handwork – Deborah Makarios

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024

How to Live Without TV (a Past Post)

This post was originally published over five years ago, but it echoes a book I am currently reading (or possibly the book echoes the post – they were published in the same year). In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport writes, “you’re more likely to succeed in reducing the role of digital tools in your life if you cultivate high-quality alternatives to the easy distraction they provide. For many people, their compulsive phone use papers over a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life.”
Oof.
I feel Past Me provided some good advice here for Present Me on how to not get sucked into the small screen. So, bearing in mind that we’re not just talking about TV here, how do you live without TV?

Remove TV from house; delete all TV-related tabs, apps etc.
Ta-da! You are living without TV.

black and white drawing of a TV dumped in a rubbish bin

Except what we really want to know is not how to live without TV, but how to thrive without TV. (Side note: if English was a more sensible language, that would have rhymed and been an all-around more catchy sentence.)

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August 3, 2023August 3, 2023

Not Your Grandmother’s…

You see it all over. Not your grandmother’s cross-stitch! Not your grandmother’s knitting! Not your grandmother’s [insert craft here]!

Black and white photograph of a smiling older woman, knitting with at least three long needles. WIthout looking. — Not my grandmother…but probably someone’s.

And it gets on my wick. There’s the note of triumphant rebellion, the unspoken yet heavily implied superiority to the grandmother. It was bad enough that the skilled craftswomen of the past had their work looked down on at the time; it is even more aggravating that some of those who are reclaiming these sidelined crafts are joining in the denigration of their predecessors and their work.