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This is a little post marking the fact that I’m going to attempt to post more often. I haven’t posted anything in a month.
The long and short of it is that I lost my job and recently found a new one. I can have a kind of one-track mind. Also I crave stability and loathe change. So you can guess that this was a big problem for me. I don’t know how to effectively put it into words. It was bad. And of course, this unmitigated disaster of a year brings its own problems.
There was a nagging voice in my head that would ask me if something was really what I ought to be doing. I was anxious all the time, and I second-guessed myself frequently. Too often, I would lurch from an aescetic productive period to an indulgent slothfulness. I was off balance and I couldn’t find the headspace to spend my free time as I had when things were normal.
I interviewed poorly a few times but finally found success. I mostly have retained the stability I need. There are a few ways that my new job is outright better than my old one. But a different perspective has stayed with me for my non-work life. Some things simply aren’t enjoyable to me anymore.
I’ve become extremely wary of my gadget hobby. My single board computer collection hums along performing their little services on my LAN. But now I look at each box and see that it requires its own SD card, network cable, power cable, case, et cetera and I ask myself if I want them at all. Some gadgets I use just to solve the problems of other gadgets. You don’t need a NAS to be centralized storage if you stick to one computer in the first place.
I used to enjoy ubicomp and the Internet of Things. I have unfinished IoT projects gathering dust. Even if I bought a pre-made solution, that’s another device for which I have to provide a stable internet connection, recharge the batteries or find a power outlet for it, and plan for its eventual failure or obsolescence.
In sort of a reverse trend, I am taking some ethereal bits and turning them into physical clutter. I am buying physical entertainment again. I had subscribed to pretty much every streaming service you had heard of. Yet I rarely enjoyed their offerings. I decided to simply buy my most watched shows and movies on DVD. It’s cheaper than you think. While I don’t enjoy the clutter, you can simply stuff them in a drawer when unused. DVDs don’t care if you have fast Wi-Fi or not. There are no batteries to recharge. I never worry that my DVDs will report my watching habits to some corporation.
A lot of those “exclusive” shows and movies that start life on Netflix or wherever are actually released on DVD too. (Do they have to do this to be eligible for Oscars or Emmys? I don’t know but I appreciate it regardless.) Since I have a library card I can try before I buy. All it costs is the time and the willingness to not have the latest and greatest.
What have I gained? In a word: resilience. This is a way to keep my digital life that doesn’t change with a sharp reduction in income. It doesn’t change if I had to move in with a friend for awhile. I like the gadgets and services, but I _love_ something more: the fact that if I’m faced with big changes, this part of my life will not change.
24 October 2020 by Sardonyx
File under: personal
File under: opinion
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