Techless Time: Three Hours of Inconvenience

This is a verbatim copy of a blog assignment written for school.

When I learned that we were being assigned to spend three hours without using electronics or information systems, my reaction was immediate dread and frustration, and anticipating making time for it brought back similar feelings whenever my mind returned to it. I decided, eventually, to get this done and over with so I would stop having to worry about when I was going to do it, and took my time techless from 8-11 PM on Tuesday the 25th.

This time began as I was nearing home on a walk back from town to drop off a CV and buy groceries, since I was not willing to make this trip without listening to any music or podcasts. With forethought, I set an alarm on my phone to go off in three hours and three minutes, and set it to Do Not Disturb so that it would not make any sound until then. This way, I would know when my time was up. In a way, then, I could not get away from using my phone, since I was passively making use of its time tracking, but I will not apologise for this; My house does not actually have a clock in it, use of devices like mobile phones which also tell time having been so ordinary and constant that no-one bothered to get one. It reminded me of attending classes in room D521, where the wall clock is perpetually stuck at 10:00 and we are not allowed to check our phones, and so by extension are not allowed to check the time.

Throughout the day, even before I started the challenge, I was thinking about angry things to say about being assigned to do this. Among them: It is not very difficult to take time away from connectedness if you want to. For some, it's a very relaxing experience to let go of the need to answer to friends or bosses and be informed of every new thing as it happens. Country retreats away are popular for good reason. However, it's a different matter when you're doing it on someone else's command. Any given person has almost certainly at some point, when they weren't thinking about it, gone three hours at a time without scratching their nose, but it's a part of human nature that if someone tells you that you have to deliberately avoid scratching it for three hours, it's immediately going to start itching.

Perhaps I would not have been so frustrated but for three major factors: First, I have been trying to find a part-time job around town, and feel rather urgently pressed to do so. It's very rare for me to be in a situation where I'd rather be looking through job listings online than what I'm actually doing, but this is one of those situations.
Second, I have always spent the majority of my social life online and my relaxation using a computer; I play computer games or watch YouTube as my primary way to enjoy myself and unwind. This is only more dramatically the case now that I am thousands of miles and many time zones away from all my old friends whose company is familiar and comforting to me, so these three hours will neither be time I can spend looking for work in a way I'm able to at this time of day, nor time I can spend relaxing and enjoying myself in the ways I'm accustomed to.
Finally, the experience of being asked to do this feels political to me. It reminds me of people I have heard dismissing "millenials" as cheap, shallow and so addicted to their phones that they can't stand to put them down for ten minutes, and as a result I feel reflexively defensive and as though I am being judged; Not only that, but judged based on a stereotype rather than for my own behaviour.

Information technology is a stratum on which life today is built; some houses no longer have clocks in them because 'everyone' has a mobile phone. Posters and food wrappers do not write out the full details of their message, but have a URL printed on them where further information can be found because 'everyone' has ready access to the internet. Going without these systems for a few hours or even a few weeks is entirely possible and may not even be particularly hard, but if someone is incapable of using them at all, they will be missing out on major advantages and may not be able to keep up with the standard pace and productivity the modern world expects and demands.

For my three hours of techlessness, I wanted to prioritise doing things that I would not normally use an electronic device to do more efficiently. Although I was thinking about what I would write throughout the day, I did not write anything for this blog; writing with paper and pen is slower for me than typing, and I would have needed to type it all out afterwards anyway. Instead, I tidied my bedroom windowsill, did a bit of organising in my room, bathed myself and cooked two different kinds of food: soup and spaghetti. Aside from tidying my windowsill, these were things I might well have done anyway on some other day, but the primary difference is that on another day, I would be listening to something on either my phone or my mp3 player. This might be music, or it might be a podcast of some kind, depending on what I felt like at the time. I care a great deal for the ability to listen to music of my own tastes whenever I want. It adds levity and fun to menial work, and also allows me to drown out things I do not want to be listening to, like a housemate's private phone conversation with a loved one or a barking dog in the neighborhood. Today, I spent three hours with a recurring earworm I wasn't allowed to scratch.

On the other hand, deliberately avoiding the use of electronics and information systems reminded me about a short piece of speculative fiction I want to write, about a disconnect from technology far more integrated and habitual, and vastly more devastating, than this one.

IT Carlow: Week Two

I am easily embarrassed and may take over an hour to really get over the embarrassment from merely being told my questions are too frequent, or perhaps too insignificant by her measure, by a lecturer. Time really seems to be flying. I had not noticed we had so little time left in the lecture. This must be a good thing. I will try to figure out other ways to approach this lecturer with my questions

-Monday 17th, September

I enjoyed sleeping this morning and clung to it. I arrived late to my first class and unfed. In the second I was continually distracted and annoyed by the man next to me who checked his phone under the desk, wobbled the bench and jostled against me with his arm. In the hallway I wrestled with the anxiety-forbidden temptation to call out to everyone not to block the hallways, in case someone needed to get through. I bought myself a breakfast in the upstairs caf, which helped fuel me through the rest of my classes.

-Tuesday 18th, September

The clubs sign-up was loud with music over a boombox in one corner. I signed up for archery, tabletop and Irish dance. I met some of Rachel's friends for the second time. I gave out 3 CVs with a cheerfulness that surprised me. I slept before midnight and soundly rested until 9 the next day.

-Wednesday 19th, September

Yesterday I found an organising toy, lifeRPG, for goal setting and tracking, with EXP gained for completed tasks. I woke to find a rejection from UpWork and a bunch of forms to fill out for my new clubs, plus obligations to further support Tabletop. It was a bad first impression. Missed counselling appointment, and didn't realize it until 9 at night.

-Thursday 20th, September

I had a sluggish morning. I helped Rachel practice categorising costs for Management Accounting and felt that I had neglected my need for leisure, so once I got home I watched a bunch of old shows of sfdebris and bought and enjoyed a game that was on sale on GOG. But I dropped off four more CVs on the way.

-Friday 21st, September

Saturday was a day of job searching work. I made a particularly strong and hopeful application to a health food store looking for a weekend shop assistant. I improved some of the phrasing on my CV and made a new version which I hope will be relevant to waitress work. I handed out four more CVs, including one to an actual bar. The approach was intimidating, as I have never felt comfortable in bars, but having overcome my mounting fear to come in and talk to two friendly counter staff was one small victory. I visited another and heard that the manager to speak to would be in on weekdays, but was not at that time. At the end of the day, I reviewed my progress and found that of all the CVs I had dropped off, positions I had applied to online and employment inquiry emails I had sent, one entire third of them had been over the last four days: Wednesday to Saturday.

Tuesday I had gotten an email from the school office reminding me of the urgency of my job search: appointments for the immigration meeting at which I would need to show evidence of 3,000 euro in a bank account to stay were beginning. Over the few days that followed, I gathered my friends and spoke seriously about the choice between returning to Canada and forfeiting the deposit my father was generous enough to let me talk him into paying for me... or staying on, although if I became financially unable to stay through the end of the year and finish the courses, I would be out by thousands more. Still, the real need of finding work is a challenge that my past self knowingly threw my present self into, determined that I should grow to meet it. Incidentally, this fits well with a new determination song shown to me by a new friend: "I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy!"

Sunday I woke up feeling utterly done with job searching. I spent the day lazy and played Theme Hospital for most of it. Chatted with Iris, and stayed up almost all night. It set me up to wake to my alarm so hazily that I thought I had multiple alarms keyed to different states, and go back to sleep after turning it off, feeling confident another one would ring. I slept in and missed my first class, but only the first one. I was in attendance for the second.

IT Carlow: Short Notes, The First Two Days

I feel a bit like I've been blindfolded and I'm trying to make my way through the days, but every time I bump into someone I feel ashamed. And it seems as though others are calling back to me, irritably, to keep up, but I just keep bumping into people and it feels as though every day teaches me the same lesson that I'm bad at talking to people... or understanding what I am supposed to do.

- Thursday 13, September (first day of classes)

The first crowded class of our crowded day, I step into the crowded room and spot a scant few open seats. Only one near the front, and when I approached it, the student sitting beside slid her bag over and lifted the folding seat to block me. Incensed, I went elsewhere, and watched...
When another new arrival scanned the room and approached that place, she moved her bag aside.

-Friday 14, September

I have connected with counselling services on campus and may wind up regularly seeing one of the counsellors here on Thursday afternoons. I have also begun reading The Leadership Skills Handbook: 90 Essential Skills You Need to Be a Leader, by Jo Owen. It has made a truly excellent first impression, with wise reminders, some frank insights that I had not thought about before and a great deal of wit. It is broken into very short, succinct sections which makes it easy to cover a whole section even if I only have five or ten minutes, and makes it easy and inviting to keep reading one more bit. Reading the first handful of sections on Thursday really cheered me up by reminding me that the courage to try things even when I don't know how I'm supposed to go about them is a strength, and that I am not the only person for whom that takes courage.

It is too easy to be overwhelmed and caught up in the mistakes, and forget to value the process of learning and finding one's way that demands making some mistakes. Maybe I am not bad at talking to people; being a foreign student, even speaking the same language, is simply hard. That doesn't account for all of my recent mistakes, however, and it still shocks my system and my blood pressure to be intentionally kept at a distance by fellow students at school with gestures of disrespect... even, perhaps, repulsion. I had hoped I was done with that.

The Broken Throne

So. It's been a week and two weekends. I have felt I've been doing surprisingly well. I have reflected on the happiness of working toward a goal that I have enjoyed over the past year. I have cried, have sought comfort in the words and company of my friends back in America and found it. I have felt confused, and hopeful, and empty.

I have searched for work, intermittantly, between sessions of passivity and fatigue bordering on depression, but not quite depression. I have despite this managed to submit resumes or reply to job ads to the tune of twenty in the two weeks I have been here.

I wrote a song. I got into a conversation on FetLife and was disappointed and alienated by an uncanny scriptedness of the advances of another human being, even though his script was polite.

I came into the campus this morning to job search, but wrote "love thyself" on my checklist, consciously, intentionally, a note of gentleness and will toward peace and joy.
(Context: There was a time, during a panic attack that I documented here, that I wrote "LOVE THYSELF" on my checklist as I was leaving class, like a compulsion, in jagged and accusing words, and visualised myself in a round room, curled up in a fetal position, with those words wrought across the rounded wall. It was one of the most direct and straightforward messages I have ever gotten from myself through my visualisations and compulsions.)

I came into campus this morning to job search, and listened to favourite OCremixes on the way, enjoying a variety of the songs that impressed me enough while I was combing through the vast collection that I wanted to keep them and hear them again. A few that I may want to remove, being not as impressed with them now, or feeling I had only liked them in comparison to other songs I liked less. Still at home, I felt a little downcast at the memory of Turks in Pursuit. A fine track, but one that Eoin had pointed out to me, based on an original track he liked, back when I showed him my habit of Audiosurfing these remixes. Now I sit down to a desk in the campus library, access the wifi, and another remix is next to come to my ear. It is one that's always struck me hard and driven me to thoughtfulness, and worse, it also speaks of Eoin. He knew the original duet, and we had planned, once, to sing it together. A 'Kid-pella, a touching a cappella rendition of Setting Sail, Coming Home from Bastion.

I take your hand; now, you'll never be lonely...

Tears come. I had hoped to be professional today. And I still hope I will be. But if I need to cry, it's well that I do it, and the sooner I can get over it.

I imagine the million things I want to say to him. To say I wanted to believe better of him than to think that his having said I would always be special to him last year, having said he liked me, and thought he would like to stay in touch a week ago, was empty words to placate. I still want to. I feel angry, although my wisdom counsels patience. I feel angry that I have heard nothing from him, after promising I would let him come to speak to me if he wished to.

I wonder, in my reeling thoughts, when I think of this, whether that was a mistake. Whether I might be able to claim him as friend quite readily if I'd been willing to lead the overture, but that he will be too intimidated to start a conversation with me, will not know what to say, and so will say nothing, until it eventually feels like it has been too long, and it would be too late now, and so will continue to say nothing. Should I rescind my promise? But that would be weakness. Desperate weakness, and would make me a clinging thorn if the truth is he would rather not speak with me.

I wonder if I should wish there was enough submissiveness or enough apathy in my nature to live on without much thought to it, and let him speak to me in his own time, whenever it strikes him to do so, even if it never does. I cannot wish for apathy, though.

The challenge of staying in touch with my loves across the ocean is upon me. It is quite natural for me to stay up late, but it makes it difficult to get any sleep. I am woken most mornings as my roommates rise, a neighborhood dog barks, a child with some developmental disability hoots a now-familiar loud cry. Perhaps I will be able to sleep in the evening, wake for company, and sleep again through the morning until it is time to wake. Perhaps, but then when will I work? There is so much to answer. It is difficult. But the voice of my dear Iris is comforting, in that blind, desperate way that something can be comforting even though it does not necessarily make any of the things that are wrong better. I remember that I wanted to talk with my friends about my future. I want their advice to help me figure out what to make of it. I realised through this experience that I build myself more to be what I think the people I love want me to be than I may have been willing to admit before.

I smashed the throne I built for Eoin, but the pieces, heavy as marble, still weigh in the center of me. I have not cleared them away, and it is hard enough even to resist the temptation to rebuild it. The throne room is a sad place now, deserted and despairing after the hope that had lived there. "My heart is wrapped in cold sorrow", I remember thinking to myself, as I marched home that Saturday afternoon, after that Friday evening, and my train back to Carlow.