A Kind of Quiet Rebellion: My Analogue January

It’s not all about books and winter walks (although they are great!)

Hello, I’m Claudia, and Happy Quiet Life is where I share my view on the world as a Highly Sensitive Person. You’ll find reflections and stories about slowing down & living simpler, reconnecting with nature, mental health & self-care, books & reading adventures. Welcome!

Not always on any more

I don’t want to be always on. (Literally and figurativeley speaking.)

I’ve been turning away from screens more and more — and my frazzled nervous system seems to sigh in relief.

Winter walks have been great since the start of the new year, with plenty of snow, a rare delight.

Reading books, of course.

I also went to the game library for some inspiration. I came home with a bag full of board games and jigsaw puzzles. (I actually had to borrow a second bag.)

But there has been a lot more …

I’ve been experimenting with limiting my screen time and internet access for about two months now.

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When I turn away from the internet and screens of all kinds at 7 a.m. after a maximum of one and a half hours (because that’s the amout of time my nervous system can cope with right now), there’s a lot of time for other possibilities.

However, it wasn’t easy at the beginning because, sure, I was so used to being always on — or at least used to checking my phone for messages or notifications several times an hour.

Actually, I went from ‘OMG, what am I going to do all day without the internet, my laptop, smartphone, access to new messages??’ with a slight panic and unease to the exact same sentence, but filled with curiosity, excitement and a feeling of freedom.

My screen-free activities in January (so far)

So, from small ideas to stop me reaching for my phone automatically to spending entire afternoons and evenings screen-free, here’s what I’ve been up to in January when it comes to offline / screen-free / analogue activities.

Reading aloud to my husband

I love reading aloud to others, always have. It came in handy as a babysitter in my teens, in my job as a librarian for years with groups of children visiting regularly, and also as an author doing ‘official' readings from my books and short stories.

But the one person I enjoy most reading to is my husband. It’s a ritual we’ve been keeping up for more than 30 years now.

It all started with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Over the years, we have read so many different books and series together. Minette Walters, Henning Mankell, Dan Brown, among others, The Swarm, a science fiction novel by German author Frank Schätzing. Harry Potter, of course. Paul Shipton’s Bug Maldoon. The occasional non-fiction like Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue (although English is our second language, but we’re both language nerds).

I often read selected articles from the newspaper or a news magazine to him while he cooks or prepares meals. (Call it a proper win-win arrangement.)

Over Christmas and well into the new year, we enjoyed the lastest book in our favourite crime novel series: The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith. 1248 pages were quite a task for my voice, but nothing tea and water couldn’t fix. It was the perfect time for cosying up with such a gripping, complex novel.

I think, you are never too old to enjoy reading aloud to each other. Call it a cosy season suggestion, but highly recommended any time of the year.

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Game library

The entrance to the game library, one bag of finds, Rush Hour Safari

In our small town there is something like a public library for board and card games, jigsaw puzzles and the like. It’s called the Spieliothek (a play on the German words for game and library) and can be used free of charge. They have about 12,500 games and jigsaw puzzles and we love to drop in from time to time to browse and borrow some of them.

This time I was especially keen on games with tangible objects, pieces, figures that felt good when held in my hand, not just cardbox or paper items. My favourite so far has been Safari Rush Hour: Jungle Escape Game (or as I liked to call it Reparking Animals), a sliding puzzle. Some tasks have proven to be quite a brain twister — a challenge that I always enjoy taking on.

We haven’t tried every game yet, so I’m looking forward to more game nights.

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Winter walks

Walks through the snowy landscape were one of my favourite pastimes in the first half of January. We were so lucky to have experienced thick blankets of snow that stayed for two weeks which has become a very rare and all the more appreciated delight. A true winter, also with storm, snowdrifts and severe cold at the end. (It’s all over now, unfortunately, but who knows, it’s only January …)

I like to walk on my own, especially in the early mornings, but I also went with my husband through a very snowy forest and met a friend for a winter walk at the lake and for coffee and cake at a café afterwards.

I also stood barefoot in the snow in our garden. Not for long, but as long as it felt okay. I enjoy being so close to the elements, it feels wonderfully different to everything we are so used to today, the comfort, the constant disconnection from the natural world through shoes/clothes/houses/cars/etc. A small moment of standing in the snow barefoot rips all this away. I loved it!

I almost never wear gloves either, not in winter, not in the summer when working in the garden (except when I have to handle bramble, ouch!). I like to touch and really feel the natural things I encounter.

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Exercising while my tea brews

I am a tea lover, and making myself a mug of herbal tea is (almost) the first thing I do in the morning.

I’ve started using the 6 minutes while the tea brews for little balancing exercises and stretching, right there in the kitchen, instead of scrolling on my phone.

A little new ritual, and it’s fun to think of movements I can do in the limited space of our kitchen.

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Looking out of the window

I’ve looked out of the window quite some hours this month. With all the snowfall, the birds at the feeder or them walking over water (aka the bird bath was solid ice for weeks), I couldn’t imagine anything better than sitting by the window and just looking out.

My husband and I enjoyed our time together when it got dark slowly and silently, the snow illuminating the garden, a quiet beauty, it felt almost like being under a spell. We never wished to be anywhere else instead. Looking out into the snow-covered garden while it was getting dark was simply the best.

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No distractions when eating alone

I used to read a book or an e-book at breakfast for decades. It’s the meal I always eat alone, and I love having the time for myself.

However, I stopped reading when eating in November and never returned to it.

I love to listen to my thoughts instead, process things, sitting in the dim-lit, quiet kitchen, a notepad and a pen ready while enjoying my breakfast. So instead of input, I give my brain, my creativity every chance to express itself. It’s astounding how the creative ideas flow when given the opportunity and the space.

I’m so glad that I exchanged some of my reading time for thinking and writing time.

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Audiobooks first thing in the morning

A while ago, I discovered how much I actually enjoy audiobooks, and while they are digital, of course, they are also screen-free, and I love to listen to them in the morning to start into the day slowly and gently and without the lights on. For me it’s lovely to stay in the warm cocoon of my bed a little longer and listen to nature audiobooks instead of diving head first into the news of the day, messages or requests of any kind.

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Completely screen-free?! No, of course not …

It hasn’t been a screen-free month, and it’s not supposed to be.

It’s not about going offline / analogue / screen-free completely and all the time.

It’s about reducing the daily usage, about intentionality and about alternatives.

Above all, it’s about calming my nervous system.

It feels good to break the habit of reaching for my phone or feeling the need to be online and/or available all the time. It’s so nice to look for inspiration and entertainment away from screens, any screens.

That said, I’ll be honest with you and say that I also had a very good time in front of screens this month:

• I watched every single biathlon world cup race on TV. (I’m a passionate fan of the sport for at least 27 years, more than half of my life.)

• My husband and I played an old video game called Ice Guys on the Commodore 64 one night. (Does anyone remember that 8-bit home computer? It’s so old, it almost counts as analogue, haha!) It was just perfect for celebrating the wonderful snow this January because you have to free abducted snowmen all over the world by throwing snowballs at the (cute) monsters and turning them into avalanches. You also get to ride really fast snowmobiles. It’s so much fun to play together, and what’s more, it’s a game my husband created back in 1997. ☃️

• I had Netflix again for a month (only the second month in my entire life) and we watched movies that we preselected before subscribing at all. That’s how we like to do it. So it was very intentional and we only watched single movies, no series. (If you are interested, we had fun with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, The Thursday Murder Club, Agatha Christie's Seven Dials, Red Notice, and we deeply enjoyed Goodbye June. Thanks to Layla Amber’s post I also discovered the wonderful little movie That Christmas. Perfect for a snow lover like me!).

Furthermore, the limitation doesn’t work every day, especially when I’m working/writing (but just writing a text without distractions is never the problem), and I tend to beat myself up for it because I know it would be better for me to listen to my heart (quite literally at the moment). But freeing myself from patterns and addictions takes time, and I try to be more compassionate with myself and just stop as soon as I notice that I’ve fallen back into old habits.

I’m not planning what I’m going to do exactly every month to go more analogue, but instead be open for what’s coming, to what I’d like to do - a bit like sitting at the breakfast table with my notepad and a pen and being curious to see what happens. That’s the only plan I need. :)

It feels like a kind of quiet rebellion to not be always on, and I long to find out where this will take me.

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If you enjoyed this post, you might also like …

What I Love About Junk Journaling

On Choosing to Do Things Manually

On (Not) Buying Stuff

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