Frustration doing its thing
I started systematically retrieving my life from Big Tech earlier this year (using this very helpful guide to start). And the farther I went, the farther I wanted to go.
Of course, lots of people don't unhitch themselves from the tech giants, because it's hard. Or if not "hard," temporarily disruptive. There are new things to learn and new habits to build. It can be exhilarating, but it's tough sometimes too.
Today has been a lot of the latter. I've been struggling with flashing a new OS to my spare phone, only to realize that while I had the right make for what I was trying to do, I didn't have the right model. SO that was my entire morning plan disrupted.
Next I went around in circles about how to blog? where to blog? to what extent do I want my blog and social Web presence to be the same thing?
...Because fam, I did the whole "make a living as a writer by hustling up a growth-at-all-costs list of followers online" thing. I did it for nearly ten years. And I'm done. It sucked. It made me hate the Internet - the same Internet I adored as a kid.
Part (okay, most) of the reason I'm here now is because I went looking for the things I remembered loving about the Internet. And lo, I found them. They're still here. You're all still here, and I am so glad to be here too.
My Big Professional Blog rarely gets updated anymore. But it still hosts stuff I occasionally need, like my portfolio page. So I fussed for a good long while this morning over whether to host my own site, keep this blog, have an outfit like nearlyfreespeech.net host me, on and on....
Finally I decided that if my goal was to simplify and de-frustrate my online life, I'd better keep this simple too. My portfolio is now a single page of static HTML hosted on Neocities. I'm still deciding whether to spring for a paid account here; if I do, I'll probably move it here too.
Tl;dr I started feeling better when I decided to Keep This Simple. It's helping.