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.

No longer having access to social media or the news, my world has become both smaller and more detailed. Sometimes I overhear conversations about backstops or fake news, but I understand little of it, and it feels abstract and remote when there are so many concrete things in front of me every day: fishing for pike, making cider, planting trees, carving spoons and a hundred other things modernity had once done for me. Some suggest that this approach is selfish, that I’m turning my back on global problems, and perhaps they’re right. But I’m not sure a tweet from me about Brexit would help the world more than rolling my sleeves up and doing something that’s useful here and now.

Not everything has been easy, far from it. With no phone, there’s no more calling family and friends, no text message to meet a mate at the pub. Washing crouched in an aluminium tub with a jug of water is as unromantic as it sounds. But I’ve learned that this way of life has its own pattern, with old, forgotten solutions. I now write letters to those I love, a process that requires an entirely different quality of language and thought. Instead of getting endless emails, messages and calls, I receive one or two letters a day, and these matter to me. Eventually I built an outdoor hot tub, and soaking under the stars with a glass of homemade blackberry wine is as romantic as it sounds.

Speaking of romance, after two years of living this way with my partner, we broke up. It would be too simplistic to put it all down to the lifestyle, though it certainly played a part. The heartbreak led me to ask some uncomfortable questions about what I was sacrificing. But I can’t pretend to be anyone except myself; I wouldn’t be happy. I’ve since met someone else, and that has been beautiful. If you remain honest, things work out as they need to, hard as it can feel. People ask if I get lonely, but I’m more sociable with my neighbours since giving up social media, and I’ve come to value quiet time with landscape and wildlife. This, among much else, I hadn’t anticipated.

When you say no to one thing, you say yes to another. Take music. The day I rejected the immortalising world of television, radio and the internet, it was as if all the world-famous artists I loved died at once. No more Bowie or Joni Mitchell. There’s a strange sadness about that, but quitting recorded music prompted me to start going to live trad sessions, and I love that now. I’m even learning to play (badly) myself.

Having no clock, my relationship with time has changed dramatically. In one way, things do take longer. There is no electric kettle to make my tea in three minutes, no supermarket to pop into for bread and pizza. But here’s the odd bit: I find myself with more time. Writing with a pencil, I can’t get distracted by clickbait or adverts. Things have a relaxed pace, with no stress. There’s more diversity, less repetition. You feel in tune, not only with seasonal rhythms, but your own body’s rhythm, too. I’ve never slept better. If I want to drop everything and go hiking, I can. It has taught me to “be here now”. Mindfulness is no longer a spiritual luxury, but an economic necessity. While this may not be the most profitable career path, it’s good for my personal bottom line: happiness.

I’ve lived with tech and without, and I know which one brings me most peace and contentment. The US environmentalist Aldo Leopold once said that “we all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness”. It’s all too easy to live a long time without ever having felt fully alive. In the unceasing trade-off between feeling that way and comfort, for most of my life I was failing to find the right balance. Now I want to feel all the emotions and elements in their entirety. The rain, the joy, the wonder – all of it.

This way of life may not be for everyone, but it is for me. I don’t know much, but I do know that.

• The Way Home: Tales From A Life Without Technology by Mark Boyle is published by Oneworld.