I’m wearing a sly smirk as I open my laptop, giddy with the satisfaction of my secret.
On the outside, I’m 33 years old with a MacBook Pro in my LA living room, but on the inside I’m 14, booting up the clunky desktop in my parents’ basement.
While Nespresso-brewed coffee with warm, fluffy foam has replaced my stack of diet coke cans and a slice of fresh sourdough with natural peanut butter stands in for my bag of bulk candy, my plans for the morning remain unchanged:
Time spent in an online universe I’m building, just for me.
One tap to open my Notion, another to start a new note. My mission is a few chapters of the romance novel I concepted in a voice note to a friend, a few hours earlier (a modern-day-Cinderella-meets-celebrity-trope set in Manhattan).
To be clear, I have no intention of publishing a romance novel.
I’m just writing, or designing, or mood-boarding, or, or, or. Something creative and digital, daily. No rules, as long as it’s inconsequential.
This practice is new for me, and yet… it isn’t.
It’s a hobby that shaped who I am, but “who I am” abandoned it, ‘til recently.
When I descaled my creative agency in 2022, I promised myself I wouldn’t let my inner people pleaser burn me out all the way to the ground again, and I’ve made good on it. I’ve been intentionally building a business that gives me total time freedom, with full autonomy over the hours I work, plenty of space to call friends, read magazines, take long, leisurely lunches. Sometimes I fire up the BBQ midday just because it makes me feel alive.
I follow what feels fun as a rule, but still, something was missing.
Gaps in my day where I felt restless with the desire to be DOING, but guarded by the wherewithal to know “working” couldn’t be the answer.
I was craving a feel-good task to scratch the itch to output without the pressure to monetize it, a creative hobby portable enough for an airplane, quiet enough for a coffee shop.
Enter:
Digital Puttering.
An homage to when my only pass times were Tumblr collages, bedazzled Piczo sites, and 100 page MS Word .docs filled with catty private school plots, Digital Puttering is a term I’m defining by pursuing creative endeavours, on the internet, for no direct social or financial gain.
I’ve been using it to make my life cuter (aesthetic monthly wallpapers, decorated Notion dashboards, elaborate outfit plans) but there’s crossover with work, too.
The Canva template I fucked around with last week may eventually be used for an Instagram graphic carousel, the think-piece I scribbled while sipping wine on a patio may morph into a Substack, at some point.
With Digital Puttering, it’s not about avoiding an outcome, it’s about ignoring the potential of an outcome, all together. Whether those two chapters become a best seller or if the story ends right there, the question of what will become of each creation simply does not enter the chat.
We spend so much time caring, creatively.
Digital Puttering is a massage for your brain in the form of not.
It’s a fulfilling pursuit in it’s own right, but it’s also a return to a time when we were in no rush to log off, before we bragged about leaving our computer at home when we travel, how long we can go without opening it, how quickly we can slam it shut.
I got my first laptop in 9th grade, and it became an extremity, a companion. There was seldom schoolwork in my saved files, just folders on folders of fashion blog screenshots, current moods, colour palettes. An online oasis no one else could infiltrate unless I sent them the link on MSN messenger, self-discovery in the form of scouring Limewire for lyrics that summed my angst just so.
When we couldn’t measure our value in the currency of views, technology wasn’t a burden, it was a playground.
Digital Puttering is a reclaiming of that.
this is ME. Also, Piczo - I must have made HUNDREDS of those back in the day and I loved it so so so much.
This feels so aligned. Digital puttering is basically the intention behind and the reason I started my Substack, Off Season (to create just for the joy of it and play in the margins of motherhood while on maternity leave). Now I have a name for it, sweet! And side note: all of the old school references you mentioned hit me with a wave of nostalgia —MSN messenger, MySpace, SIMS! Those were the days!