Our guide to analog fall

Nothing is real anymore. Our money is in Apple Pay and our textbooks are online PDFs and our music comes from Bluetooth connections with AirPod Pros. 

As the weather gets cooler and there are fewer outdoor activities available, we have to get more creative with how to reconnect with our humanity to resist the doomscrolling urge.

So we propose a return to “analog” fall: using physical media, working with your hands and exploring nature. 

Break out the moka pot

A Nespresso machine goes for $109. A Breville Barista Express dares to cost $699. Since when did a simple latte get so expensive to make at home? 

For those of us who love to indulge in the occasional pumpkin spice latte but can’t find it in them to spend $7 on a Starbucks drink or $700 on an espresso machine, the solution is found in the spirit of analog fall: a moka pot!

The moka pot is a stovetop espresso maker that whistles the tune of analog fall as it percolates. The coffee brews slower, sure, but that might just be an object lesson that we need in our instant gratification world. My moka pot cost $20 and saved me a lifetime of autumnal whimsy. To up the analog, I recommend serving your PSL in a mason jar with ice from an ice cube tray.

Bring a deck of cards everywhere with you

Do you ever look up from your phone while waiting for your food at a restaurant and realize your friends around the table are all doomscrolling too? It’s a dystopian sight. 

We all hate waiting, whether it’s for your roommate to get out of the shower, for your Royal Grounds order to be ready or for your professor to start class. But instead of pulling out your phone during these in-between moments, imagine how fun it would be if you whipped out a deck of cards and made everyone play a game with you.

Almost everyone knows a few card games, and most people have a good story of how they learned to play, too. Nothing is more analog than the sound of shuffling and slapping cards down on the table, hopefully mixed with the sound of laughter and chatting too. 

For this reason, I carry around a pack of State Farm-branded cards in my purse everywhere I go, along with a Calico Critter named Francesca and my Nikon Coolpix digital camera. Just a few analog fall essentials. 

Knit your dream fall sweater

Sometimes I find myself anxiously checking Instagram in between chunks of procrastinated homework. If you’re anything like me, you need little breaks between assignments. But the number of sweet treats to be consumed, cups of coffee to be brewed and hot girl walks to be taken are limited. And doing things with your physical body is important, especially when you’ve been only exercising your mind for so long.

This past winter, I knit my own sweater for the first time. Knitting showed me the hard work it takes to make a piece of clothing. It’s easy to buy from Shein and throw it away in the same month, but knitting this single sweater with my own bare hands took me four months. Knitting has taught me about staying sustainable and ditching microtrends for long-term stuff. 

Plus, it’s so mysterious and analog to say that you’re in the process of knitting a sweater, and it’s an awesome project to pick up and work on for little bits of time. There are free project patterns on Ravelry, endless YouTube tutorials, and free yarn in the Bethel library Makerspace!

No AirPods walks 

The dopamine you’ll get from the sound of leaves and acorns crunching under your shoes as you take a long walk on a fall evening is even better than the rush of someone liking your Instagram story. Going on walks with no AirPods and no distractions is the perfect way to welcome in the new season, especially as the leaves change and the temperatures get cooler. 

You can stroll around a nearby neighborhood and look at the Halloween yard decorations, watch little kids ride their tricycles down the sidewalk and say hi to your neighborhood grandma sitting on her porch. If you walk around on campus, you can watch the squirrels and frisbee golfers frolic around the woods. I know this sounds a lot like Shinrin-Yoku from Introduction to Wellbeing, but I swear it does wonders for your mental state.

Also, the harvest moon falls on Monday, Oct. 6 this year. It could be a great evening to take an extra-long stroll and stare at the moon. Don’t bring your AirPods, but when you get back home, you can listen to the Neil Young song. 

Take notes with a notebook

Someone in front of you in class is always playing some niche version of Candy Crush or designing a Canva graphic for their extracurricular commitment on their computer. Your laptop sends you iMessage notifications every 10 minutes. Every reel, every brightly-colored game, every inflammatory political article you could ever possibly read is all at your fingertips while you take notes on your computer. 

Instead, embrace your human limitations this analog fall and take slow notes with your hands. You don’t need legible handwriting or colorful stationery.Just an 89 cent notebook and a G2 Pilot pen. If you get bored in class you can doodle in the margins instead of playing a thousand rounds of Slither.io. I’m pretty sure they did this on cave walls back before the ills of modern civilization ruined us all.