Here's to An Analog 2026

Almost by definition this blog/newsletter/self-imposed prison has been about grappling with an internet environment that is no longer working for me. It started last year around this time with a post I made on threads, which is here for posterity:

You never know how something like this will do when put out there. On the one hand it seems so easy. Just one day a week without Phone? Without Podcast? 24 hours without Notifications? It was going to be hard for me personally, but I was ready to be laughed at for proposing something so minor. It went pretty viral both on Threads and Instagram and resonated with a lot of people, which was an indication that this is a bigger problem than most of us probably were admitting to ourselves.

Given the way 2025 shook out, one may humbly call this prophetic. The signals were there, but I don’t know if at the time we knew that social media platforms would absolutely betray every shred of goodwill they built, starting by doing things like donating millions to the current president’s inauguration fund and ending with the wholesale embrace of the technology that will almost inevitably make them useless. In retrospect it should have been obvious. If there’s one thing the tech industry does best, it’s build something nice and then systematically destroy it. Give yourself a pat on the back, Howie.

Today I see a lot of people talking about how to make 2026 more analog and I believe my experience gives me a smidge of head start in the fight against the bowl cut billionaires and their sad little clankers. I would never call myself a nascent guru but if someone else called me that I’d have no choice but say “well I guess I’m a guru now.” It’s a heady responsibility so I will promise you two things right now: yes I may invest in a heavy robe, no there will not be any weird sex stuff.

That’s plenty of intro so let’s talk about some of the things I’ve learned in one year of Log Cabin Sundays (™ ™ ™):

My first Sunday of the year I went on a ranging walkabout for 2 hours. Nobody knew where I was, because all I had on my person was an automatic watch. I kind of wished I’d had a wallet to stop and get a Gatorade but that was a lesson learned. In that time, no app knew how many steps I took or if I’d filled out my exercise rings for that day. In spite of this I still got stronger. No satellite knew where I was, and I wasn’t training any map making models. I like having secrets from Zuck. We should try to have more of those.

Embarking on this journey I had a lot of big ideas. I would get back into knitting and get really good at it. I would beat all the Castlevania games I wasn’t good enough as a kid to finish. I would do so many puzzles. In fact, all I needed was books. Many Sundays this year I would wake up, put on a record, and plan the week’s dinners. Then I’d clean the kitchen to another record and sit down to read. We’d go for a walk usually, or I would go on a long hike. I’d make a more complicated than usual dinner, clean the kitchen again, and then read or watch an old movie. I’m reminded that I spent all of my childhood with roughly these same options available to me and was plenty entertained. How did I get to a point where it wasn’t enough?

I had set the ambitious for me goal to read 40 books, but thanks to many a Log Cabin Sunday resulting in me devouring one cover to cover and maybe even starting a second, I’ve read 56 (hopefully 57 by the time of this reading). I have been a big reader my whole life but hadn’t realized how often I stop reading to look at my phone until it wasn’t an option. I was reading more deliberately and retaining more.

If you’ve been following me on social media you’ve probably watched as we got a record player as a Christmas gift a few years ago for our kids and then I subsequently got completely absorbed in it. I talked about this in a recent post so I won’t belabor it, but as skeptical as I was about the medium, it has been ultimately great for me. Listening to albums start to finish was something that I hadn’t been doing since I was in high school, and more recently most of my listening time has been podcasts. This is no offense to the people I know who make thoughtful, informative podcasts, but most of the ones I was listening to were a complete waste of time. Because I listened primarily while doing other tasks like my job and housework, I couldn’t have something important that I would miss, so I listened to a lot of the chatter type shows. I think this is an ADHD thing, body-doubling. I could focus better if I felt like I had some friends hanging around with my talking about football or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever while we worked.

I know it sounds goofy if you haven’t done it for a while, but the physical act of removing a record (or CD or tape or whatever) from a sleeve and looking at the lyrics while it played genuinely makes a difference. I like that music has become something I sit and focus on and think about in a way I never did before. Even when listening to streaming music on the train or while exercising I listen to albums start to finish in the order the artist intended. I’ll still put on a playlist of feel-good bangers sometimes when I’m sad, but even then it’s as a jumping off point to get back to album listening.

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this on the newsletter/blog/personal prison but the birthday before my last one I had a couple of wake-up calls regarding my physical fitness. I had gained about 35 pounds in the years after leaving field work, and it was taking a toll on my ability to do the things I want to. I was also being prescribed increasingly strong medications to manage my kidney disease and was getting really tired on hikes. Maybe the most distressing thing was going to the rec center with my nieces and nephew and not being able to make it to the top of the climbing wall. This in particular distressed me so much because I was once an OK climber. This won’t mean a lot to most of you, but I was leading 5.10s. You don’t need to know what that means other than it’s a far cry from failing on the pool climbing wall easily ascended by any 9 year old.

I’m not a behavioral scientist, but I do think that discipline is a muscle, and the more you work it the stronger it gets. Even a weekly experiment of leaving the thing I’m perhaps more addicted to than anything else on earth on my night stand for 24 hour works that muscle, and I’m seeing results in my regular life. I’ve lost all 35 of those pounds and am starting to add more weight in muscle. I dropped one whole blood pressure medication, and am taking half of the other. I will even tell myself sometimes if I can put down Phone and take a break from Podcast, then I can do the gym today even if I’m tired or sad or (often) both. And wouldn’t you know it, I feel better having done it.

This last Log Cabin Sunday was so lovely. We went for a walk to our town’s beaver dam and birded. We watched Flight of the Navigator. I listened to Radiohead’s The Bends. On Monday morning I looked at my phone like it was a time bomb. It took me an hour just to open it and start getting caught up on social media, and instantly I was getting my feelings hurt. I’d made a couple of mildly controversial posts on Saturday and woke to people being angry and mean. I know that other people experience many, many times the vitriol I do online (especially if they’re women, marginalized people, and the many intersections within) but I was kind of appalled. Why am I doing this to myself? Even when I go out of my way to try to consider every angle of nuance I can, I’m still misunderstood. And sometimes mocked. Why am I looking at this device?

As the day progressed, I was able to check social media as usual and just roll my eyes at the crappy stuff people say seemingly without thinking about how a real human will read those words. I noticed this more or less as it happened and had a realization that the Monday morning person was the right one. I shouldn’t be desensitized because people shouldn’t treat each other like this. We usually don’t talk to each other like that in person, even when we disagree. If someone does, I would simply leave or disengage. But with Phone, I not only invite it but openly court it.

Where does this leave us all as we stare down the barrel of a 2026 that will almost certainly bring more of the things that have made our lives–perhaps for the first time in my lifetime at least–actively and progressively more hostile? Boy that’s a tough one and I sure do hope you have some ideas in addition to mine, but here are a few I’ve come up with, many of which I’ve talked about this year:

Reconnect with something you loved pre-internet if you’re old like me, or something you once loved doing that didn’t require it. A few years ago I got back into yo-yo, which has been a lot of fun. And I started taking a pottery class, which I liked in high school but only took one semester of because of a bully. There’s a million of these. It could be skateboarding or roller skating or even something that doesn’t involve the word “skate” at all. Pick up your clarinet again. Reacquaint yourself with watercolor. Let yourself be bad at it. This part is key because if you’re like me, you were probably told in high school that if you weren’t the best in your class at the thing, you should probably quit. That voice was wrong; don’t listen to it anymore. Even I, someone demonstrably just a baby beginner at pottery, was able to make a few ceramic pieces that I was proud to give away.

Get comfortable with quiet. I had a realization a few Sundays ago that even records were a distraction sometimes when I needed to be alone with my thoughts. I cooked an elaborate meal with no background music and just focused on making my movements as efficient as I could. I took pleasure in how easily many cooking tasks flowed that I had once struggled with. Sometimes the thoughts aren’t very good ones, which is probably why we drowned them out with podcasts and tunes. Those thoughts, I’m afraid to say, are the ones we need the most to work out.

Participate in real life. This year I joined our library board. We don’t do very much. We meet every couple of months and approve minutes and someone reports on how the library is doing and we review the policies. But it feels good to see the tangible results having such a great library has on my community. I also met with a city council member about ways we could improve ecosystems for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife in my city. Volunteer, form a local working group to daylight your stream, plant some pollinator plants. Be with other people. AI isn’t going to fool you if you aren’t looking at a screen.

Assess all the things that are taking up your time and if they’re still worth it. This year I over-committed to you all. I kept adding new ways I was going to fight the system. A newsletter, a physical zine, stickers, mailing pottery (it’s very expensive to do this whoa). I wrote a book proposal. I wanted to do more with Patreon and Substack. I keep making more videos on Instagram, which by my accounting has resulted somehow in me having fewer followers at the end of 2026 than I did at the beginning. Perhaps I would be in better shape on social media if I had never posted a thing.

I’m going to be more judicious about what I spend my time and energy on this year and I need to be more honest with myself about what being a social media creator is doing to my mental health. Sometimes it feels like I can’t walk away from this platform I’ve built, something that many people dream about having. And there was a period in there where it was just so much fun. I imagine that’s what it feels like sometimes to break up with a long-term relationship; there were good times, but the good times seem fewer and farther apart. One way you can stick around way too long is with the lingering: What if they get good again? The better question sometimes is: What if they don’t? How much longer can you keep this up?

I like you all too much to simply disappear, and I will stick with this weekly (mostly) report and trying to figure out a way to get as many of you as I can into a space where we don’t depend on the increasingly weird, increasingly wealthy, increasingly depraved robber baron class to maintain our friendship. If you’ve got ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Sariah Jane is a grey-haired, feisty, Gen X lesbian grandmother. She has 3 bird feeders, a Kindle, and a library card. Many, many years ago she was a massage therapist in a very fancy spa, which means she has seen Vera Wang, 50 Cent, and Ed McMahon all naked. Sariah Jane lives an easy life in Northern California.

This recipe began as my mother’s plain shortbread recipe, which she would make every year for the holidays. After she passed away in 2006, I continued the tradition, but always made it begrudgingly since I felt it was a little boring.

After a recent Alaska Airlines flight, I was given a chai-spiced cookie as part of my in-flight snack service. After my first bite, I knew exactly what needed to change with my mother’s shortbread recipe. I immediately began working on this revised version.

Notes:

Butter needs to be room temperature, and soft enough to be malleable only with a spatula. I don’t recommend using a stand mixer here, because overworking the butter will create a more dense, chewy shortbread.

Also, if the thought of cookie cutters and a crumbly mess on your counter feels like too much, that’s okay. You can always just press the dough into an 8x8 pan (PYREX is best) and bake for about 35m instead. Keep an eye on the edges; if they start to turn golden brown, take the pan out immediately. Cut them into your desired size right away, while the dough is still hot.

Ingredients:

½ tsp orange zest (optional)

100g (½ cup) granulated sugar, plus a little extra for finishing (see instructions)

225g (1 cup) butter, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 ½ tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

½ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp salt

340g (2 ¾ cup) unbleached all purpose flour

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 325°

In a mixing bowl, add orange zest to granulated sugar.

Using a spatula, press zest against the sugar granules several times to release the oils.

Add butter, vanilla, and all spices. With the spatula, blend well.

Add flour in 3-4 batches, mixing well with the spatula between batches. Be careful not to overwork this step - you want the ingredients to just blend together so there’s no more flour left in the bowl. The dough will be crumbly, similar to clumpy, wet sand.

Using your hands, press and mold the dough into a ball. Place it on a silicone mat (easier) or lightly floured countertop. Press the dough out to ½” thick, using a rolling pin if necessary.

Using a cookie cutter of your choice (I like round), cut the dough and place it on a cookie sheet lined with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Reform the remaining dough and continue until you’ve used all the dough. You could also use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into traditional shortbread rectangles if you prefer.

You may find it necessary to use a thin, metal spatula or a fish turner to lift the shortbread from the counter onto the cookie sheet.

Using a fork, carefully make shallow indentations all over the top of each cookie.

Bake for ~18 minutes. The cookie should still be slightly soft to the touch, and not yet browning on the edges. If the edges begin to brown before 18 minutes, remove immediately.

Sprinkle granulated sugar on top of the cookies while they are still hot. After 5 minutes, transfer to a cooling rack.

Estimated Nutrition Facts based on 20 cookies in a batch:

Calories 164 kcal

Total Fat 9.3 g

Saturated Fat 5.8 g

Carbohydrates 18.3 g

Dietary Fiber 0.6 g

Protein 1.8 g

Sodium 31 mg