The CD

Music was once a finite resource. Think about what that meant and the moments it created.

You’d lend someone a CD – physically hand it to them. For a second, you’re both touching it, sharing it. There’s excitement on your face, intrigue on theirs, as they turn it over in their hands, reading the song names, admiring the cover art. You point out your favourite tracks – the reason you wanted to lend it to them in the first place. They crack open the case – carefully: the hinge has become loose. Absent-mindedly they pop out the disc – for no good reason really other than to pick it up and hold it in their hand. It’s scratched. You won’t be able to listen to it while they’re borrowing it but that’s okay because you want them to hear it: it’s important. They slip it into their bag, place it on their desk when they get home. It sits there, staring at them, its physical presence a persistent reminder of what you mean to them, whatever that is. It’s an intimate moment as they load it into their CD player and await the display’s token of recognition. Something of yours is theirs and they’re immersed in it now. One of the songs you pointed out starts playing and how could they not listen to it more closely than the rest? Listen in the context of you. Days pass and they return the CD. It’s a natural opportunity to ask them what they thought of it and perhaps they’ve already started telling you. The album is back in your possession now. You can listen to it again, but this time you’re the recipient and you get to hear it through their lens. Every single part of the process is inescapably coated with meaning. It’s so much more than music.

Nowadays you send a text, share a link. Perhaps that’s where it ends. It disappears into the abyss of your message history: out of sight, out of mind. Maybe you even forget that you sent it to them; maybe they do but you don’t. Perhaps if you’re lucky, they listen to your suggestion – your suggestion, that didn’t come out of nowhere, that you sent them for a reason. They load up Spotify and add it to their queue because God forbid they make this a priority, God forbid this suggestion that came embedded with a piece of yourself be something they truly listen to. That they sit in silence for a moment afterwards and reflect on how it would’ve made you feel, why you wanted them to hear it. God forbid it be anything more than an annoyance for them to overcome so they can return seamlessly to their favourite playlist. Perhaps you’re even luckier and they actually reply, telling you what they thought of it, explaining that they saved it to their library. That’s still cool, I guess, but there’s something hollow about it – thin, contaminated by digital fuzz. It’s got nothing on the way they hesitate slightly when handing the CD back to you, the loss of something new and exciting causing them a twinge of sadness, like returning a pet you’ve been looking after while your friend is on holiday. Nothing on the way you turn it over in your hands as you walk away, noticing a new scratch on the case and wondering where this piece of you has travelled since you last saw it. Nothing on how it makes you feel when you visit them a month later and see the copy they bought sitting on their coffee table, proudly displayed. It’s got nothing on any of this.

The magic in the world is fading. Nothing is special in abundance.

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Disclaimer: The blog portion below is absolute brain vomit. I haven’t had time to edit or even spellcheck it at all (even with uploading it a day late). It’s thoughts on a page. Hopefully you still find some value in it, even if it may drag and be borderline unreadable in parts (I’m probably exaggerating and it’s fine).

This Week I

A lot of people have made assumptions about why I decided to give up my phone. They think I wanted to stop doomscrolling, stop checking for notifications, stop wasting my time. I suppose all of that is true, but it’s not the whole answer. I feel very strongly that we’ve lost something as a society. A certain magic that once filled even the most minute moments of everyday life. The impossible-to-define quality that makes life worth living rather than a chore. Take a look around and you can see it – feel it – so clearly: the lack. We operate now always at a deficit. We are never satisfied, and it kills me. We’ve been given the most extraordinary world to explore, yet we turn to our phones constantly because we feel – deep in our blood, somewhere far from our stream of conscious thought – that they are the only things capable of filling the void they create. We are like koalas, who consume a diet that actively harms them and prevents them from evolving. I could talk for hours about all this (and I’m working on a much longer piece that I hope to release in the coming weeks), but I hope the piece above provides a taste of my feelings on the matter (even if it does come across a bit ‘man shaking fist at sky’).

I’ve been without a phone for ten days now (and no music, social media, or video streaming for the first seven of those days), and it’s going really well. For context, I wasn’t a chronic phone user before all this. I haven’t had social media apps for years now, nor do I have any video streaming apps. I don’t use my phone in bed or when I first wake up, nor does it ever travel with me into the bathroom. And it’s been at least a year since I carried any sort of wireless headphones around with me. Still, though, I feel the itch, the urge. The logic-defying feeling that the world will become a little bit better, a little less uncomfortable, if I just reach for my phone and do something, anything. Mostly, I google unimportant things, check if people have texted me back, search sports scores for events I barely care about, and peruse the weather a completely unnecessary number of times per day.

As you can tell from this post so far, I get really passionate and honestly angry about the way I see smartphones affecting the world. Sometimes I wonder if I’m being unfair, if I’m reading into things that aren’t there, if the eerie ‘off’ feeling the world has had in recent years has been sparked by something else (or if I’m imagining it altogether). The last ten days have shown me that I’m justified in the way I feel. Before I get to the positives, however, let me start by outlining the challenges.

The first morning was difficult, I admit. I felt the withdrawals – the slight skip of my heartbeat and the uncomfortable buzzing in my blood when I realised that I couldn’t use my phone. My house was somehow simultaneously too loud and too quiet, the heavy tick of the kitchen clock irking me especially. My skin was crawling, and my brain was screaming at me for stimulation. The drive to work was pretty difficult without music, and I felt the way I’d expect people to feel when they first quit cigarettes. That all went away though, really quickly in fact. By the end of my eight-hour shift, most of those withdrawals had vanished (and those that remained were quelled completely over the next few days). There have been a few other challenges, such as other people not being able to contact me (more of a problem for them than me, but I’ve felt guilty about it nonetheless), and little logistical problems like banking. However, all of these hurdles have been much more manageable than I expected – definitely not enough to sour the experience or deter me from continuing.

One of the more interesting things I’ve noticed is the things that haven’t been difficult. I thought easily the biggest challenge would be not missing the ability to Google stuff; however, the thought has hardly crossed my mind (when it has, I’ve written it down in my pocket notepad to look up later on my laptop). I realised that almost none of the things I usually googled were actually useful, instead just a bunch of random crap I didn’t need to know. I always knew that, but now I felt it. The same has gone for things like YouTube and weather checking: I simply haven’t even thought about them.

In the challenges that I’ve actually endured throughout the experience so far, I’ve realised what smartphone-related activities are truly meaningful to me. Not listening to music in the car hasn’t gotten easier; I love doing it, and I haven’t seen any benefit from abstaining. Similarly, while I’ve enjoyed the freedom of not being contactable 24/7, I have missed being able to message people (I’ve still been able to on my laptop, but that’s obviously less frequent). Whichever way I continue to live my life after this experiment, I want to find a way to bring these two things back.

So, they were the challenges. Now let me tell you about the positives.

I don’t want to sound excessive, but it’s been a bit life-changing. The overall vibe of life has taken on this relaxed yet vibrant quality – a clean energy that courses through my blood like fresh running water. It’s a cliché, but like lifting your head out from under the water and taking a deep, cold breath, my mind feels crystal clear in a way it hasn’t for as long as I can remember. The world appears to exist in higher definition, like my smudged glasses have been meticulously sprayed and wiped. It’s how the world should feel, I reckon, and I’m addicted to it already.

I’ve been more present in what I’m doing than ever before. In not having my phone on me – the beacon of stimulation that it is – whatever is in front of me naturally becomes the most interesting thing in the room. With my mind freed up, I’ve started to notice more, like how much I like the greasy sound of car tyres running on wet road after it’s rained. I’ve become more invested in the conversations I’m having, and my listening has improved a lot. I’ve felt more engaged and more engaging.

I’m rediscovering a way of living that I always yearned for but hardly ever experienced. Not messaging people as much, but being completely engrossed when I do see them in person because we have so much to catch up on. Reading a book or just people watching while I wait. Sitting on the train and thinking, just thinking, for forty minutes without feeling like I’m missing anything. Using the payphone at uni. It’s all been a lot of fun, honestly.

Things that used to seem difficult have become easier, obvious even. I used to walk past the dishwasher and think No way, too hard. Now I see it and think of course I’m going to empty it and just do it. I used I never do productive things like uni work at night – impossible, I’d tell myself. In the past ten days, I’ve done productive tasks at any hour without them feeling difficult at all.

I’ll finish with a story from the week. I caught up with a mate on Monday night for dinner and a walk through the city. At one point, I asked to quickly check the train timetable on his phone (kinda cheating, I know), and realised to my horror that I was about to miss the last train of the night (it was only 8:20 but I hadn’t realised there were bus replacements in the late evening). I was about a ten-minute walk from Southern Cross, and my train was arriving in 8 minutes. I only had one option: I ran. And it was… exhilarating. I felt fast, strong, powerful. I looked up at the buildings, the ones that meant something to me, and the ones that didn’t. My city, I thought. I watched the people as I sped past, out with friends, families, partners. Laughing, arguing, standing in silence. It was all beautiful to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so grounded, connected, and invigorated in my life. I got to the platform with 3 minutes to spare. I stood there catching my breath, heart beating frantically, and realised something I already knew deep in my heart: I can never go back. After all these years, I found the courage to give up my phone, and I don’t care how inconvenient it might be, I can’t take it back, at least not fully. For the first time I can remember, life feels exactly the way it should. And that’s pretty cool.