Welcome to the Offline, Online Podcast

A quick note before we begin.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided to record this podcast at the beach.

The idea being it would bring a soothing and calm vibe to the introductory episode of this podcast.

However, the result was merely a bunch of wind noise, exaggerated noise cancellation affecting my vocals at times, and unfortunately for me, some occasional heavy breathing because of walking through the sand for quite a few minutes.

For this, I apologize, but hopefully it’s still a good episode to listen to and you enjoy it.

Hello, this is the Offline Online Podcast.

My name is Andrew and I am recording this from my local beach.

I will try and keep a photo in the description.

Pretty lucky to be able to live in such a beautiful country.

I figured doing this on the beach would actually be a good way to start the podcast, given it’s about mixing your offline life and your online life and finding the balance between the two.

Specifically, what I’ve been doing in regards to finding the balance.

So, hopefully, this is a bit calming, although I am recording this on the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which has excellent noise cancellation.

So, I’m not entirely sure how much of this water that’s splashing next to me is actually going to come through, if any.

But, we’ll move forward.

So, another middle-aged dude doing a podcast, just what the world needs.

Well, fair enough, but I’m really doing this to push my own limits and comfort.

But, what is this podcast about?

Specifically, around intentional living.

Some people call it digital minimalism.

Some people have different devices they try and use to be more productive or reduce distractions in their life.

Some people have issues with social media.

I’m not immune, as most people are.

So, this podcast, I intend to go through my journey.

And, one thing to be very clear at the start is that this is a journey, and I don’t think the journey ever ends.

I think your needs, as you get older, for everything really, change.

And, the needs of your digital requirements change along with it.

So, I believe that this is a constant thing.

And, there’s no end goal.

It’s just what’s right for you now.

And, what’s right for me now is walking along this beach.

It’s a very nice thing to be able to do.

So, the intention is, every month, I will go over a specific topic around digital living and how I am tackling challenges, how I’m using technology to improve my life, how I’m using technology to even avoid distractions sometimes, and maybe some tips and tricks that might be able to help those of you who are listening go through their journey.

Again, there’s no right or wrong here.

It’s just what I’m doing, what works for me, and maybe some of the stuff that I bring up will work for you too.

So, to start this one, I thought I’d just go over a little bit about myself as a person, who I am, my background in technology, all that kind of stuff.

So, as a middle-aged, well, 42, father of two, married, kind of stereotypical middle class, very lucky person.

I work in technology.

I am a process manager within the IT service management space.

I’m not technical, but the main thing I do, it’s a really hard area to describe, but the main thing I’m kind of specialized in is major incident management.

So, when shit hits the fan and there’s a big technology outage, that’s where I will step in with technical teams and help manage a major incident to the end, work with stakeholders to get comms out, all that kind of stuff.

Weirdly, I enjoy it.

Some people think it’s high pressure, but compared to other work, I don’t mind it at all.

But I’ve been working with technology since I was under 10 years old.

The earliest memories I’ve been engaged with technology was I have two sisters that are a generation older than me, and one of them, their now husband, used to come over after university with a couple of boxes of 286 computers, and he’d get me to take them apart, put new RAM in it, all that kind of stuff.

And this is back when anti-static straps were necessary because parts back then were extremely susceptible to damage from static, unlike now where it’s really optional.

And also when cases weren’t user-friendly, so they didn’t have nice rolled edges.

So generally, when you finished working on the computer, your hands would be full of Band-Aids with small cuts here and there.

But I didn’t mind.

I kind of loved it.

And I’ve kind of just gone from there.

I still consider myself a technology optimist.

Sorry, I’ve had to stop and look at a quite nice sandcastle that’s here.

Let me take a photo of that.

Now, I wonder who did that?

Anyway, where was I?

Yeah, I consider myself a technology optimist in reality.

So what does that mean?

I generally find or consider technology to be positive overall.

Now, I know that’s difficult given the current climate in, let’s say, the last decade or so and what’s going on in the world.

But I do think overall it’s a net positive, and I still do, even though I’m very honest about the pitfalls of digital technology.

But I also remember in my younger days in my family who are Indian descent, my parents immigrated from India to Australia.

I remember them trying to call home, call their relatives who are still in India.

First of all, you couldn’t just pick up the phone and call.

You had to do international calling card from the newsagent.

And it was really expensive.

And then, because not all people in India had a phone to their home, you’d sometimes have to organize that beforehand, maybe through post, maybe through email.

And so you’d organize that, and then you’d organize time to make the call, and then you’d make the call.

And then the call was probably around five minutes because it was expensive.

You didn’t have long.

And at least the infrastructure in India for telephone wasn’t particularly high quality, so there was a lot of static.

So you’d be shouting and trying to hear each other.

So you didn’t really have much of a conversation.

It was more of a catch up what you’re doing, get as much information as you can out of the way in those five to ten minutes that you had from your calling card credit.

And then that was it.

That was it.

And these days, my wife is from the UK.

She migrated here for us.

And her mom and family are still in the UK, but they video call every day.

And that is where technology has played a really important role.

Morning.

Yeah, technology has played an important role in how we live today.

My kids growing up got to video call their Nana from the UK every day.

So when they did have the opportunity to come and visit, they didn’t spend their first two weeks getting to know their grandkids.

They already had a relationship, and they just got straight into enjoying the moment.

That was really important in this, especially if you’re separated in distance like we are.

So there’s definitely benefits.

But I’m not ignorant of the pitfalls either.

Social media, yes, there’s some benefits, but also could be argued it’s a kind of a net negative in the world, especially in recent times.

But I said overall, I feel I’m a technology optimist.

However, like many people, over the past few years, I’ve been on a personal journey, a journey to be more aware and in the moment and to not live through the screen, despite my general positivity around technology.

So over those past few years, I’ve gone through, I said, journey to look at what I’m using, how I’m using things, look at different devices, change my habits, work on what works for me and what doesn’t.

And again, it’s journey.

It’s constantly evolving and still is.

So this podcast will hopefully go through that and provide a bit of a guide and some assistance for you if you’re listening.

At the minimum, it’ll push me out of my comfort zone to do this podcast and hopefully not edit it too much and be a bit more real.

That sounds corny, doesn’t it?

Everyone says that they want to be real, but then you end up with podcast tropes.

Now I’m just blabbering on.

All right.

So I’ll put a link to the show page in the description, which will then have a contact link.

If you have any questions or comments, I’d highly encourage you to follow that and subscribe to the podcast wherever you can.

I don’t actually know how it’s going to work, really.

I’ve set up a podcast page with my blog hosting, so we’ll see how it goes.

But in the meantime, I’m going to stop, take another picture, so hopefully you can enjoy this view as much as I am.

Time to get offline.

We’ll see you in the next episode.