💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › phlog › offline-life.txt captured on 2022-07-16 at 15:57:03.
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Offline life ------------ So, I haven't written anything in quite a long time - probably the longest break in this phlog's history. Tomasino[1] recently wrote about how occasional pauses are inherent to the practice of blogging/phlogging and that people shouldn't waste time apologising for or commenting on these. I think I agree in general, but I'm contradicting this now because the last three weeks haven't just been the usual "I'm still actively interested in maintaining a phlog, I've just been temporarily busy with real life stuff which has kept me away from it". I think it's fair to say that during these weeks I've come to feel more disconnected from and even disinterested in anything to do with computers, the internet or electronics than I can ever recall having been in my adult life. I think probably this is largely attributable to the glorious weather and ridiculously long daylight hours which are already here in Finland. The rapidity of the change in season here is nothing short of astonishign for me, and this is my first time experiencing the summer part of it as a contrast to the recently experienced winter part, as opposed to some strange new novelty that appeared immediately after a long flight and as a backdrop to all the preparation involved in starting up life in a new country. When I'm home from work and dinner is finished and it's *still* bright and warm outside, the idea of going downstairs to a room with tiny windows to write phlog posts or code behind a desk has a very hard time competing against going for a walk or a bike ride, or even just sitting outside and enjoying a beer. We have now received our garden allotment so a lot of our spare time has gone into that. The soil here is a clay type of soil which is totally unfamiliar to us. It is very dry and crumbly and tends to spontaneously clump into small, hard pseudo-rocks. It honestly feels kind of like gardening on the moon. I have also gotten more interested in cycling, or perhaps more specifically I've gotten interested in bicycle mechanics and so I'm riding more as a side-effect of that, and finding that I enjoy it more for it's own sake. I've gotten involved in a few bike projects, one a from-scratch build and one a restoration, both of which I will write about at some time. I've been enjoying and feeling fullfilled by this offline life, and there is a vague temptation to just relegate digital life to colder days, as seems to be SparcIPX's model[2]. But I don't think I really want to do that. I do feel bad about dropping out of the gopher community, and about neglecting my own nascent community at circumlunar.space. I value the community spirit here very much and want to remain a part of it, so I will try to strike a better balance between the two, and will try to do so. That said, it might take a while, because I'm going to be travelling for a good chunk of June. I'm going to Estonia for work early in the month, so after that my wife and I are going to travel down through the Baltic states and then into Belarus before flying back home. I won't be taking my laptop with me after the conference, so I won't be able to phlog from the road, but I will definitely make more of an effort than I have been to keep on top of everybody else's writing. I see that ZLG is back[3], which is absolutely fantastic! [1] gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tomasino/phlog/20180522-move-your-feet [2] gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/sparcipx/phlog/May_2018/05-22-18 [3] gopher://zelibertinegamer.me:70/0/phlog/2018-05-25_2211.txt