Real As Resistance - Analog Joy In A Digital World
The Matchbook | 1.23.26
What if I told you that hiding somewhere in one of your closets, or perhaps in your parents or grandparents if not your own, is a secret tool that can help ease the rougher patches that come with autism, ADHD, burnout, and absolute rage at the current state of things?
What if I told you that once you find one, once you start using it, it feels like medicine, and that everyone from the Silent Generation to Baby Boomers, Gen X to Millenials, all the way to Gen Z, from neurodivergents to teenage kids who spend a third of their day on the phone?
What if I told you if you don’t have this tool, you can probably find one for less than $1 at Goodwill, or if you want a brand new version, $5 at any local big box store? What if I told you they are reusable, shareable, and require no prescription whatsoever?
What if I told you I’ve used at least 12 of them in the last month alone?
What if I told you that the tool I’m speaking of, is an f’ing PUZZLE? Yeah. A jigsaw puzzle. Yeah. I’m serious.
In a digital world friends, I believe that REAL IS RESISTANCE.
I believe we can undo what has been done to us over these last 15 years. I believe we can disconnect, I believe we can slow down, I believe we can remind our brains of that magic that is boredom, the miracle that is the mundane in our lives, the meandering pace and wandering spirit of our youths before all things were reduced to the glass box in our hands all the damn time.
Viva la Revolución!
This isn’t a post about the evils of our technology, I’m not gonna bore you with that, it’s just a Matchbook post about the opposite. About the joys of going analog, about finding things that are simple, beautiful, and that allow us to BE without having to BE plugged in.
For us, it’s been puzzles. There’s something about them, and I can’t quite explain it properly to anyone who hasn’t done one in the last 10-20 years. I mean REALLY done one. The predictability of them, the tactile feedback when the piece you were looking for is found, then clicked into place (bonus points if you are lucky enough to have access to wooden puzzles, because the 3D nature of each piece really makes this almost orgasmically wonderful), the single-minded nature of the task that sometimes leads you to search for a single piece for over a half an hour.
If the digital world gives us endless scroll, puzzles are the perfect juxtaposition. There’s an end, friends. There’s finally an end!
And then, in true Buddhist nature, once you find that end and feel the profound sense of completion and this bizarre quiet satisfaction, you take it apart. You split the pieces back up, you shake them up to shuffle them so whenever you or someone else attempts the puzzle again it’s fresh, it’s hard, it’s new. Puzzles are the sand mandalas we never knew we needed.
In truth, it doesn’t have to be a jigsaw for you, it really doesn’t, but I am just writing to beg you to find something, find anything that is offline, that is analog, that is slow and measured and purposeful and removed from all things WWW.
I have many, and I treasure them all. I read books, a lot, I take real photos with cameras that are not on my iPhone (see also my Fuji Wrap-Up Posts here!), I take nightly walks on mountain loops outside my home, I sit on the deck for hours during the warm months and watch storms roll across the valley, I write, and I write, and I write. Sarah, too, has those she has fallen in love with, making artisanal sourdough bread most of all. I see her fall into the rhythm of stretching the dough, of shaping it on the cool countertops, of scoring it with her razorblade, of baking it until perfect. I see, I know.
Did I expect our friends Lynzee and Lauren to fall in love with puzzling when they came to visit? No. Did I expect two teenagers to forget their phones for 5 hours, then come back the next day and demand a new puzzle to attempt? No. Did I love it when the weird joy for such a strange little hobby spread? You bet your silly ass.
Real IS resistance, and we can fight this fight together. We don’t have to shame ourselves for picking up our phones and falling into the trap, but we can do better. We can find little weird joyful things that exist far outside of Instagram and TikTok and we can forgive ourselves for forgetting to care if we go viral or not.
I didn’t expect to pop in here today and write a piece about puzzles, I really didn’t. I just realized that when you find something that changes your life for the better, something that doesn’t require spending astronomical amounts of money, or complete overhauls of the systems we have in place, you want to share it with the people you love the most.
That’s you, friends. It’s always been you. This community is another place, and though it exists on the internets, it’s different and it always has been. We are for each other, medicine, and I treasure you for that.
What are your analog things that fill you with joy? What are your offline tools for reconnecting with yourself, with the world, with those you love? Share with us, let our analog list grow.
For now, I’m off to puzzle a bit. I see you when there’s nothing left to fit.
I love you all.
Be good.
A dear friend in Maine does puzzles, often small, and I have thought how it must be a form of meditation for her. She gifted a small one and today I will pull it out and join you all.
…we are all pieces in the larger world. 📚🌲
I write in journals and analog has been my battle cry for eons. So hope you can reach many. My 250 push is cursive writing and I ordered these cool books to sell in gallery this year to encourage kids to write in the secret code of the colonists. Breaks my heart that many kids don’t have a signature, can’t read handwritten notes, and so much is lost as their don’t get rote and memory, eye and hand coordination, and the lessons from old sayings and bits of poetry and text that were used to teach bit just secretive but capitalization, punctuation, an spelling. Memory builds connections just like analog life does. So glad this is your goal. Have loved your work since the old days. Peace.