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There was a time—not so long ago—when my phone was prone to overheating due to its sheer volume of apps. There were the usual suspects like Uber and Spotify, of course. (I’m nothing if not a standard-issue boring millennial.) But the ones that took up the most storage and the majority of my mental energy were the extremely chaos-friendly dating apps: Tinder, Lex, Hinge, Feeld, basically anything I felt had even a .01% chance of connecting me to my soulmate...or at least someone I could have a reasonably good time with at a wine bar.
Unfortunately, the good times at wine bars were few and far between, and I spent way too much ordering overpriced sushi or pints of sorrow-drowning Ben Jerry’s straight to my New York apartment when dates went badly. Digital life permeated my every move: I’d scroll Poshmark on the subway on the way to work instead of shopping small, pore over Yelp when I needed to find a restaurant instead of just strolling down the block, and Airbnb my way around the world on trips. At the end of 2021, my phone was definitely the most active thing in my life, constantly lighting up with texted party invites and notifications about a brand-new delivery deal on Postmates and sales on The RealReal that made a $500 pair of Wales Bonner track pants seem almost reasonable. (They weren’t.)
I can’t say that I’ve enacted a spartan no-screen regime over the last few years, but as I head into 2024, I’m feeling a lot more balanced. A long-term relationship has eliminated the need to frantically swipe right or left, and I’m now more into browsing vintage stores IRL and asking friends for recommendations of where to stay than expecting Big Tech to solve every quest for a new pair of jeans or a hotel in Maine. I always expected (hell, dreamed) that my life would get more blissfully boring as I got older, and having turned 30 this past year, I can attest that is indeed the case.
I used to while away my Friday nights on Tinder and let DoorDashed bagels take care of my Saturday mornings, but I now find myself sometimes rising early (barf) and practicing my extremely bad Spanish on my Duolingo app while I make coffee. I use the Libby public-library app to read all the mortifying celebrity memoirs I’d be too ashamed to buy in person, and my Form Swim app comes in handy when I want to log my leisurely lap swims at the indoor pool by my house in Echo Park. In a particularly humiliating or amazing feat (depending on your vantage), I even downloaded a gardening app not too long ago. TBH, it’s a little glitchy, so I can’t recommend it. How did I become this person?
I know there’s nothing shameful about turning into the kind of person who wants to stay on top of their gentle workouts and tomato-weeding responsibilities. (Read: an adult, I guess?) But as I scroll through my phone’s neatly tended rows of sensible, non-messy apps, I can’t help feeling a tiny bit of nostalgia for the way my phone used to look when I was—let’s be honest—more of a hot mess. But if I tell myself I was “so fun back then!” I am ignoring the fact that basically everyone in my life got exhausted by me on a regular basis. Perhaps I’m actually more fun now, in a cozy, hygge-appreciating, contributes-more-than-the-minimum-to-her-retirement-account way? And what if the apps on my phone reflect that? And what if that’s okay?
I shudder to think what apps lie in my future. (Does the AARP have one yet?) But I am really enjoying the thought of actually appreciating and honing my boringness in 2024. Maybe my Gen Z friends will laugh at me, but I’ll be the one laughing when I’m fluent in Spanish/an excellent gardener/a faster swimmer and have read every celebrity memoir currently in print. Maybe I’ll even get that app that (God help me) lets you identify birds this year. Good luck stopping me once I’m an amateur ornithologist, world!
