question I and my kids have instantly. My recipes are largely kept in my Evernote app or Pinterest. Instead of baby albums, I have Instagram. I just bought expanded Google storage subscription because I couldn't bear deleting any more photos. I keep all my music in the cloud for easy access and my kids can't scratch up the discs that way.

But. Now people are talking about supply chain problems. Google is censoring stories and topics (and tracking your information to boot). Big tech is deciding what people can see and discuss. Whatever your opinions on vaccines, masks, covid response, whatever, I think you should be free. Free to read what you want, speak what you want, discuss, and do what you want. Get the vaccine, or don't. I'm against mandating it. Science is never settled, discussion should never be quashed in favor of "shut up and get in line because we're your betters and we know." The places that do that inevitably move toward not being for your health and wellness, but for their own power and good. Maybe there is more risk in America because of freedom, but I would rather take the risk of my own decisions than never have to make them at all. Not to mention that I do not trust anyone to actually be a completely unbiased pure caretaker of me and my family. There is nobody I trust to make all our decisions for us.

And now the conspiracy theorists who are sometimes right are prophesying a social credit score thing like China and non-vaccinated being second class citizens. And I want to check right out of that society. It makes me want to move to a little town that never grew out of the 1800s, with a one-room schoolhouse and doctors that visited the house and maybe I can farm and not get the Internet. Maybe I could join the Amish?

But how do I give up my interconnectedness? How do I go offline when I'm basically an addict?

I'm trying to figure out what to do with pictures. I am not constrained by buying film, processing, and having only a limited number of copies. I am constrained by Google only giving me 15G of space (even though I have an Android, wth?). And accept for what I put on other social media sites, or shared to my Mom's digital picture frame, I'm the only one who can enjoy them. I could download them to an external hard drive I suppose, and save them that way, and delete them all off Google. Make Shutterfly books? Too expensive.

I could get a digital camera so I could ditch the phone, but honestly me pulling out a camera every time my kids are cute for about 1.2 seconds is kind of impossible.

I was thinking maybe I'd have to Walmart print all of my good photos and put them in an album, or several. Organized by child? By chronological date?

Scrapbook them? This all requires curating. And then I'd still probably put the backlog on an external drive.

What about my recipes in an offline world? Do I just get a whole bunch of different books? Painstakingly copy them down on cute little cards? Copy, paste, format, print, and put them into binders?

For music, burn a bunch of CDs and keep all the digitals on other hard drives? I was getting rid of CDs I had ripped not too long ago. It kind of hurts to think about going backward.

I just don't like what I see when I look forward.

View an acreage, take 2

 We went out to see another acreage. Similar setup in that it was a quilt block of grass and trees in a bunch of fields, also about 20 minutes outside of town.

Our realtor said that it was actually a pretty good example of an acreage, and advised us to put in an offer on it no later than that night, if we wanted it.

We ended up not putting in an offer. First off, it was more expensive than our house, while not being as nice as our house. There were a few things that would make living in it difficult, like the dining room only being big enough for a small four-person round table.

I'd take pictures, but normally we're trying to look before the kids get bored, and trying to keep an eye on the kids, and I'm holding the baby.

Anyway, I didn't find the lot that interesting. No creek. It had a bunch of trees on the edges, but underneath them was some fencing and thick undergrowth that the kids couldn't get in. Otherwise it was mostly just grass. No paths, no nooks, no hide and seek behind the trees. And then the real estate agent said that within three years, over half the trees would probably have to be taken out. The emerald ash borer has reached this area and is wrecking damage on all ash trees not already taken out. Our town has been preparing for this for years, but I still know some people who are now looking at having to take trees out of their yards cause they're mostly dead.

I don't want to buy a lot of country to lose half my established trees.

So we weren't in love with it. Maybe we're too picky, but no pressure over here. Nobody is making us move.

I still dream about an acreage though.