Life Got Simpler and Therefore Also Healthier and Happier
Some people envy not wealth but happiness (which they're unable to attain, even with hoarding and accumulation)
Being "traditional" no longer means following traditional lifestyles; it means passively conforming to (or blindly complying with) norms imposed by corporate media, owned by people who crave our consumption (GAFAM shopping).
At the start of 2022 I moved "my desk" or "my office" downstairs (away from where it used to be). I still use all the same pre-owned laptops and they work fine. A few weeks from now it'll be 4 years. I'm now a lot closer to the kitchen (food!), but I compensate for that with exercise and extra sleep.
My health improved a lot in recent years. It's not that I was unhealthy, but I used to be awake and sleep sporadically because of the nature of my job (plus the sites needing monitoring tools - and occasionally human intervention - due to downtimes caused by inherent complexity of WordPress, Drupal etc.) and a lazy man's diet with erratic sleeping patterns.
I've since then reverted back to a lot of 1990s technology, including my childhood stereo system and other old stuff which works reliably and never contains DRM (it almost predates the concept, at least for music distribution). The CDs I listen to are about 30 years old and they work on any old laptop with an optical drive. They've aged well and I bought some last year.
In his latest talk (the questions he answers interest me the most) Richard Stallman repeatedly insisted that living in "traditional" and (Software) Freedom-respecting ways is actually in a lot of ways easier and healthier. I can relate to that message. "Purists" like my wife and I can mostly avoid all sorts of harmful and undesirable so-called 'tech' which is considered "modern" or "state-of-the-art". We miss nothing of importance or value. We never feel "left out" and if some shops refuse to accept cash, we'll skip them and reward those that do. The 1990s were not a dark era.
Think simpler. Be happier. Lower expectations, too. Focus on what you enjoy most and "be useful", not shallowly conformist for peer affirmation. Maybe you'll even convince others to find a better way to live. █
His talk has gotten a lot of "buzz" this past day:
Image source: New Office Setup After Sirius