I read Project Hail Mary last summer and really enjoyed it. I may have to give the audiobook a try!
Also thank you for a beautiful album to put on while holding our newborn. For Emma, forever ago has always been a favorite of mine and this brought back many feeling of nostalgia and memories of friends from back when that album came out.
From 02/2021 - 08/2021 I ditched my iphone in favor of a Nokia 2780 (a flip phone I dubbed Felipe). I had to switch back to an iphone when I was promoted at my job and needed mobile access to several smartphone apps. I have since become readdicted to my phone (although it took some time) and I have gone back to Felipe this week. I have since bought a new truck which has GPS built in, I have dusted off my granddad's old digicam that captured our childhoods, and I have figured out how to transfer my Spotify playlists to MP3. I simply cannot be stopped.
The last time I did this, my dear mother complained she would no longer receive pictures of me-she didn't before, but that was her complaint nonetheless. So, whenever I was with people doing something worth capturing (the bar is very low) I would have a friend take the picture and text it to her directly. My mother received hundreds of photos of me from random numbers at all hours of the day, and her reactions to them ("thumbs up", "hearts", or "ha ha") became a pseudo-social currency among my friends. In May and June of 2023 I spent 5 weeks in Tokyo, Japan. Where I was caught in a typhoon and punched a hole through my iphone completely ruining it. Thankfully I was with a group of a dozen or so peers, and once more my mother began receiving randomly texted pictures of me from across the world.
I have found myself returning to things I feel are more human, more experience driven, and so I have begun once again collecting and playing vinyl records because I like to watch the needle drop. I have returned to using a French press because while my kureig does a good job, it makes my coffee the same way it makes everyone else's, and I don't appreciate being treated as unimportant by something I own.
More than anything, I hate that I knowingly allow something I carry in my pocket, to steal my attention. I hate that my brain has chemically rewired itself to want to look at a metal and glass square instead off the world around me. A flip phone allows my friends to call me, and for me to call my friends. That is all I need it to do. Plus it is really fun to flick it shut to hang up on people.
I am downloading Project Hail Mary onto Felipe, I will let you know what I think.
https://youtu.be/m08TxIsFTRI?si=U8oddrubFIPyP04H
Lady's & Gents a dream is coming true!
I read Project Hail Mary last summer and really enjoyed it. I may have to give the audiobook a try!
Also thank you for a beautiful album to put on while holding our newborn. For Emma, forever ago has always been a favorite of mine and this brought back many feeling of nostalgia and memories of friends from back when that album came out.
Tim, regarding the final bonus poem,
From 02/2021 - 08/2021 I ditched my iphone in favor of a Nokia 2780 (a flip phone I dubbed Felipe). I had to switch back to an iphone when I was promoted at my job and needed mobile access to several smartphone apps. I have since become readdicted to my phone (although it took some time) and I have gone back to Felipe this week. I have since bought a new truck which has GPS built in, I have dusted off my granddad's old digicam that captured our childhoods, and I have figured out how to transfer my Spotify playlists to MP3. I simply cannot be stopped.
The last time I did this, my dear mother complained she would no longer receive pictures of me-she didn't before, but that was her complaint nonetheless. So, whenever I was with people doing something worth capturing (the bar is very low) I would have a friend take the picture and text it to her directly. My mother received hundreds of photos of me from random numbers at all hours of the day, and her reactions to them ("thumbs up", "hearts", or "ha ha") became a pseudo-social currency among my friends. In May and June of 2023 I spent 5 weeks in Tokyo, Japan. Where I was caught in a typhoon and punched a hole through my iphone completely ruining it. Thankfully I was with a group of a dozen or so peers, and once more my mother began receiving randomly texted pictures of me from across the world.
I have found myself returning to things I feel are more human, more experience driven, and so I have begun once again collecting and playing vinyl records because I like to watch the needle drop. I have returned to using a French press because while my kureig does a good job, it makes my coffee the same way it makes everyone else's, and I don't appreciate being treated as unimportant by something I own.
More than anything, I hate that I knowingly allow something I carry in my pocket, to steal my attention. I hate that my brain has chemically rewired itself to want to look at a metal and glass square instead off the world around me. A flip phone allows my friends to call me, and for me to call my friends. That is all I need it to do. Plus it is really fun to flick it shut to hang up on people.
I am downloading Project Hail Mary onto Felipe, I will let you know what I think.
Best,
DJ
I’m going to check out that audiobook! The first-person inside-his-head narration worked for me in The Martian too.
And I’m gonna try those pens! I love a nice pen or pencil and have started leaving them all over. I like the idea of doing so more deliberately.