A Small Web July
I am putting this out into the ether to see if anyone wants to join me, in any capacity, in some kind of accountability structure (following each others blogs about this on RSS, a 32-bit Cafe thread, sporadic guestbook/cbox comments, idk!) for spending less time on the corporate web for the month of July. I am interested in seeing how my brain wiring shifts with some new rules and a new month.
My (personal) rules for July are:
- Almost no walled garden social media. For me that's Meta products, Reddit, maybe Bluesky here too. Anywhere where the spiciest or doomiest takes run wild are out for me. (My one exception is made for a daily check-in with my sobriety group).
- Minimal time spent on the "big web". For me, I consider this YouTube (landing/discovery pages, comments, etc - watching a single linked video through small web discovery is OK for me), news (15 minutes a day is plenty), or ad-filled, algorithm-driven, infinite scroll websites like Pinterest.
- Replace scrolling with building - building out my RSS reader, my website, my personal link connections, my skills in using a static site generator, etc.
- Shifting my center of gravity to the physical life in front of me. Per Oliver Burkeman:
To stay sane, you need at least one foot planted firmly in your world: the world of your job and neighborhood, that letter you need to mail, the pasta you're cooking for dinner, the novel you're reading with your book group, ... – the world where you can have an effect.
My personal strategies to achieve this are:
- A new notebook and pen to help me make this experiment different than previous practices. When I feel the urge to scroll, I will take to writing if the next right step isn't clear to me. What discomfort am I trying to solve?
- Shifting my physical environment: I will clean my house really well today, since I know my thinking is better without clutter. I will get a new puzzle going to piddle on. I have a bunch of post-it notes I will pull out and not feel shy about putting reminders around.
- Beefing up my RSS feed with content I want to see, both big-and-small web. YouTube isn't a problem for me until I go onto the website itself and get sucked into a hole, but subscribing to a channel on RSS isn't a problem for me. I also want to really focus on IRL events and making sure I have a way to get events into my "feed."
- More IRL hangouts and texting people as soon as I think about them. I want to be more thoughtful!
- Skillbuilding: beyond learning to code, I want to prioritize walking, baking, drawing portraits and learning gouache, and swimming.
My tendency is to add more rules. Meditate daily! Walk every morning! I hope I do those things, but I will also feel okay if I cross-stitch and watch the West Wing instead of dooming out on Reddit.
I thrive with accountability, but I can also just be accountable to myself. I will probably post more here during this month with updates, and you can subscribe to the RSS of this blog to keep up with this experiment.
You can email me at fern_enjoyer at tutamail dot com or find me where this is shared. I would love to hear from you.