Linked: The last of “Offline”

I’ve linked to the year feature that The Verge did with Paul Miller a few times. Unfortunately, my Instapaper queue forgot a few of these posts and I finally found them last month.

Below are 3 more features I thought fun to link:

how my creativity got killed

I have a running joke with a friend about how audiophiles, past a certain dollar figure, lose all semblance of musical taste. I think it’s because it’s about consumption; you need to find the perfect “content” to show off your sound system. I guess that’s the word I hate the most: “content.” It suggests an empty terabyte on your DVR to fill, 40 hours of evening free time to consume, a distribution pipeline to monetize. At some point, do I consume content, or does it consume me? I want inspiration, not a 4K babysitter.

love, loss, and dating without Facebook

I don’t know if you know this, but I have a terrible memory. Like, monumentally bad. It’s not just for facts and figures, either. I don’t remember faces very well. Sometimes when I would meet up with her, I’d be waiting on a corner and keep thinking I’d seen her, and it would take a second to realize it wasn’t her. And then when I finally saw her, my memory would putter to life and go “oh yeah, THAT’S what she looks like.” I don’t want to sound all sappy or anything, but she was always better looking than I’d remembered.

For our quasi-dates I relied on word-of-mouth recommendations for restaurants and things to do. I grabbed a brochure from a community organization in her neighborhood. Sometimes we’d just walk and look around for something to strike our fancy. I dedicated a couple of pages in my Moleskine to listing useful facts about her, or the name of an artist she liked. And yes, I sent her some snail mail.

boiling it down to the essentials

Without the internet, my world has shrunk. It’s all very simple, and if maybe I still don’t understand it, at least I can see it all at once. My folder called “notes” has 1,097 items in it. 470 of those text files were created or modified after I left the internet. That’s literally all I’ve created since I left the internet. 

Great insights. I can relate to these in many ways. The articles are great and I appreciate the world Paul did while offline for a year. He has certainly changed my thinking and, at least I feel less alone in the isolation that is self-inflicted out here in the woods.

I’d prefer to be more isolated. The only thing holding me back is my job.No immediate changes planned but I do dream of building that bomb shelter one day underground, V for Vendetta style. We’ll see what the future holds.