Dear friends,

I'm interested in my system of tools and creative practices and how they are connected. What do I keep analog? Where do I leverage low-distraction tech? What do I use for what purpose? How do I keep from being too invested in perfectionism and optimization?

Since I first became thoughtful about my dis-ease with most social media and my reliance on Big Tech, it hasn't felt easy to figure out paths forward. Communities and working groups I belong to rely on Google in ways large and small. Family members feel burdened by having to keep me up to date if I'm not logged onto social media to "see what's going on" in our community and among our friend groups. Because there is no way to be "pure" about any of this, I find myself often lapsing into temptation to give up completely, but admittedly, this is short-lived.

Coming off this recent season of busyness, though, it’s clear to me that my attention and energy are worth treating as sacred. Because of this, finding ways to pull away from technology's distractions while simultaneously building habits and systems that bolster both (energy + attention) isn't an optional task for me. This is necessary work that will carry me forward into this next phase of my life.

Simultaneously, at work, the exposure to and insistence on participation with Generative AI and LLMs, particularly ChatGPT, have proved to be something I need to be extremely careful about. In the times that I have used ChatGPT, I completely identify with this statement by artist and educator Mel Mitchell-Jackson in their incredible essay on being "AI Sober": "I would read back the ideas and feel covered in a goo of slime."

I have also experienced a rush of excitement and dopamine when using these tools, temporarily convinced that I was wielding some magic wand that was helping me figure things out more quickly and be more productive. These feelings never stuck, though. Afterwards, I would feel a sense of existential shame — a more intense version of the feeling I have when I "come to" after spending way too long scrolling through Instagram. It is clear to me that LLMs work very quickly to atrophy my creative functioning. I become instantly fearful that I can't work without these tools the moment I step away from them. This feeling, alongside all that we know about the horrible environmental abuses these tools are perpetrating, is enough for me to know without a shadow of a doubt that using them is outside of my values.

So, all that said, this is why I feel a deep need to create value statements and guidelines for myself and my work that I will likely publish on my website this winter. I have all of these swirling thoughts about refusing to move at the speed of capitalism, about the sacredness of attention, and about how we infuse care for ourselves and each other in all that we do. I am thankful to have begun to feel the benefits of living with intention and am enthusiastic not only about how I will continue to extend these blessings in my own life, but also how I might share what I am learning.

For now, here is a jumbled list of practices and tools that I currently have integrated:

Digital Spaces and Tools

• I am using Obsidian on my laptop for note-taking and for random fits of writing. This tool is terrific for many reasons, but two worth naming are 1) you can keep your notes offline and private, and 2) it is easy to link notes together to better map your thoughts.

• I have moved off Gmail and Google Suite, unless compelled to use them due to my participation in a working group. I am using Proton for both email and online file storage. While they do have an AI tool, Proton products focus on security and don't try to force AI usage into everything I do within their ecosystem.

• I have just started trying LibreOffice as a replacement for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. I don't have a review of the tool yet. I’m excited about giving it a try after Microsoft removed desktop application access for users with school accounts (I get mine through my seminary). When that happened, I downloaded this open-source software as an offline alternative.

• I'm all about Signal. If you and I are currently friends who communicate via text, Apple Messages, or FaceTime, let's switch to Signal.

• I am also very new to are.na, where I am experimenting with housing the online places, things, words, etc. that I am blessed to discover on the internet in one easy-to-reference spot. This also helps scratch the itch to curate a space that moving away from Instagram created in me.

• DuckDuckGo is my current web browser. I appreciate that it's security-forward and keeps me off of Chrome. I'm sure there are better browsers, but I haven't yet invested the time to research those. Rejecting all cookies autmatically also keeps an algorithm out of my business when using search engines. Less perfectly curated content has proved better for my attention and, to be honest, my bank account.

Low-Distraction Tech Devices & Optimizations

• I have a Freewrite Traveler that I use for focused writing sessions. This is basically a word processor with an e-ink display that lets me focus entirely on words and output, and keeps me from getting distracted or bogged down in in-the-moment editing.

• I use the Dumb Phone app on my iPhone 15 to keep it locked down. I do not have email or social media on my phone and do my best to keep it in use as my digital Swiss army knife, where I can send messages, make phone calls, and listen to music (Apple Music right now, but considering a switch to Qobuz), books (Kobo), and audiobooks (Libro.fm). I also keep my iPhone set to grayscale and use a matte screen protector to keep things less shiny and inviting.

• The Remarkable Paper Pro is my holy grail of tech devices. Admittedly, like the Freewrite, this is pricey. I gifted it to myself this past March, and the ability to read PDFs for school, keep up with bullet journaling on a digital screen, to have it as a paperless option to preach from (I read from PDFs I load onto it), and so much more has made it one of the most useful products I have ever purchased. I absolutely love this thing.

Analog Things That I Won't Give Up

• I write morning pages every day in a paper notebook with a particular pen. I spend 20-30 minutes doing this each morning. This creates a record of my thoughts that is not held in any cloud, made with tools that feel good in my hand. This ritual is a key one for me.

• If you know me, you know that I love vinyl records. I keep a small record player next to my desk and pick 4-5 records each day I'm working from home to use as my soundtrack. I have wired headphones attached to my record player, and I promise you what I'm listening to sounds better than anything coming through a smartphone and wireless earbuds. (Yes, the college-aged music snob and radio d.j. is still alive and well within me.)

• I still buy books. This is probably more of a problem than a "system" because I do not have room for many more. I also don't hate ebooks at all and have asked for a Kobo e-reader for Christmas. That said, I will never not love a physical book.

If these things serve any unified purpose, it is to SLOW ME DOWN and keep me focused on one thing at a time. I am keenly aware that this is also a hyper-fixation for me and that my satisfaction is probably coming too primarily from a desire to "get it right" when it comes to how I organize my writing and creative life as well as my ministerial work.

What needs to come next is the list of value statements that I mentioned earlier (that probably should have come before, but this is not how my brain naturally works). Getting those things verbalized will keep me out of this loop of optimization and consumerism that is ultimately contradictory to the entire exercise of shifting gears and slowing down.

How do you live with intention? I’d love to hear from you. What I know beyond everything here is that we live in a culture that genuinely doesn’t want us to stop and contemplate the “why” behind what we do. Even to ask yourself the question can be countercultural, and in my opinion, can easily lead to something great.

With care,

Rachel