Rejecting Convenience
I've been on this path in my life for over a year, where I am making slow adjustments to my daily life to put little barriers between me and convenience when I feel appropriate. Convenience can be great, I love that I can just email random strangers here on Bear and interact with other bloggers or people like you reading this. However, more often than not, convenience has a cost, and it's not always a cost I'm willing to pay. Maybe you've had this thought too, maybe you're slowly becoming aware to that we may be slipping into Brave New World territory with how much of ourselves we give for the sake of convenience.
Let's take Spotify for example. You get seemingly infinite songs all at your fingertips. However, now you have an algorithm pushing music you may not even care for, underpaying artists, and taking away or changing music at will. There's no sense of self curation, just some Intel microchip recommendation, it didn't hear the song, it just gathered points of data and just said "here". There's a certain feeling you get when you're going through a music store, or music section and looking at the album covers, seeking recommendations online, and actually going out to grab the music yourself (or at least download it off youtube with some mp3 conversion tool). Yeah, the latter takes a lot more work, but more often than not that extra work makes the whole experience that much more personal.
I honestly never would have gave Chapel Roan a chance had I not seen her "Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess" at a record shop. I found some of my most favorite albums by just checking out things for myself through looking through music stores or checking out RateYourMusic. Daft Punk's Discovery, MF DOOM, Himiko Kikuchi's Flying Beagle, the list goes on of albums I NEVER would have found if I just kept letting an algorithm tell me what I should listen to.
This isn't even going into the whole data privacy nightmare that is the modern tech sphere. That's another cost to convenience.
Same thing can be applied to movie/show streaming services. You end up needing like 5 different services to be able to actually see what you want because no one service has everything. You could honestly spend that money on just getting the physical disc and then you actually own it.
I got with a serious splash of cold water when it came to just how fragile the online ecosystem can be when some 100,000 of songs were blocked on youtube because of a license dispute. Most of my favorite bands were just barred and inaccessible until the dispute got resolved. My CD/MP3 file collection was a saving grace. Spotify can't go into my laptop and take away my music, Netflix can't go onto my shelf and rip a movie off.
Hell, you don't even need to buy these things physically, if you get your hands on the mkv/mp4 through TOTALLY legal means, then all you need is a USB stick, or a plex server.
I started taking public transportation on my commutes to work. It takes longer, sure, and there have been a few occasions where I got rained on and didn't bring a jacket, but I also have been helping my personal fitness. You can also do other things while on a train, like writing, reading, drawing. You can't do that in a car stuck in rush hour traffic.
I feel like that by making things more inconvenient for myself, I become more competent. When I don't rely on GPS, I find I am capable of navigating my way around. I could drive all the way from my home to Huntington Beach with nothing more than just looking at road signs. I'm less socially anxious because I'm more accustomed to just asking people for help. I don't get that sense of dread when making a simple phone call.
So, maybe consider this as a sign to make some changes in your life. You can go as strict or lenient as you feel comfortable with. It can be something as simple as parking farther away from the store when you go grocery shopping. Do what makes the most sense to you. Sometimes inconvenience is what gives life that extra joy.
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