Here’s the situation:  We have too much in 2023.  Too much stimulation, too much information and too much access to each other’s lives.  I really don’t think the human spirit was meant to take in as much as we do and I think it’s stealing the joy of simplicity.

If you’re close to my age, you might remember a little show called The Simple Life that aired in 2003, where hotel heiress and socialite Paris Hilton and her friend Nicole Ritchie, daughter of Lionel Ritchie, left the comfort of their lives and their wealth in Beverly Hills to move in with a family in small town Arkansas and live like the “average American” for a month.  The simple life.  Naturally these 2 were not used to getting their hands dirty and comedic antics ensued.  I don’t remember many details about this show anymore, and when I googled to find out what year it aired, I was quite surprised to find out there were actually 5 seasons of it, but I do remember thinking that fame and fortune were so much more enviable than any kind of “simple life”!

20 years later I’m pretty sure that sentiment continues to ring true for many.  Even if it’s not outwardly admitted, it’s evidenced by how many people still pursue quick fame and quick fortune by going on reality TV shows, trying to go viral on social media or trying to become “influencers” of some kind.  Fame and fortune (money and popularity) sound way more glamourous than being unknown and living comfortably within a budget. They automatically give you status so people look up to you and a platform so people listen to you.

Andy’s from the generation that thinks they should all be famous.  What happened to the generation that knew you shut up, did your work and died quietly from a heart attack?

– Stanley Hudson, The Office, S9E21 (Livin’ the Dream)

I consider myself fairly rooted in reality, but even I was enamored with the idea of ‘influence’ and up until about 2021 had these googly-eyes for “impacting the world”.  What would I bring to the table?  Who knows!  But a simple life?  Being an ‘average American’?  Pssh, boring!  Give me status!  Give me a platform!  I had ideas and dreams for a big life!  So what happened?  Well, 2020 happened with its fear mongering and lockdowns.  Even worse, 2021 with it’s divisive vaccines.  Seeing how friends and families turned on each other over opinions, and how complete strangers suddenly thought they were entitled to know something about you that was really a private and personal choice, made me realize how little I wanted anyone in my business and if I had status or a platform, I wouldn’t have the luxury of privacy!

It was also during that time that I became disenchanted with the people that we have given a platform and status to, like celebrities, media or the voices that have somehow been selected to be elevated.  What have these people really done to deserve it and do they even have anything good to say?  Why do we listen to them just because they’re “famous”?  It doesn’t make them better or even smarter, in the same way that being intelligent doesn’t mean that you’ll make good life decisions!  So between all of these things AND watching the world slip deeper and deeper into lunacy since, I can think of few things now that are more desirable than simplicity!  Everything else has gotten way too heavy, way too shallow, way too fake or downright corrupt.  Give me the simple life.

The Good ‘Ol Days

Am I officially this age now?  The age when you look back and say things like “everything was so much simpler then”, or what I’ve caught myself saying lately which is, “the 90’s were so great”.  Ok reality, the 90’s were not that great, but comparatively, can we please go back?!  I guess maybe my feelings are blissfully nostalgic because I was a teenager then with little responsibility, but looking back everything really does seem so much simpler.  Convenient, no, but simple?  Yes!

I’ve had a few good laughs recently watching Instagram reels from @thenostalgiclatino where the screen text says something like “it’s the 2000s and you just downloaded the hot new Destinee’s Children (ToDaLeft.exe.mp3)”, while a janky version of the song plays in the background and his caption is either “thanks Napster” or “Limewire days”.  It cracks me up because that’s exactly how it was!  You had to scroll through a long list of the song you wanted looking for the best star rating and compare download speeds, and then you didn’t know if you were getting the actual song or even a quality version of it until the downloaded completed, which could take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour!  My friends and I would spend hours doing this too so that we could burn the perfect mix CD!  This seems so prehistoric now considering in an hour we could replace our entire CD library with the tap of a screen, but back then we were ecstatic to even be able to get one individual song and for free!

What about finding all of this music in the days before Shazam?  I can’t tell you how many times I’d hear a catchy song in a store and will myself to try and remember the tune!  Or you’d make out a few of the lyrics and again, hope that your brain retained enough of them so you could search for the song when you finally got to a computer, because we didn’t carry around mini computers in our purses or pockets!  This was in the days before Google had all of the answers too, because I specifically remember going on music forums to ask if anyone knew what songs lyrics belonged to!  “Does anyone know a song that goes like: o-o-o-o-on, do-ow-ow-ow-own, to-o-o-o-o, the…(something something)…?”.  Guess what?  Somebody did!  The answer: The Creeps by Fedde Le Grand.  True story!

It’s all so laughable, but I swear the most difficult things used to be whether there’d be enough copies of the new movie you wanted to rent being at Blockbuster, deciding how early you wanted to line up outside of a Ticketmaster window to try and get the best seats or being rejected by someone one time in real life, instead of multiple times on multiple platforms.

I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering machine and that one answering machine had one cassette tape and that one cassette tape either had a message from a guy or it didn’t.  And now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies.  It’s exhausting.

– Drew Barrymore, He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)

Today it feels like you can’t look anywhere and find just plain simple.  It’s all gotten so complicated.  Women are men and men are women – and apparently men make the best kind of women according to all the women’s awards they’re winning!  Words are violence, everything is racist and if you merely even question anything, you’re labeled some kind of phobic.  Feelings are fact, facts are considered hate speech and now the truth is apparently subjective.  Oh and if you disagree with anything, we’ll just change definitions or rewrite history so that you can’t argue with it, because look, it’s recorded in a book now, so it must be true!  Trust the science, right?

Everything’s been politicized, every form of ad or entertainment has to have some kind of message or agenda sprinkled in (or shoved down our throats) because apparently we’re not smart enough to think for ourselves or make decisions for ourselves anymore.  And the things we keep implementing to try and improve other things (eg. DEI or climate policies) are actually making everything worse!  So many of the issues we face today are manufactured crises!  So do you agree with me?  Can we please go back?

Keeping Up With the Joneses Ingalls

My coworker and I often chat about the state of the world, get ourselves all worked up and then say 3 little words, which are mutually understood: OFF THE GRID!  This is our way of saying the world is crazy and we want no part of it!  I’m ready to go live in the wilderness somewhere without anyone telling me how I should feel, what I’m allowed to say and what I can and can not do.  It seems I’m not the only one who wants no part of this current trajectory either.  She recently told me about a poll the local radio station was doing, asking people whether they’d rather go into the future or back to the past and I blurted out “the past!”, just as she was telling me the results of the poll, which were exactly that.  I followed it up by saying “I’d rather go back to homesteading at this point”.

Ok, so maybe homesteading and living in the wilderness is a stretch for me, but reversing just a little bit would be nice.  Yes, I know people loooove their technology and conveniences, but in my experience, the ‘ease’ of technology and convenience has become more frustrating and inconvenient than not.  (This is coming from a girl who still has a VCR and DVD player hooked up, enjoys basic cable TV, up until a few months ago still burned CDs for her car and is currently typing on an old laptop given to me for free that sometimes the ‘Q’ and ‘?’ don’t work on, so take from it what you will!)

Inconvenient Convenience

Thank the Lord for an employer that provides group benefits, but just the other day I went to submit an insurance claim online, which I’ve done multiple times before, but haven’t done for a couple years and this time, they wouldn’t let me login.  They said I needed to set up an ID, which was separate from any of the login information I was able to use in the past.  Ugh, ok fine.  Typed in a user name and a password and the password again to confirm it, only to be given an error message.  My password was long enough, but it didn’t contain a lowercase letter.  *eye roll*  Try again, with a lowercase letter.  Oh, now it needs a special character!  Alright, throw an exclamation point at the end like we all do – great, they’ve sent me an email with a link to activate my ID, which is only good for 15 minutes.  Log into email, activate account.  Now they need me to add my phone number for double security.  Now they’ve texted me a 6 digit number to confirm.  Did that.  “You’re almost done”, now I have to enter my group benefits password to link myself.  Then to submit my claim I had to search for my healthcare provider by postal code and name and their license number.  Oh. my. gosh.  20 minutes later!!  You know what I used to do?  Write my name on a form, photocopy my receipt and put it in the mail.  30 seconds – done.

What about all the other things that are automated now for our “convenience”?  Many stores have more self-checkout lanes than real ones and if I’m going to do all of the work myself, my prices should be lower since you don’t have to pay for an employee to do this position.  Except that you do, because there’s always a missing code or sale price that didn’t ring up so an employee has to stand by and come help anyway!  We keep taking positions from humans and giving them to robots and then we 1) fear that AI is going to take over the world (yet we keep advancing it) and 2) we have politicians promising to lower the unemployment rate by creating more jobs.  Ok sure, a lot of jobs have been created in the last few years, spawned from our laziness and these jobs are as drivers.

The last time I was with friends who thought it would save us time ordering McDonald’s through Skip the Dishes instead of going down the street to the drive-thru, we ended up waiting 1.5 hours for our order to arrive.  ONE AND A HALF HOURS FOR MCDONALD’S!  Or recently at work, someone thought it would be more convenient to place an order online for some supplies, which is fine, but why so much unnecessary communication when you do that?

2 separate emails confirming they received the order and then telling you it’s out for delivery.  3 separate text messages from the delivery service telling you your package is out for delivery, your driver will drop the item off rather than hand it to you and that your package will arrive shortly.  1 phone call from the driver confirming he’s at the right building and then 2 follow-up text messages telling you your package was left in a safe location and to state it was delivered.  That’s EIGHT times we were contacted, 6 of which were within a 20 minute span, all to get some paper towel and WD-40.  Maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon now, but do you know what would have been just as fast and less annoying?  Driving 10 minutes down the street and popping into the store for 5 minutes.  Although now when you make an in-store purchase, they all innocently ask you for your email address and then start spamming you with their promotions.

I know you probably think I’m overreacting or being a “boomer”, but it’s just too many things and too much contact.  Nobody outside of my friends and family need this much access (or surveillance) into my life!

Click Here to Unsubscribe

Remember when we all got cell phones but they were for emergency use only?  Or a time before social media when you actually had to speak to people to get updates about their lives?  For being so disconnected, we were way more connected!  People had less of anything that we have today, yet they were happier and healthier – that’s probably why!  People knew how to take a joke and brush things off and for everything in the past that is supposedly “so offensive” today, nobody was that offended.  We didn’t hear news 24/7 or on a global scale.  You lived in your own little bubble, building your own little life and you didn’t tell other people how to live theirs because that was none of your business!  People used to exercise critical thought and have a moral compass and convictions and people actually stuck to those convictions instead of being swayed by the fear of being canceled.

Well, I unsubscribe from 2023.  OFF THE GRID!  I don’t want anymore of this nonsense that is stealing the joy out of everything, past and present, and rewriting a history that, if anything, we should keep teaching so we can learn from it, rather than erasing so that we’re doomed to repeat it.  I don’t want virtue-veiled hate or intolerant-tolerance.  Just be the bad guy and own being hateful and intolerant, instead of trying to save face by appearing so virtuous and above reproach – we can see through it anyway!  If 2023 is what progress looks like, I will be a happy homesteader, barefoot (and not pregnant) in the kitchen because I want no part of this dystopian nightmare that “progress” is creating.

This Little Life of Mine

I used to look at people who were content with their small lives and think they were somehow sad or pathetic, had no dreams or were just unmotivated, but they might be onto something!  They don’t need a platform or status because they’re solid and secure and their “simple” lives are just that – simple.  Quiet, smooth, uncomplicated, even keel, peaceful.  Well, I’m craving that kind of simple!  I want to see the return of cheesy and wholesome and hobbies!  (Who has a hobby anymore that’s not just scrolling through social media?!)  I just want my friends, my family, my church and the basics please; food, clothing and shelter.  The simple life.  Who’s with me?