Issue #0005 - Celebrate each small you-moment
It has been a while since the last post, and not a single day has passed without me thinking that I wanted to write. But one day you say, "in a moment" or "I'll do it later," and suddenly two weeks have passed again and you didn't write a single word. But hey, here I am actually writing!
The last two weeks I've been absorbed by the project I mentioned in the last post: The Summer of Ownership. I've already explained a couple of times what my whole purpose with it was, and I think that after six weeks of preparation and implementation, I've finally reached the point where it is in a decent state. It's not finished, and it will demand constant monitoring, but that's something I don't mind. I can finally say that I managed to set up my own server at home, self-hosting most of the common apps and services I wanted to have full control of. This "blog" included. Yes, you guessed right; you are reading this from my computer. Or sort of.
I'm not going to go into too many technical details. This is not the place or the time for it. But I'll definitely create a guide for anybody that is interested (for my future self). I'm proud to have finished one of the projects I had in mind during the summer.
Another project I had in mind for this summer was to set up some sort of "photo blog" that motivates me to take more pictures, edit them, and upload them somewhere for people to enjoy them. One thing I've been trying to get rid of over the past months is the amount of social media I got into unwillingly, and this is the first step on that road.
Screw (big-corp) social media
Yup, that's right. I have zero problems saying that, and I feel that with each passing day, I'm one step closer to being able to get rid of actively using them. Of course I'm not deleting all of them. Sometimes they’re the only way to communicate with certain people. Yes, I mean "you", the one that doesn't remember anymore how to make a phone call.
However, my plan is to cut down my usage as much as possible. Do I want to publish my pictures? Fuck Instagram: I'm not going to give them my photos for free. Do I want to write some nonsense like this post? Fuck Facebook: I own my words, and here they cannot be censored. Do I want to communicate with people? Fuck WhatsApp: either a phone call or the app I choose that doesn't read my messages. And the same goes for my email, my documents, and everything else. Full tinfoil hat now!
And this is just an example. In the last six months I've been able to delete WhatsApp, stop using Instagram except for redirecting people to my photo blog, completely stop using Google's suite, detach myself from YouTube, and finally cancel my Spotify subscription after 15 years (!!). And I'm alive, with more time for myself, and I haven't lost any of the perks of those apps; I still listen to music (that I own), talk with people, chat with people, and use and share all the documents just as I was doing before.
Celebrate the small things
For most people these will be just small things, and for others they might even be big inconveniences. But for me it’s a win that happy to celebrate. In fact, I’m so happy that I went out (here) to yell into the void how proud I am. Kudos to me!
And you should celebrate more. It can be just finishing that TV show you had put on hold for days, or listening to that disk you bought months ago. It could be celebrating that you just went out for a walk, or that you printed that old phone photo you never thought you were going to do.
But do it and then celebrate it. And do it without waiting for others to tell you how cool is that. Feel proud of yourself for doing one small thing for yourself and to yourself.