Illness
I’ve been away for a while. I had kind of a rough year. I got sick for a while. I’m better now. But the world is pretty crazy (USA).
As I’ve been recovering, I’m trying to rebuild my habits, and my digital minimalist habits. Being sick meant that a lot of that went out the window. Eventually, I could only lay in bed unwell for so long before the siren song of algorithmic feeds got the better of me. I had to scroll through some suffering.
I had been pretty close to buying a minimalist smart phone. But I put it off. Then I found that having a smartphone was extremely useful when I was in the hospital for a few days. It would have been harder to manage my situation without one.
Similarly, I was very close to deleting my Amazon account, and then a need to quickly get some meds delivered really was extremely useful.
I think ultimately - I would have made it through this situation with out these things. But it would have been legitimately more stressful to do so. Society has changed to the point where, it’s no longer just about your personal decision, but there is a social assumption or expectation that you have access to these technologies and services. Which is a bummer.
I’m not totally giving up on a minimalist phone, or disconnecting from services that I don’t feel morally comfortable using, like Amazon. But there are also legitimate pragmatic reasons why doing so is a challenge, I have to admit.
Now, I need to level-set with myself about giving up Reddit again. Let’s begin again…