Paper, notebook, pencil. The stealthy thrill of being a resistance fighter when you whip out new-fangled technology at the supermarket – a shopping list. Pre-planning a menu with specific meals you’d like to prepare optional but highly recommended.
Take the joyous route around nonsense, no software required.
The near-constant piracy privacy invasions sweeping up everything we do and all we think we want to know, primarily on our insistence of sharing, uploading, making things visible [he writes on a website], requires a kind of slow acceptance endemic to the tools. During the heady decades of the Cold War, school children would regularly have drills for what to do in a nuclear attack, so no surprise about what we can become socialized to. It’s akin to what dating apps are doing to interpersonal relations – the apps are not designed to help you find the love of your life, but to keep you using the app. Reflecting on the difference produces amazing results in less than a week.
Information intake. Reading books, for one; listening to records, for another. Sure, I have dogs in this fight. But whatever you’re reading or listening to, you can talk about it or not. I do talk and even write about some of what I read, because I am sometimes asked. But I don’t have to. Even conversations you have about what moves you can be privately maintained. They might even get more interesting. A note of caution here about building intrigue. But only a note. You’re worth it.
Can you we practice privacy? Certainly, especially while you still know how. This goes for so many things, obviously, but get this: you can also purchase bound books full of empty pages, on which you can write ideas or jokes or scandalous stories, or draw things. It sounds crazy but most paper will stand up to watercolor. Spend some time and update your own software. In order to bring the phrase ‘playing it close to the vest’ back into common parlance, some people must wear vests.
