How to Have an Analog Summer

A Xennial’s Guide to Pre-Internet Joy

A Xennial reminisces about the before-times

I’ve been trying to name this season for myself—this post-pandemic, second-Trump-administration, middle-age, mid-career, mother-of-a-10-year-old season. It’s a weird time. The news is constantly terrifying, and I’m still feeling the social repercussions of the years we spent hunkered down during Covid, layered with the grief of losing so many immediate family members.

We’ve lived in the Boston area for seven years now, but in many ways, we have very little community to show for it. Maybe that’s just how these middle years feel—I think it is, for many of us. But I also suspect that the global tension of oligarchy, capitalism, and rising fascism is exerting a strong, oppressive influence. In my anxious moments, I worry that the best is behind us, and the future will only grow darker and harder to move through.

But I also suspect that this is the thick of it. And when I look out my solstice window, I see nothing but bright summer light and dark summer greens. I hear birdsong and children playing basketball.

It is a dissonant experience.

Do you have ideas for what to call this era we are in?

What I want from this summer - aside from sudden political relief, world peace, and a functioning social democracy - is simply a feeling of presence. Presence to my life, as it is, and not as I fear it might become.

Old Soul/Modern Heart

My brand, if you want to call it that, emphasizes the use of analog tools alongside modern communication. I type on a real vintage typewriter, shoot photographs on film, and write all my poems by hand in physical notebooks. I cut photos and quotes out of magazines and glue them to poster board. I draw with charcoal. I walk through the woods and by the lake. I am, in many ways, a fan of the “real world.”

But I also post on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, Substack, Bluesky, and run three different online businesses. I’m completely addicted to my phone and watch endless hours of TV (I’m especially fond of British crime dramas and skill-based reality shows). I am a product of my time—born in 1981, right on the cusp of Gen X and Millennial. I feel an aching nostalgia for a pre-internet, or at least pre-smartphone, era, but I also balk when someone calls without texting first.

photos of my process by Gina Brocker Photography

Reclaiming the analog world without regressing

I crave the freedom of a summer night catching fireflies and playing Ghost in the Graveyard. I want so badly to float on my back in the public pool while we wait for fireworks to begin. I want to be bored and thirsty, surrounded by people who know how to make games from toothpicks, who remember reading shampoo bottles and cereal boxes instead of endlessly scrolling their phones.

I know that kind of backward longing can be dangerous—so much has progressed and improved for many people over the past forty years. But as the future looms, filled with never-ending video ads and AI-generated art, I can’t help but wonder what’s still worth hanging on to.

So here’s a list of little analog rebellions. A way to reclaim a slower summer.

photos found on Pinterest

Analog Summer Nostalgia List

*with a huge hat/tip to

Brittany's Notebook

for the idea!

• Collect shells and display them on your windowsills

• Make lemonade from scratch

• Grow basil and add it to everything!

• Drive with the windows down and listen to a mix of your favorite adolescent songs

• Have a water fight, jump through a sprinkler, make rainbows with the hose

• Read in a hammock

• Go camping

• Make s’mores

• Have a BBQ party

• Road trip to see family

• Outdoor movie night

• Go to a baseball game and eat red licorice ropes and hot dogs

• Make popcorn and watch movies you loved in your PJ’s:

  • Empire Records

  • Clueless

  • Before Sunrise

  • Amélie

• Go berry picking

• Eat corn on the cob straight off the grill

• Visit a state fair, renaissance fair, street fair, or art fair

• Pack picnics

• Paint en plein air

• Write poetry in a beautiful spot

• Take photos on film

• Collage with scissors and glue sticks

What are some of your favorite throwback summer activities? Keep the list going in the comments!

May this be a season of choosing beauty, boredom, and presence over panic. A season to remember that rest is not a retreat from justice, but a resource for it. May we never forget that joy is an act of resistance, and that tending to our own aliveness makes us more capable of doing the long, slow work of repair and change.

If you enjoy these letters, please do hit the share button! It’s so helpful for me to find new readers.

And if you’re longing for a little structure for your creativity this season, Chapbook Summer starts soon. It’s a five-week journey to help you shape your poems into a small, submission-ready manuscript. We begin July 7th and doors are closing this week!

It’s the kind of work that’s meant to be done barefoot, with ink on your fingers and a glass of lemonade nearby.

Let’s make summer feel long and languid again.

xo,
Alix

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