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Reverting Back to a Simpler Time

Every since the world started shutting down when COVID-19 hit I've been finding myself reverting back to simpler things. With the constant firehose of information from the news channels, social feeds, and just general information overload I've been burning out on almost a weekly basis. It sucks and I am tired. I recognize that my personal issues with all of this pales in comparison with what other people are going through in this world. However, if I am not operating at a healthy mental level then not only can I not help myself, but I cannot help others. At the end of day all that really matters is being happy and trying to help others as we spin around this ball of water and rock to make a life worth living with the time we have.

My approach to fixing this for myself is essentially reverting everything I do to simpler versions to reduce the cognitive load and allow my brain to recover.

  1. Leaving social media, except Instagram (I interact with my powerlifting coach there)
  2. Reducing my public profile on GitHub/Gitlab and moving to sourcehut
  3. Leaving most Slack groups I am in
  4. Leaving my computer off outside of 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM EST
  5. Catching up on news a few times a week to still be a well informed citizen
  6. Read non-technical books for pleasure
  7. Spend more time with human beings in person

Social media like Twitter and LinkedIn have been great for so long, but now they have just become overly political streams of consciousness that is just overwhelming. The software we all write has direct political impact and we need to recognize that, but Twitter swings to the extremes a lot and I find it hard to follow so it is personally best for me to remove myself from it. LinkedIn generally doesn't suffer from too much politics, but it does suffer from overly marketed and fake bullshit that just gets on my nerves. The "visionaries", "thought leaders", and "startup hustlers" are far too common now and it is best we agree to disagree and part ways. These anti-social media platforms have now done more harm than good and they are not worth it anymore.

GitHub/Gitlab provide a great platform for code sharing and fostering the open source idea. There was a time in my life where I wanted to contribute to open source as much as possible, but as time went on and I starting having more important things in my life outside of coding I realized a commitment to open source would eat into the rest of my life. This prompted me to start archiving and moving my public repos. I will still hack around on things when I feel like it, but I will not advertise I am doing so as much anymore so I can keep them personal.

I know I have a big dependency on Google for my phone, email, etc. so this will come off a hypocritical, but I also feel like I need to move to more ethical software choices from here on out. Someday I hope to look back on my software choices and my uses for them and be happy not regret supporting ones that were involved in questionable ethical and political practices. So far I am happy with my choices of Linux for my daily operating system, Signal for messaging, and now sourcehut for source control. Everything else is pure fluff that I haven't gotten value out of in a long time so it is time to remove it.

This isn't a goodbye, but is it is me reverting back to simpler times. Email me, call me, text me, and read this blog (text only with no tracking) for tech things I experiment with. Any code worth sharing will end up on sourcehut, but I make not promises to accept patches or support bug fixes in any way if you choose to use it.

Talk to you later.