The Road To Hell Is Paved With Modern Conveniences

When Convenience Becomes Habit

Photo by Negative Space from Pexels

 
When Norbert and I moved to Puerto Rico, we purposefully chose a neighborhood in San Juan that’s close to Norbert’s office. As a plus, this neighborhood happens to be near the beach, several supermarkets, and an array of hipster hangouts (coffee shops, yoga studios, “cake studio,” etc.). We vacillated back and forth on the topic of buying a car; we really didn’t need it on a daily basis, but seeing as Puerto Rico’s public transportation options are on par with Miami’s (e.g. terrible), we figured it would be handy to have a vehicle in order to access the greater San Juan metro area and adventure around the island.
 
We bought the first car we looked at and while it’s taken us on some pretty awesome weekend wanderings, it mostly sat parked on our street, unused. At first. But as the weeks went by, we started to use the car for little trips around the neighborhood that we’d normally make walking or biking. First, it was if the weather was bad. But then, if we needed to pick something up from the office on the weekend or if I plainly didn’t feel like walking to the supermarket, we’d take the car. Over time, it became so much more inconvenient to walk or bike; it was just so much easier to drive. I didn’t really like paying for parking when I went to Norbert’s office by car, but I didn’t give much thought to our shifting habits. Until now.
 
While we were off the island for the holidays, we left our car to some good friends (who I wrote about a few months ago) who were having car trouble. We were planning to be gone for over a month and we knew that using our vehicle would save them a lot of hassle. They live way out in a suburb of San Juan, and although there is a train line that goes out there, it only gets them part of the way home. Plus, they make most of their income by selling plants and fresh juices several days a week on Calle Loiza, in our neighborhood, meaning that a vehicle is crucial to their livelihood.
 
When we got back to the island two weeks ago, though, their car trouble still hadn’t been solved.
 
“Keep the car,” we told them, “until you figure it all out.”
 
They tried fighting us on it, but the truth is, we have little need for our car most of the time. We entered into a car-sharing situation. When we had a doctor’s appointment, we made plans to borrow our car for the afternoon. They work in our neighborhood, so it’s pretty easy to grab the car for a few hours if we really need it. But we’ve rarely used it since we’ve been back.
 
Instead, we’re getting back into the habit of walking and biking around town. I go to Norbert’s office fairly frequently and without the cop-out solution of driving the short distance, I walk the 20 minutes instead. Over the weekend, we did our errands by bike, strapping groceries and other purchases to our baskets. And guess what? It wasn’t super convenient. And that’s okay. We survived.
 
Our car-free situation makes me think about something my father once told me about gun ownership: you can’t shoot someone if you don’t have a gun. In other words, you can’t use something you don’t have. When we had the car at our disposal, it was obviously more likely that we would use it, even for easy errands around our neighborhood. It’s the reason why I resisted getting a smartphone for so long. I knew I was more likely to check my email too often and Google indiscriminately if I had the internet available in the palm of my hand.
 
Yes, it’s inconvenient to be without a car. It requires a bit more planning. Rather than deciding spur of the moment, we have to organize our trips to Home Depot, Costco, or the recycling center. It’s the same thing as living without wi-fi at home. I won’t be able to post this newsletter as soon as I’m done. Instead, I stock up on internet activities – feedback for my writing partners, online forms to be filled out, researching homestead exemptions, posting my newsletter – and I walk to Norbert’s office or the nearest coffee shop with my list of tasks, waiting to be completed.
 
I think that it’s human nature to lean towards convenience, the easy way out. It’s all about preserving energy wherever possible, right? When it’s raining outside and I’ve got to buy groceries for dinner, what am I going to do? Pull out the umbrella or jump into the car?

I like the way writer Tim Wu puts it in his NYT article, "The Tyranny of Convenience": "Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences."
 
People didn’t understand why I’d choose to make my life so difficult without a smartphone and all it’s conveniences: the guidance of Google maps, the ability to read a voicemail (instead of listening to it—so passé) in the visual voicemail app or the ease of scanning a document with a click of a button, constant access to email and social media and the entire world wide web. And yes, it did require me to be more thoughtful and do more planning. Same thing as living without wi-fi at home, or deciding, like my friend Dan, to refrain from taking optional plane rides. I guess you could call that “inconvenient.”

But sometimes inconveniences bring us delight, like splashing in puddles on your way to the grocery store. Or staying home all weekend, enjoying the beach two blocks from our house, instead of driving to a different beach two hours away.

Tip of the Week

How can you make your life just a teensy bit LESS convenient? Hang up your clothes to dry instead of stuffing them into the dryer, or bake your own bread every week instead of buying a loaf at the bakery. It's counter-intuitive, but, "with its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, [convenience] threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life."

Digital Life Around the Web

Thanks to our devices, every space is a super-space, or a non-place. "Until the 20th century, one had to leave the house for almost anything: to work, to eat or shop, to entertain yourself, to see other people. Now home is a prison of convenience that we need special help to escape."

Under California's new Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), we have a right to demand the complete trove of our personal information from companies like Instagram--and demand that they delete said information. 

If you're in the LA area, this coach is leading a 6-week group experiment on using tech with intention. 

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