supporting my values over taking defaults: stop filling the silence
As my Smartphone died i relied on a Nokia 6300 4G, which the greatest feature was being able to become an hotspot for other devices. Since there is no more need internet on the go and i had hard times writing SMS with a T9 keyboard i changed a little my setup.
The first thing i did was making a shell script that given a string of text with my phone connected to the PC it will type messages by itself. In fact KaiOS, the operative system of the phone, is based on FirefoxOS whose applications are packages written in HTML, CSS and JS, nothing more. Since the OS exposes some API to communicate with i dealed directly with the keyboard, not because it’s the fastest or better method but because it’s the first thing that worked. And it’s fun to see the phone using the T9 by itself.
A friend of mine told me to get a Blackberry so i could use a QWERTY keyboard to type when needed. I didn’t want to invest money for decluttering because i think it’s a contradiction so it came to my mind that i have a device that could fit my actual need: an ol Nokia E5.
This device has SymbianOS, an old Nokia OS which has been discontinued when Microsoft bought the Devices & Service division who was also responsable for the SymbianOS development.
Using a more-than-ten years old phone may have some security disadvantages, but since i don’t want to use any internet-involved feature I pretend to consider me safe. The gain that i have by not having the responsability of keeping any Meta account reliable and always connected is worth it. For the moment I keep myself from going deep into the modding world of the Symbian phones also if it’s been open sourced, but I don’t have any need that the actual state can’t satisfy.
another self awarness level
This week I’m trying to get rid of Youtube, Netflix and also Spotify as services that i use for filling the silence and the absence of presences when i do routine stuff like cooking and eating but also just hanging aroud the house for minor tasks. I noticed that I use to turn on a podcast, a tv series or a YT video but I’m not too interested in the topic, in fact it happens that i don’t finish what I’m watching because i don’t really care in doing that and the next time I will choose another series, podcast or video also if I didn’t finished the previous one.
The first day passed and I’m fine, before bedtime I’m keeping a daily diary as a log for the day, after this experiment I will merge my notes and see what I can learn from it. I noticed that i remember more things and the day passes slowly. Especially i remember the trip home-office and it’s something that never happened to me, I’m also more aware of the current season and weather, i find it fascinating.
I have also put another two small rules for this week: if I start a book I have to finish it and I can read only one thing at a time. Now I’m reading Vagabond and I'm torn between deciding whether this is a valid choice or not, because it’s a manga and not a book and I use to read while eating. I tell myself that it’s not for avoid not-doing but because I’m genuinely interested in the story and the teachings that it’s giving to me, so if someone is interested in discussing about it or about giving me an advice, reach me in the contact page by e-mail. I'm not blaming myself, I just have a lot of time to think.
I’m finally engineering my environment to support me, my decisions and the lifestyle i want for me, call it what you want: decluttering, digital minimalism or whatever neologism seems to fit, but the reality is that i simply rather to support my values than defaulting to what’s easiest.
See how the journey begun | <-- fourth chapter - sixth chapter --->