Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about why it’s a good idea to also have some old-school “low-tech” hobbies as well. This was something I ended up thinking about one evening in early-mid June when I turned my old early-mid 2010s second-hand small form-factor PC on and noticed that it took even longer to start up than usual. After about fifty minutes, it booted to a mouse cursor on a black screen. Fortunately, “Ctrl Alt Del” still worked and I was able to do a proper restart, which took maybe thirty to fifty minutes or so and then it loaded properly. And, no, I don’t have a smartphone.
Anyway, although I could have fired up my old PS2 or listened to one of the two 1990s-2000s CD/Cassette/Radio players that I own, or even just watched traditional television, I was in more of an old-school mood and found myself reading some more of the paperback book I was reading at the time (a thriller novel from 2021 called “Better Off Dead” by Lee & Andrew Child. So far, it’s a solid “4/5”) and also making some art in one of my sketchbooks. Yes, I usually scan and edit my art digitally, but it still has a physical component – because it is the most satisfying part of making art.
(Click for larger image) This is a cropped – but otherwise unedited – scan of the physical waterproof ink/watercolour pencil painting I made whilst I was waiting for my computer to load properly. I’ll hopefully post a fully edited version of it here in late November next year.
This waterproof ink and watercolour pencil painting (with rain added using a white gel pen) was also made from imagination. You put in twice as much effort for art that looks half as good, but it lets you make art without even glancing at the internet.
It was based on both a random daydream – set in the very early 2000s – that I’d had earlier and also a memory from much earlier that day of looking at an old photo I took in December 2018 of a cool-looking building in Gosport. Surprisingly, I still got at least some of the details vaguely right in my painting.
(Click for larger image) This is a cropped (to remove a number plate) version of a photo I took of a cool-looking building in Gosport on the 17th December 2018. The painting was inspired by a memory of looking at this photo earlier the same day.
And, of course, I could also document all of this stuff in an old-fashioned physical journal as well. A cheap hardback “Cambridge” notebook, slightly smaller than A5 size, with paper that is sturdy enough to handle rollerball pen ink as well. Like, honestly, it was annoying that the computer was taking so long to load… but it wasn’t like I was bored whilst it was loading.
Anyway, the point of this article is that it’s worth having at least one or two “low-tech” hobbies because of situations like this. Whilst it’s obviously best to go for whatever actually interests you, one of the cool things about reading, drawing and/or writing is that you still get the relaxing/immersive feeling of “focus” that you get whilst using a computer… but with less distractions. And there’s a strange timelessness to it all as well.
Yes, this is probably because I grew up in the 1990s/2000s and have rarely been “up to date” with technology (again, the second-hand PC I’m typing this on was probably manufactured in about 2012-13), but don’t write off “low-tech” hobbies. There’s also something brilliantly tactile and “solid” about them as well, when compared to computers. And, yes, computers are amazing – I spend a lot of time on this old computer – but it’s still worth having some “low-tech” hobbies too. Not only as a “backup” if there are tech issues, but also because they can actually be genuinely fun and relaxing as well.
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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂
