Paper.

I have always loved a notebook and pen.

In middle school and high school I was an avid "journal keeper." None of what I wrote was meant for anyone but me. I would write to pass the time, or to work out my thoughts and feelings on a subject.

I still do this personal writing on occasion and recycle my journals in a grand paper shredding ceremony. The writings go back to the glorious land of NYC sanitation to be used in something else and the paper has done me mental good. (It's also a part of my Buddhist non-attachment practice.)

Recently I realized that I have outsourced a lot I used to do on pen and paper to my phone.

The biggest culprit has been my calendar.

I was always a paper planner type of person in high school and college. I looked forward to buying my new shiny planner every school year, and used an array of rainbow highlighters and pens to write everything down.

At some point I started using my phone to do my calendar dirty work instead of paper. A few years out of college I put everything into Apple's calendar. After a while I discovered the syncing with Apple's calendar is not great, and I remember one year (maybe in the mid 2010's?) going back to a paper calendar for a brief period of time out of frustration.

Somewhere along the way Google started to really gain traction, and I went back to the land of the Google calendar.

I think phone calendars are great. I truly have nothing against them, but I'm actually considering going back to a paper calendar for most things.

I know there is some research to back this up, but I retain much more info when I write things down on paper as opposed to using a phone. In addition, this is one of the ways I am trying to go more analog in my life to retain more of my cognitive ability and frankly, my joy.

There isn't much creativity or joy to be had in a Google Calendar.

There's another reason I really want to make this shift back to more analog means. I'm really tired of companies having any right at all to my information. It may seem somewhat luddite, but I don't trust the big tech monopolies like Meta and Google...

Why do we give up so much of our information?

I remember when I was a kid and we wouldn't even tell people our last name on the internet, let alone put our calendar there.

Anyway... these are just my random thoughts on the subject.