Eschewing the Ephemeral: Or Finding Meaning in Analog

I am Gen X. Sure, the tail end of the generation, but still, I am a card-carrying member of generation X.

We're an interesting generation. We are a generation of transition, with one foot in the digital world, and the other firmly on the well-worn ground that is the analog world. And this duality, this inherent need to have straddled two very different worlds gives us a unique perspective.

I was raised in a predominantly analog world. I have vivid memories of looking through my mother's vinyl records. I can still, to this day, see the covers of albums by Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5, The Moody Blues, Billy Joel, and ABBA in my mind's eye perfectly. I have fond, indelible memories of dancing in the living room with my mother as we played music, probably louder than we should have.

I also remember heading home from the store with a new PC game in hand, ready to tear the box open and pour over the manual. Back then, manuals meant something. If you were lucky, there would be a tutorial level or two, but you were also expected to have spent some time going through that book. I recall the scent of the paper and the feel of the glossy pages. Just thinking of it transports me back to those earlier days.

Yep, I had to flip the tape over to get to the second side. Until I was gifted a Walkman that was sufficiently fancy to automatically change direction and be able to play the second side without turning the cassette tape over.

And books. So many books. I would cover the soft-cover books with clear contact paper to try to protect them. Because, as a youth, I was sure to punish those books. My copies of The Lord of the Rings were so well-worn. All one had to do was look at it to know it was incredibly well-loved.

At the same time, I have been a huge beneficiary of the digital age. I will admit to having downloaded untold numbers of (low-quality) MP3s from Napster and its ilk. I have embraced the streaming and digital media age with my television and movies. And, as a rabid listener of music, I welcome my Apple Music and Spotify overlords, providing me with instantaneous access to more music than one human could ever consume in a lifetime.

My books as well! I have Kindles and Kobos and hundreds (at least) of e-books, ready to read at a moment's notice. Add in the mobile apps for those services, and I can read anywhere, anytime. It truly is a golden age for consumption.

But lately, I have had a bit of an odd thought kicking around in my head.

Image courtesy DALL-E

I am beginning to think that the ephemeral nature of our media, the instantaneous nature of it, has significantly devalued it. When we can add multiple albums to our music "collection" every Friday, each release can get lost in the shuffle. It has become a commodity. Having a hundred books in my pocket makes them less significant.

Access to literally more TV and movies than is possible to watch, and being inundated with new ones all the time, makes each of them seem utterly disposable and replaceable.

And so, as the Gen X-er I am, I find myself moving back to analog forms of media and entertainment. Is this just nostalgia? Am I secretly striving to be an analog hipster? Or is there something truly different when one has the physical?

I am more convinced that there really is a difference.

Now, I am not going full hipster. I still listen to so much music that is digital. It is convenient, constantly with me, and ready to go at the touch of a button on the glass screen. I love having multiple books on my Kindle, and love the fact that I can carry them with me almost effortlessly anywhere.

But I have also begun to embrace the intentionality that comes from physical things. When I choose to listen to an album on vinyl, I am making a very deliberate choice. I am, most likely, going to listen to the entire album. Or at least one entire side. The act of standing up, looking through my vinyl, placing it on the turntable, and dropping the needle on the record, connects me to whatever I am listening to in a way that the digital just never will.

Physical books still move me as well. Yes, I have the vast majority of leather-bound books by Brandon Sanderson. They look beautiful, but more importantly, they connect me in a way that, when I pick up a hardcover book, I am setting an intention to read, and nothing else. That paper doesn't also check my email. It doesn't connect me to social media. It doesn't distract. And that focus that it invites helps me engage in a more profound, meaningful manner.

This isn't something that I turn to for everything. It is reserved for the music and books that really mean something to me. It is for the media I want to develop a stronger connection with.

I still buy my games digitally. Convenience wins out. But it does mean I have more games in my Steam library than I will ever actually finish. Those games in my shameful backlog have been diminished because of the sheer volume of them. So while I realize that something has been lost, in this area I think the trade-off is worth it.

But there are other areas where the analog is connecting me more to my activity. Perhaps even connecting me more to my purpose. This past month, I have embraced paper journaling. I write in my Theme System journal daily. Some days while lifting weights, other days at my desk in my office.

I still journal in excellent apps like Day One, and I do add my paper journal entries to Day One as PDFs. Perhaps this is silly, but I find meaning in adding the paper aspect to the digital.

For me, the digital is much quicker, and allows me to get more thoughts down in less time. So it still has a place. But the paper and the pen, with my admittedly terrible handwriting, must move more slowly, especially if I have any hope to come back to it and read it later. It must be a more deliberate activity. And so, for the thoughts that matter the most to me, I find value in them being expressed in an analog medium.

For my children, the analog seems odd. Antiquated, one might even say. But, having lived significant parts of my life in both the analog and digital worlds, I find great meaning in the requisite increased intentionality of an analog product.

So, while I still have mostly digital media in my world, for those things that really matter to me, there will also be an analog component. I find a stronger connection with that, and that connection gives those things more meaning in my life.

And isn't that the main reason to have music, books, and other things in our lives? To provide some meaning? For me, at least, that is what I am looking for. If it doesn't provide some meaning to me, I suppose I'm just not interested. So, yeah, I suppose I am a bit old in that way.

Just don't call me a boomer.