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Gemini, day 3

The effects of de-webbing my brain have been faster than I expected. Already I'm finding myself spending much more time at a framebuffer console, since a graphical X11/Wayland desktop is of little use for writing prose or code. I've set IRC to `+g` and asked some friends on XMPP to email me instead, zapping away instant messaging zombie mode. These are changes I could get used to, and I really hope I do.

Unfortunately, the urge to check my email every few moments is still there, but it's a little easier each day to ignore. I don't think I had ever noticed just how pervasive those thoughts are. Of course, mutt is still a better boogeyman to fight than any subreddit ending in the substring "memes". The fact remains that incoming email is bounded, content crawling around on the web effectively is not.

Instead of fighting my brain too much early on, I'm allowing myself synchronization points, where I open all my inboxes and social platforms at once, read and reply to everything in one go, and then close everything to disconnect again. This all happens online, and there is a looming threat of clicking a link that leads to another link and waking up from the Internet trance an hour later. Eventually I would enjoy going "offline-first" like solderpunk has gemlogged about, but for now, these changes alone have freed up tremendous time and cognitive resources.

Progress towards "offline first"

I'm well-aware that changing a brain is possible. I'm also well-aware that neuroplasticity takes place on the scale of weeks or months, rather than days. In other words, for now I'm running new software on my old hardware. I'm okay with a placebo for a few weeks if that's what it takes to kick the habit for good.

And what a placebo it is. To be clear, a narrow focus on freeing up time and cognitive resources can be problematic, as those are proxies for measuring a person's productivity. The notion that every human's goal is to maximize their personal productivity is a lie sold to us to exploit our labour for profit. There is nothing wrong with being unproductive and spending -- not wasting -- time in service of happiness. There's nothing wrong with resting the mind for its own sake.

For years I thought that was what I was doing lurking the web.

I was wrong.

I have been happier these past few days than I have been in months. I had resigned myself to the pandemic blues. Gemini was a beacon. No, I am not happier for time spent reading gemlogs instead, although I do find the content on CAPCOM far more edifying than the garbage I used to frequent. Rather my journey into space has been releasing me from pointless online chains I had not realized were binding me. I'm spending more time outside, and more of my computer-facing time offline with uninterrupted read-only or write-only pipelines.

I used to think if I was enjoying something, I should pass a link to a friend so they could enjoy it too. Little did I realize that forced me to cease my enjoyment to instead open up Dino or Signal, and check my email and scroll their spam while at it.

If my goal is to maximize my friends' happiness, perhaps the kindest is to avoid interrupting them when we are not actively engaging, and bringing my whole self without anyone else in another window when we are.

It feels so obvious when I put it this way. And yet the web is specifically designed against this.

Instant gratification is zero gratification. I don't need my senses saturated to remember what it means to be happy.

I do hope the public accountability of a daily gemlog will make this change persistent. I never want to go back to being a web zombie. And if this does persist once the novelty wears off, I owe Geminispace a deep gratitude.