I want to be bored this year. I want to swim in unstructured hours that allow me to catch up with myself, where I can realise thoughts I didn’t know I had; to let my imagination roam and bloom into shapes only possible without the constant distraction of a screen blurring my vision.

We hound ourselves with an aggressive load the moment our eyes flutter open and just before they close – scrolling, checking, cross-checking, responding, reacting. Our brain is tender and plastic at these times, producing alpha waves – the state in which we’re most receptive to new ideas and can absorb information like a sponge. 

This wakefulness is a place of calm and creativity. But too often, we don’t have the chance to see where this flow might take us, interrupting it with a phone thrust in our face. The onslaught of information pushes us into a state where we’re alert but scattered, our minds fed with things we think will make us better, healthier, more interesting, more attractive. 

We’ve never had more at our fingertips, and yet, we’ve never felt less. This paradox is what Catherine Shannon explores in her essay Your Phone is Why You Don’t Feel Sexy, which prompted me to think about the following two questions:

• Where’s the line between fascination with the world and being consumed by it?

• As tech gets deeper, colder and more uncanny, what will the counter-offer be?

Shannon writes:

“The proliferation of devices surrounding us at all times may help us ‘get in touch’ with other people, sure, but they impede our ability to get in touch with ourselves. A ‘touch’ screen would indeed seem to promise something tactile and real, but they leave us cold, tepid and listless. Something is deeply wrong when we sext the same way we order a sandwich.” 

The void my phone was widening within me prompted me to return to things I can hold in real life. I’d been collecting vinyl for some time, the love for it as much about the collecting and the quality as it was about imagining the stories embedded within each groove. But last year, I started gathering CDs again, dug my iPod out from the back of a forgotten drawer, ordered DVDs of my favourite films on eBay and became a member of the Keats Community Library. I even considered switching my phone for a Blackberry Bold 9700 (Jim Legxacy style).

These things are perhaps inconvenient, but intentional. Slow joy over quick pleasure. I don’t want my default to be instant gratification. I want things I can feel, scratch, stain, love, perhaps even lose. This desire for tangible, meaningful experiences leads me to another quote from Shannon:

“Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.”

There’s an additional layer to all of this, though. As someone raised on a Reddit thread discussing this very topic: