Deanne Schildroth dot com

Not to be too black-framed-glasses about it, but my word of the year last year was “analogue”. I wanted to be more present, use social media less, and shift back into physical media. I did use social media less, for sure, although not as much as I’d hoped for. I started the year off really strong, buying my own music off 7digital. I built up a small collection of albums that I still listen to all the time. But over time, streaming crept back in, when I wanted to listen to just one song I didn’t own, and then before I knew it, I had been streaming whatever the YouTube music algorithm fed me all morning at work.

I recommitted to my physical media quest at the end of last year when I thrifted a bunch of holiday DVDs, and a friend downsized his collection and gave me a bunch of other movies. This past month, I bought myself a really neat record player/CD player/tape deck. I only have a small collection of CDs but there is something so enjoyable about putting on a CD and listening to it all the way through, without having to have my phone in my hand. There’s no little screen with the album art, or song credits at the touch of a button. Just music, coming out of a magic box from across the room.

I don’t have any records yet. They’re quite pricey, even in the second hand market, compared to CDs. So I’m still trying to come up with a method of deciding what is vinyl-worthy and what isn’t. Most places around me are selling CDs for $1-5 each, whereas vinyl is around $30 to start, to the sky’s the limit at the top of the range. I would like to get a few vinyls, but I think just for convenience sake, I’ll mostly be listening to CDs. And of course, there are still great applications for streaming. It’s a good way to discover new music and try before you buy. I’m currently working through the albums on https://1001albumsgenerator.com and streaming them has been the best way to go. (As an aside, it’s a bit of a slog. HOW are some of these albums the best of the best??).

This year, I’m seeing a lot of people online talking about their “analogue bag”. At first I was smug and thought “pfft, I started doing analogue stuff last year already. Nice of everyone else to catch up!” The more it comes up though, the more I think I’ve been warming to the idea.

For those not chronically online, the analogue bag is a bag full of stuff to keep you from being chronically online. Think crafts, books, a camera, a journal. The idea is to scroll less, repair your withering attention span and do something you actually enjoy and that makes you happy. As a person who almost always has a book, some knitting, a notebook in her bag, I feel like I’m already halfway there! *pushes black-framed-glasses up nose*

Now the actual issue, and what is at the crux of this post today, is that I’m seeing a lot of YouTube videos (probably elsewhere, but YT is where I spend most of my online time these days), warning against the analogue bag. These people have their hearts in the right place, I’m sure, but it does feel a little bit like a wallflower telling someone to not go out into the world and make a name for themselves. No! Don’t try that thing, what if it fails?

The thing that these naysayers are saying nay about is with the overconsumption of it all. See? Heart in the right place! It would be so easy to see “going analogue” as this quarter’s micro trend (and let’s be honest, for most people, that’s what it is). “Here are 15 things you need for your analogue bag this month. Half of them are in my Amazon affiliate shop, and the rest are on my TikTok shop.” I get it. It’s gross. We don’t like that. But to paint the whole movement as something not worth it because certain people will take it too far is disingenuous.

It doesn’t matter what the trend is, the overconsumption girlies are going to overconsume. It’s like saying “don’t drink this one beer, because some people will drink ten.” Eyes on your own fries, as my 10^th grade french teacher liked to say. If this is something you want to try, I encourage you to dip a toe in.

I believe the point of having a dedicated bag, or basket, or box, is so that all your offline stuff exists in one place. You can just go to the box and pull something out to do that isn’t scrolling on the phone. Kind of like a toybox! But you don’t have to get a giant Rubbermaid tote, or one of those big blue IKEA bags and fill them to the brim with hobbies. Get a puzzle book from the dollar store. Buy a paint-by-number kit that has everything you need in it. Get a book from the library (for the love of god, visit your local library!).

With any hobby, I have always been of the mind to start small and cheap. See if you even enjoy the hobby before you drop hundreds of dollars. Doodle in an empty journal or a cheap dollar store sketchbook before getting nice pencils and cotton paper and a set of alcohol markers. Honestly, almost all my sketchbooks are from the dollar store. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve always found the decent quality sketchbooks and water colour paper at my local Dollarama.

If you do an internet search for “second hand art supplies” plus your city name, you’ll probably find at least one or two shops in your area selling a plethora of items. We have one store where I live. A few times a year, I round up supplies I’m not using and donate to the shop. I try to make them my first stop when I want to try a new hobby or medium. It’s a bit of a crapshoot as I’m at the mercy of whatever people decided to donate at that time. But I have picked up pencils, markers, buttons, zippers, frames, paints, rubber stamps, and canvases to name a few things. My local store has everything priced as “fill a little bag for $5, fill a big bag for $10”, making it quite economical to try something new.

Of course, that’s just one idea, for arts and crafts folks. Get out there on your local selling websites (I’m partial to VarageSale, but a lot of people use Facebook Marketplace) and see what’s on offer. There are always a lot of sporting goods, gardening supplies and camping products to check out.

The point is, everything is susceptible to overconsumption these days. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new things! Just be really aware of how you are approaching things and know your limits. Try one thing at a time. Just try.

My analogue bag is actually a basket I already had that used to have a bunch of blankets in it. I got rid of the excess of blankets and now it contains: the sweater I’m knitting, my library books, my journal, and a sketchbook. I really want to make watercolour painting more accessible for me, so I might set up a little tray on the kitchen table with all the stuff ready to go. That way there’s not a lot of set up that needs to happen if I want to paint for an hour.

Now send this post to someone who you think would like it, leave a comment about what offline hobby you’re going to try, and get off the internet for the night!