After two years off-grid, I'm embracing daily letters, good sleep and my DIY hot tub | Mark Boyle

This is what I've learned from living without email, electricity, or a phone"

It was almost midnight when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be for ever. I had spent the summer of 2016 hand-building a straw bale home on a half-wild smallholding in County Galway, Ireland, and the following morning I intended to begin a new life without modern technology. There would be no running water, no clock, no fossil fuels, no electricity or any of the things it powers; no internet, phone, washing machine, lightbulbs or radio. I had no idea if unplugging myself from the industrial world would mean I'd lose all touch with reality, or finally discover it.

I'm reluctant to write much about the big-picture reasons why I decided to reject tech. We know them too well already, and it's not for want of information that we continue down the road we're on. But, over time, I found my reasons slowly changed. Now they've less to do with saving the world, and much more to do with savouring the world. The world needs savouring.