Going Analog

The view from Lycabettus Hill, Athens, Greece

I'm writing from Athens as I navigate a new chapter—living abroad with intention, embracing the analog, and documenting what it really looks like to create a life you love in real time. If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

For several months before leaving the US, I began talking about “going analog.” I was longing for less digital engagement—a time before social media and endless screen time. Hell, I was longing for the days when phones didn’t even have answering machines. If you weren’t home when someone called, they just tried again later. If you were on the phone with someone else, the person calling got a busy signal. The lack of technology protected us from the anxiety that our overstimulating digital age has cast upon us.

I wasn’t a frequent user of social media, but I decided to delete those apps from my phone anyway in late October 2025. Thing is, people don’t know you’ve abandoned that form of communication, so I’d check my messages from time to time and get pulled into the quicksand of scrolling. Then, 15-20 minutes later, I’d snap out of the trance and practically hurl my phone down.

No surprise then that I left my phone charging in the terminal at Newark Airport on December 20th as we were leaving the country for the first leg of our journey to London—almost a manifestation of this break I was craving. The doors closed on the airplane, the announcement to “turn off your digital devices” came over the PA system, and I realized what I’d done.

Unlike old me, I didn’t fly into a panic with quick, shallow breathing. I calmly shared this with my husband and asked him to wave over the nearest flight attendant. It was midnight, and we were one of the few flights left after several hours of delays, so I wasn’t too worried they’d be able to retrieve it (which they did).

It’s now January 11th, 2026, and I still don’t have my cell phone. It’s become annoying only because there are things you simply can’t do without it—take pictures, receive security texts, contact new people I’ve met, look things up as I think of them. But this last one? That falls squarely into what I’d call the addictive behavior of instant gratification.

Here’s what I noticed without it:

How often I reached for my phone in that first week—first thing in the morning, while having coffee, sitting at a cafe, looking up a fact or directions, talking with people and wanting to use it as a prop to show pictures.

How annoyed I became at my husband, who still had his phone. Every time we’d sit down at a restaurant, out it would come. He’d say, “It’ll only be a minute,” but I’d often sit there for up to 20 minutes waiting for him to engage.

I began to question my annoyance, challenge it, and remind myself of my “analog” dreams. I looked around, noticed things, got curious. I sat with the restless energy surging through my veins like an addiction and wondered at its power over my emotions.

I read voraciously. I could be indulgent again with one of my great joys. When we got to Greece, I tried to download the Kindle app on my desktop, but you need your phone for a security code to do that.

I felt calmer—despite leaving life as I knew it, despite knowing I was going to a country where I couldn’t read signs or labels or speak the language, despite all the moving about: Hudson, New York, London, Stratford, Heathrow, Athens—with six suitcases, no less. (Even though we thought we’d pared down to two suitcases each, we had more stuff we couldn’t bear to chuck.)

I had more energy and curiosity for exploring.

My phone is winding its way back to me, VERY SLOWLY. It’s been sitting for days at the FedEx hub in San Marco, Italy, which is pretty funny to me because, well, one expects this of Italy—which is one of the reasons I love Italy. I know that when I get it back, I’ll be drawn into its enslaving habits again. But now I have some guardrails naturally built into this new place I’m living.

Glorious Athens, where people sit at cafes for hours on end talking with one another, not a screen in sight. I want to be like them. My heart aches looking at this beautiful sea of humanity—everywhere we go, people are engaging, laughing, communicating, learning. I’ve been duped into the miasma of technology, numbing out of human engagement like the SOMA’d society in Huxley’s Brave New World.

I will have a daily reminder not to go back to my old ways. And I plan to use all the extra time to learn—the Greek alphabet, conversational Greek, the history of this region, how to distinguish and cook the fish they sell at the market, how to get around Athens and understand the geography of this side of the world, how to think in metric measurements and the 24-hour clock, and how to live again by choosing a more analog existence.

I’m writing from Athens as I navigate this new chapter—living with intention, embracing the analog, and documenting what it really looks like to create a life you love in real time. If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.