Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
Started my New Year’s Day hike in the dark with some good people.
There was no sun, but there was lots of spooky fog and a bit of snow. I can’t believe I got to witness this view. There was no snow where we parked our cars, and there was just a dusting as we neared the top. But this sight, of all the snow on the trees… it was magical.
The fog made it extra special, too. A delightfully spooky way to start the new year.
I deleted my Twitter account in June of 2023, but it was harder to let go of Instagram.
Sure, I might miss some things that friends are doing. BUT, who says I have to keep up with everything all the time?
Two people reached out this past weekend to go on some adventures in the woods. This was via my phone number, not a DM.
I talked to a friend today about iced coffee because he sent out a newsletter on the subject.
There will be things I miss. But there will be things that I don’t miss.
I might only have 20 more years on planet earth, if I’m lucky. No one gets out alive.
What if I read a book every week this year?
Or walk 5 miles every day?
And besides – the more time I spend on IG is more value I build for Meta.
Fuck that.
I’ve been thinking of getting a new laptop by the end of the year, sort of for tax reasons, but mostly because I’ve never been in love with my current MacBook Pro from 2020.
That said, I love having a 1TB harddrive. What I don’t love, though, is my Photo’s file over 350GB in size.
The baseline MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip comes with a 512GB HD.
So now I’m dragging my photo file thing over to my 2TB external HD.
I’ve got photos that are 20 years old in the Apple photos app.
From when I moved to NYC. Screen shots from my iPhone 4. Photos from when I biked across most of the US.
So many photos of my life, yet when I pass away this external HD will just get tossed in a dumpster and no one will remember any of it.
Happy New Year!
Great post from Olivia Rafferty about quitting and deleting Spotify:
My final reason was this: I wanted to own my music again. I wanted to press ‘shuffle’ on my entire catalog and have it surprise me with my own taste. Spotify lets you ‘like’ albums, and save songs to playlists, but you’ll never get a full idea of what songs you have in your catalogue. And what if some artists pulled their work from the platform? I constantly reach for Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo and it’s not there. Owning your music means that you will never lose it at the whim of someone else’s business decision. And it will be a catalogue that exists in its entirety. All together, in one place.
She details how she’ll listen to music moving forward, too. Great read.
Read it here: …So I Finally Quit Spotify
Tis the season to hear from almost everybody how frazzled, burnt out, at wits end they are! No energy! No motivation! No drive! Exploited and driven to exhaustion, with no energy to make things better, let alone make dinner tonight.
Sam Altman on burnout:
This quote is the clincher for me:
“Oh, actually when I’m doing this thing that I like and that is working I have a huge amount of energy and I can get a lot of stuff done.”
When I am doing things I loathe, I have zero energy, drive, or ambition.
Takeaway – do more of the things that give you energy.
Be around people that give you energy.
Watch and listen to things that give you energy.
This is a wonderful little bit of Christmas music, and a nice break from my usual holiay listening.
Why is it so hard to quit social media?
“(Social media) platforms are designed to trap viewers in a social media rabbit hole: They offer bite-sized content that makes it easy to quickly consume several videos or posts in a row, they often automatically suggest similar content, and many of them even automatically start playing similar videos, reducing the potential for interruptions.”
More, more, more. Unending more. This from ‘The Psychology of Your Scrolling Addiction,’ via The Trend Report.
Love this by @madebynelson from Instagram.
“Stop shrinking into places you’ve outgrown 🌸✨
It’s important to continue to plant ourselves in bigger pots and new gardens as we continue to grow and evolve.
Enjoy your week! I cannot believe it’s December”
See the full post here.
A wonderful interview with Tina Roth Eisenberg (Swiss Miss), talking about creating and hosting Creative Mornings, and so many other gatherings of people.
“Be really clear why you’re gathering people.”
It also mentions The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker, such a wonderful book and something I’ve been re-reading as I’ve been hosting more Zoom calls.
I mean it – career / work wise I’ve been WAITING. Hoping that someone would come along and just drop the perfect job / gig / NEXT THING in my lap. That’s how I’ve been for many years in my career… fortunate enough that some things led to other things, but in the last decade a lot of that work was work I settled on because I needed the money, which duh – is plenty okay, of course.
But now, lately, in these past two years, I’ve been deliberately carving out something, and in the last few MONTHS I’ve leaned hard into this “why not get together more often with energetic people?” space, and I swear, things are buzzing for me now, and I love it.
