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Hello, and a post mortem

Even beyond the context of the ongoing global pandemic, 2021 felt like a year of personal inflection points that warrant some kind of retrospective review. 2022 was my first full year in ~ career reboot v3 ~, software development. After the better part of a decade being self-employed, 2021 was my first year back having a boss. Having vacation days. Having truly good health insurance. I had two major elective surgeries this year. I can drive at night and throw a frisbee again, maybe even at the same time!

My partner and I moved in together, into a big drafty patchwork of an apartment. We taught our cats how to deal. I spent 3 weeks in France, only my second time in Europe. Espresso was $1, even at the stadiums. My sister moved to Tokyo, and one day I'll be allowed to visit. For a year largely spent in a socially-distanced holding pattern, 2021 was anything but dull. But without a doubt, the biggest life-event of my 2021 was leaving social media. My hope for 2022 is to build and participate in a healthy, fulfilling form of social media on gemini.

brb

I imagine it would be the very definition of 'preaching to the choir' to anyone reading this here on gemini, but my negative feelings RE social media came to a head ~ april. The more time I spent in tech/dev circles, the more grossed out I felt spending time scrolling and swiping. Generating data to be hoovered up and combed over. But mostly, I didn't like the itch that social media scratched for me. Even though I had been telling myself "you can't delete instagram, it's how you stay in touch with friends", the majority of my time surfing-social was accompanied by thoughts of "fuck this person", and "fuck this targeted ad, i'd NEVER buy this". I was conjuring my own little rain cloud of negativity, following me from room to room. Finally, with no fanfare or forethought, I deleted the app from my phone. My goal was two weeks. I knew it would take a week just to shake myself from the almost subconscious instinct to unlock my phone and immediately open instagram every 10 minutes or so. I rearranged the apps on my phone. I downloaded the NYTimes app and committed to reading an article every time I found my thumb hovering over where the app icon used to live. A digital swear jar.

After a month away, I deactivated the account. I spent the rest of 2021 learning how to text my friends more. Sometimes I'd pester my partner for updates from social media. I listened to way more podcasts. And I mourned the death of my digial social life, having slowly evolved from counter-strike IRC channels and niche computer parts forums over two decades ago to blasts of targeted social content and lifestyle products from the same couple of platforms run by the same couple of jerkbag tech companies. And so Social Media, this thing that was a regular and steady part of my life since adolescence, slowly and inevitably came to its ignominious end.

Gollum finds the ring

And then, by chance, I stumbled upon gemini and it struck a chord. It hit me - I had allowed my perception of what social media _was_ to be warped. Social media had become the platform - the likes, the stories, the stream, the hashtags, the marketing, and even the billionaires pulling the strings from above. But that's not what social media really is. Social media is nonspecific. It's not tied to a platform. It doesn't go away when AWS goes down for 3 hours. Social media is

social - people, interacting
media - content, for people

Humbly, I posit that gemini is social media. And it's exactly the kind of social media I'd like to make a regular part of my life.

It's 2022

This year, I'd like to write more. But that's a pretty low bar from where I'm standing. This year I'd like to write _often_. I'd like to share more. I'd like to interact, and create, and learn, and teach. And I think this space, in this place, is a wonderful place to start.