Hello all, and welcome to the (dys)connected blog. My name is Austin, and you can think of this as my sort of personal journal of my journey exploring digital minimalism. A bit about me: I grew up in a small town in Missouri and currently live in the Midwest with my husband and our dog. I have always been infatuated with technology and the “next best thing”, and have more specifically always had a strong interest in Apple. So much so that one time several year ago, my aunt (who also shares an interest in Apple) had a client call her an “Apple whore”, and she said that would have to apply to me as well. Steve Jobs had long been one of my idols for his determination, obsessiveness for detail, and the way he saw the world. Maybe not so much for his personality, but without it, the world might be in a much different place. I own many Apple products, just about a device from each of their product categories (sans a Vision Pro). So clearly, I’m not adverse to technology as a whole.

I, like many others, became very accustomed to their phone and devices. There was hardly a day I didn’t look at my phone for less than 5 hours, in addition to my iPad, Mac, tv, and whatever else. I would take pictures of things that I probably wouldn’t look at more than once, just because I thought it might look good on instagram for my 300 followers (most of whom I had not seen in person in several years). All of this changed when I read the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport in late summer 2024. In the book, he goes into great detail about our interactions with our devices and how they have taken over all aspects of our lives. He explains the shift in society to being more anxious, less attentive, and overall more negative since the introduction of not just social media, but the devices that allow us to access that social media at any given point. The book was very eye opening, so much so that my husband read it, and we both instantly wanted to throw our cellular devices in the water as Lorde had metaphorically done in 2021 (IYKYK). Reading this sparked my interest in the idea of going back to a world where not everything centered around this 6″ brick of glass and metal in our pockets.

Now, we are here on this blog, sharing my stories, insights, things I notice, thoughts, etc. with hopefully other likeminded people. My blog posts, as you have probably already noticed, are very raw, maybe a bit scattered brained, but they are my thoughts from my mind to my keyboard. You may notice the design of the blog is very plain. Serif text, lack of fancy animations, photos, design, etc. It was inspired by the alternative/pop artist, Lorde. For her most recent album, Virgin, she completely erased her website (lorde.co.nz) and returned it to a very Web 1.0, Times New Roman, bare bones site that left only the essentials. It promotes transparency, weeds out the unnecessary items, and leaves you with just the information you need. Frankly, I think that is essential to the core of this blog—just the essentials.

And I think that’s about it for this first post. If this blog sounds like something that interests you, please leave a comment and subscribe to get new posts delivered directly to your inbox.