Megan Hobby-Kauffman
Artist, maker, and professional joy-bringer. From my North Carolina studio, Mayhen Press, I whip up colorful, story-filled designs that make everyday life a little brighter (and a lot more fun).
There seems to be such a feeling of excitement with this new year! Everyone is ready to take control and start living with intentionality even as the world goes crazy around us. I’m aching to grasp my daily existence better. I want to remember my life and it seems that all too often the days fly by in a blur and I can barely remember what I did in a week. I believe that at least some of the remedy to this is to get things tangible again.
Something that we all seem to be craving more this year than ever is a return to analog. That sweet feeling of tangibility. There is something about preserving our thoughts, memories and ideas in a tangible form…preserving our past and present for the future in a way that helps us slow down a bit more and grasp what’s going on around us. Sketchbooks, photo albums you can hold, journals, library cards, letters, recipe cards and planners all take the place of apps, google and email. Maybe those of us that are craving all of this are old-fashioned…or maybe we are visionaries for the future. Either way, taking back our time, our memories and our dreams of the future might just help us remember our lives a little bit better and connect with those around us in a more personal way. What if we focused on creating meaningful, tangible relationships with those around us rather than valuing having all of our days in a form that is readily shareable with the world at large?
Since running a business in the real world does require me to be online and have a certain amount of what I do be available online and on my devices, I’ve been thinking through how to make this return to analog practical for myself. I’m sure many of you face the same dilemma so I thought I’d make a list of 5 practical little things that can help me (and you!) go less digital this year.
5 Ways to Get Things Tangible in Your Daily Life
- Print at least some of your personal photos out into photo packs or photo books. I’ve been using Chatbooks to print some of mine out. My kids have loved being able to grab photos to look at whenever they want to! If you have the time you could take up scrapbooking or photo journaling and make beautiful memory books yourself!
- Start a habit of quiet time. Get a real notebook and set aside a few minutes every day (even just 10 if that’s all you have!) to journal, reflect, dream and plan. I love doing this to help myself still feel like an individual in the midst of all the demands of life.
- Write out some of the recipes that you make a lot onto recipe cards (or our recipe book !) so you aren’t cooking from your phone all the time! This is one that I’m really excited to do because almost every evening I find myself cooking with a bunch of ads popping up on my phone as I try to follow recipe directions online. I love leafing through my recipe box to find a stained recipe card and following the familiar directions to make dinner for my family.
- Start a letter writing habit. Email is inevitable for some things but what if you make time, maybe once a week, to write a letter? Maybe you have someone you know is lonely that you could write to each week. Or maybe you have four different people that you write to once a month. You can take a pledge to join a little army of devoted letter writers at The Sunday Letter Project and if you don’t have anyone to write to you can find a pen pal through them as well! Even just a small note counts, you don’t have to write a lengthy letter every time.
- Try using a planner. This is going to be an interesting one for me since my organization skills can get a bit jumbled and I sometimes need my phone to alert me about appointments. I am going to try it and do my best to build a habit of checking my planner daily.
I’m really looking forward to taking some practical action toward balancing out my digital life with more analog activities and seeing how that helps me give myself permission to just be me, without any reference to whether or not something is share-worthy. I hope that you find a little inspiration to try a couple things this year that help you live a little less in the digital realm.
In the spirit of our lives very much being a balancing act of analog tangibility and being a part of the online community that allows us to connect easier and get to know people that we may not meet otherwise - share what you are doing to go more analog this year either in the comments here or tag
@mayhen_press
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from Mayhen Press and you can reply directly to emails from us! I’m looking forward to hearing what you will try this year! Happy 2026!
