The Three-City Problem of Modern Life — interesting read and social commentary about the lives we live today. We either live in the city of reason, of faith, or of technology. Living in one city isolates us from the rest of the world and that makes us feel incomplete.

7 Tips to Stand Out And Land The Job — has great advice for job interviews.

A Roth IRA is one of the most powerful wealth building tools that the average person can use to become extremely wealthy... — good info on ROTH IRA accounts.

^ This is probably only applicable to US readers, as a ROTH IRA is a specific tax-advantaged account offered by the government. But if your country has a similar offering, then some of the info might still be useful.

On Social Media

Social media is like a sandbox where you can observe mimetic theory and mimetic desires in full display.

Staying off social media while you know all your family and friends are there, is like missing out on a party that you're invited to, a party that goes on 24/7, every day of the week and year.

Some people, actually most people, can't resist the urge to join the party. That's because we humans have this need to connect and to belong to a tribe. That's what the creators of social media figured out and made use of. It is one of their crowning achievements. They've fabricated this need, this desire, to be online all the time, to browse the news feed and like and comment on every single interesting post that comes our way.

Parenting

My kid just texted me 🌭 — great tip on the use of family code and passwords. I didn't even know this was a thing.

Perhaps the reason teens isolate themselves when they're overwhelmed instead of coming to us... — seems like great parenting advice on not shutting out your toddler when they're having a tantrum.

The Research Behind Picky Eating — it looks like, the more you pressure a child to eat something (like say veggies), the more they will not want to. And it doesn't just stop there. Research seems to indicate, that if you continue forcing this issue, the kids will end up not liking the food even when they turn into adults.

Quotes

Sometimes to touch the light, you must first touch the darkness. ~ Galadriel, Rings of Power, Season 1 – Episode 5

This might just seem like a good quote to be shared online, but I think it is a deep theological observation. Have you ever wondered why wherever there's good, there's evil? Wherever there's light, there's darkness?

It's because evil is a parasite that latches on to the good.

Now read that quote again and hopefully you'll gain a new appreciation of it.

Spirituality

Choosing to follow Christ means choosing exile, but the flip side to it is that the key to living a joyful and happy life, is to follow God’s will. So by choosing exile, you still ironically find the path to living a joyful and happy life.

Feeling stressed out? Feel like you can't keep up? Feel like you're drowning in anxiety? Talk to God and lay it all out on Him. If you put God first, then everything else will fall into place.

Misc

I finally have a reason as to why walking in nature is better than say, walking in a parking lot, even if that parking lot is surrounded by trees.

Before you read my reason, just know that I am a car guy.

Taking walks in a parking lot makes me look at cars, which then gets me thinking about my car, and wondering why is it that I'm driving an old car, when I could be driving something new like this one over here, or that one over there. Walking in a parking lot basically has the potential to distract me with thoughts of wanting to buy a new car. That goes away when I do my walks in nature, because well, what am I going to think about, wanting to buy a new tree?

One of life's mysteries is this itch, want, need, to buy new books even while the number of unread books in my bookshelves keep on increasing.

This is why I'm putting a lot of effort into clearing out my online to-read list, as well as dropping a lot of the RSS feeds I follow. If I want to make progress with reading all the unread books in my bookshelf, I need to let go of reading all these interesting articles and blog posts on the internet.

Tags: #JournalEntry #Bookmarks #PersonalFinance #SocialMedia #Parenting #Quotes #Theology #Spirituality #Christianity

Personal Publishing Principles — this is a great read for someone interested in creating/maintaining a personal website or a personal blog.

One good tip that was shared in that post is that a personal website/blog is the perfect place for you to experiment with your own ideas. Not everything will work out of course, but keep trying and some will.

This also tells me that if your personal website won't allow you to do that, then you probably have a professional website as opposed to a personal one.

‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ – the mantra of the Instagram era — extremely good read on the use of social media, and how it changes the way we think and go about our daily lives.

One of the problems with social media that is highlighted in this essay, is that while social media gives everyone a voice, everyone on social media is also speaking at the same time. This means that if you want to be heard, you will want to speak louder, and you'll want to do so more often than everybody else. If you don't, you risk becoming somebody who shouts into the void with nobody even glancing your way.

So you can see how this can make people addicted to constantly posting photos, status, updates, etc... Each post becoming grander and grander just so you can get more eyeballs and hopefully likes/comments on it.

Christianity

From Mk 10:46-52:

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging.

On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me.”

Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.” He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.

Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.” Jesus told him, ‘Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.

This gospel passage is a great example of being persistent with your prayers. Bartimaeus kept calling out to Jesus even as he was getting reprimanded by the people around him. He was being told to shut up, but he kept calling out anyway. And eventually Jesus answered his call. The lesson here is to be persistent with your prayers.

You could argue that he kept on calling because he was blind and desperate. True, that seems to be a valid point. But then, why wait till you're blind and desperate before you persevere in your prayers? I feel like you open yourself up to more gifts and blessings from the Lord, if you don't wait till you're blind and desperate.

When Jesus says,

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate Father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

... what He means is that any of those cannot be loved more than God himself. To be a disciple means to put everything else second to the love of God.

Source: Bishop Barron, Word on Fire Bible Volume I, p386

There is a beautiful comment on this Youtube video from Christian Gospel that goes like this:

GOD is like oxygen. You can't see HIM, but you can't live without Him! The GOD that fought with David is the same GOD that will fight with you & for you! Your next chapter will be amazing. GOD is changing your storyline to happy & healed!💕❤🙏🙌

“GOD is like oxygen. You can't see HIM, but you can't live without Him!” Love that analogy!

Reflections

One of the great things about social media is that it made it really easy to give everyone a voice (see interesting read above). The problem is, it comes with a price. You pay for it with your data and attention.

People who weren't on social media before, didn't have the urges to post photos or post status updates. It makes me think that this is something that has turned into a habit over time. And since it's become a habit for most people, it is hard to stop.

Writing for yourself is writing to a private diary or journal. Writing to an audience is when your writing is shared to the public.

Quotes

What is weird? Someone who is different? Or someone who is different than you? ~ Sensei Wu, Ninjago

Ninjago is easily becoming my favorite kids TV show. It is filled with insightful quotes like this one. Sometimes I feel like they made the show for adults, just as much as they made it for kids.

“Children are perhaps the most unmistakable evidence of goodness in a world so bogged down by suffering and anger.” ~ Jared Zimmerer, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute

Parenting

Is the internet hurting the youth? — Gary Vee — seems like excellent advice on how to handle kids and their use of the internet.

For those who don't want to click the link because they're allergic to Instagram or Reels, the advice is this: Build your kid's self-esteem first before letting them loose on the internet.

Tags: #JournalEntry #Bookmarks #Blogging #SocialMedia #Christianity #Spirituality #Reflections #Writing #Parenting

Why? Why are we doing all this? Why do we feel the need to do all this? Does anybody else think that's not normal? I've been asking myself those questions for months now.

There's lots of advice on what to do to take control of your data online. For instance, you should have all your blog posts and photos under your domain name, so you keep control of them. And if you're not concerned about that, there's lots of advice on what platform is the best for photo-blogging, long-form blogging, micro-blogging, etc... There's all sorts of advice regarding the best ways to manage your data online. But no one seems to be asking the question, why?

Why do we need to post photos of our lives online? Why do we need to document everything that's happened to us? Why do we need to have all of this data online?

In an age where we are more connected than ever through the internet, why is it that we feel more alone, especially when we are offline? In an age where we can add hundreds of people to our friends list, why is it that we feel like we don't exist if we're not posting online?

Is it because we feel like we are missing out on everything happening online? Is it because of FOMO? Is that why we keep posting status updates, keep sharing photos, keep writing blog posts?

Or is it because we feel like we don't exist if we don't see a piece of ourselves online? Is it because we feel like we don't exist if no one comments or likes our posts online?

“Hey, hey, look over here, I've uploaded a new photo, I've shared a new blog post, I've got a new Instagram story, I'm playing a new video game, etc... I'm still alive. Talk to me.”

I say that, because I believe that's one of the reasons driving this constant need to share online — to remind other people that we exist.

At least that's the case for me. Is it the same for you?

I still can't wrap my head around it. The internet has allowed us to connect with more people than we could ever be connected with, on a personal level. And yet, we feel more isolated than ever before.

And I think that highlights another issue. Our basic human need for social connection is not getting fulfilled. Not with the way we live our lives nowadays.

Because it's so easy to connect with other people online, that's what we end up doing. But I can't help but feel like, that's why it's not enough. The online connections and interactions we engage in, are not as fulfilling or satisfying, as the personal interactions that used to be a staple of our everyday lives.

Of course the pandemic is not helping things right now. But we have been living this way before the pandemic. It's not like this is only a problem now.

No matter how many photos we upload, how many status updates we make, how many blog posts we share, there's still something missing. We're still constantly checking that feed. We're still waiting for those likes to come in. We're still waiting for the confirmation that let's us know, that other people know we're still alive.

On the flip side, all you need is just one game of Settlers of Catan with family and friends. The resulting satisfaction from that social interaction is... immeasurable.

I've been thinking about how the older generation lived. With no smartphones in their pockets, they didn't have portable cameras to bring with them when they ventured out into the real world. It also means that even if they brought a camera with them, there was no way to instantly share a photo afterwards. And even when they got home, there was no social media app or website waiting for them to upload all the photos they took that day. So, I'm thinking that they most likely didn't have these constant urges to share everything online.

To be able to go out, do things and live life without feeling the urge to share everything online — how liberating must that have been? I would love to be able to experience that — to not even have the urge to share online a beautiful photo that I just took. To not even have the urge to share the really good song that I'm listening to right now. To not even have the urge to write a blog post about the crazy thing that happened to me or to the world today.

However, knowing what I know now, it seems impossible to go back to that naive way of living.

I believe that the technologies in the world that we live in today, has altered the way we think about life. And more importantly, it has altered what it means to be alive. It is not enough now to know you're alive. You also have to prove it to the rest of the world too — because otherwise, it feels like you don't exist.

Tags: #Reflection #DigitalMinimalism #Blogging #SocialMedia

I ran into an issue while working on the previous weeknotes post. My weeknotes post show up on this journal, but it has software dev related posts. That makes me think that those should be on my dev blog. And now I wonder, maybe I should have just one website in the first place.

Now the problem with having one website that houses all kinds of content, is that my personal posts would start showing up alongside my dev related posts. I remember Scott Hanselman said that you should keep overtly personal information out of your tech blog. That's pretty much why I have a dev blog and a separate personal blog/journal. I also think that the advice on separating them still makes sense. But I also feel, based on experience, that having to maintain multiple websites can be exhausting.

After pouring out my heart and soul, my personal life into this online journal, I now have this urge to move on and leave it all behind. I no longer want to post something overly personal.

Had I decided to remain with an anonymous journal like Inquiry suggested in the past, I probably wouldn't have a problem with all the personal posts I wrote. But I really wanted to “own my words”, so this is what I get for doing so LOL.

On a related note... I wish I could start over with my domain and websites. Or, just leave everything behind and start fresh on a new blog/site.

Spent an hour dumping my thoughts into Obsidian. They were about the four websites (dev blog, this journal, music blog, photo-blog) that I'm currently maintaining. The question I have for myself is, can I combine all four websites into just one? And if so, can I do it on Write.as, Micro.blog, WordPress or some other platform?

I am in the process of trying to figure out, how to narrow down the number of my sites from 4, to at most 2. One thing I've started to notice from other .NET developers, is that most of them don't have personal blogs. They blog about software development and that's pretty much it.

And now that I think about it, if my intent with blogs and personal websites is to remind people that I'm still alive, then putting out posts on my dev blog is good enough. I don't have to get all personal in a personal blog/journal like this one. I don't need to share all the personal details. If the point is really just to tell other people I'm still alive, then posting about something, and it doesn't have to be a personal topic, is good enough.

In the interest of trying to decrease the load of maintaining multiple websites at once, I think I need to stop writing a post for each song I add to the playlist for my music blog. I should instead write a post for when I have a new playlist out. I think this will lessen the load on my part, and will keep me less distracted during the day.

Fast forward a few days...

Instead of sharing music that I’m listening to right at that moment, I should just curate songs instead. Sharing music while I’m listening to them, can be distracting. And it doesn’t serve any purpose other than to share something I’m listening to at the moment. Building and curating a playlist though, is intentionally creating something that could be valuable to someone else other than myself.

I'm not sure what to do with my Above the Earth and Seas blog. It started out as a place to share photos of the sky. This was mainly to make use of my 3rd free write.as blog and to make use of the snap.as image hosting feature. But as you can tell, it doesn't really have a specific purpose, other than a place for me to share photos of the sky.

I'm not sure what benefit I'm getting from it. I'm not sure if it provides any value whatsoever. I'm not even sure if it is reaching people who are interested in photos of the sky. Currently, there's 1 email subscriber. Unlike this journal or my music blog, I haven't received any messages from a reader regarding any of the content in it. So the question I'm asking myself is, is there any value in continuing to post if no one is even benefiting from or appreciating the photos?

What I'm quickly realizing with regards to blogs, is that without a feedback loop, I don't know if my efforts are just being wasted. I don't know who is benefiting from it or even if I'm benefiting from it. Which is why...

Sometime this week, I ended up creating an Instagram account for my Above the Earth and Seas blog. As far as ease of use goes, it is so much easier to post to Instagram. While yes, I have to use a phone, I spend less time looking at a screen when trying to post something. There's also a feedback loop and the comfort of knowing that I'm not posting to a void. I know people on Instagram can find the photos through the hashtags. And there is a huge community of people posting photos of the sky in it.

That said, I now remember another reason why I was trying to post photos on a blog versus on Instagram. It's the way social media primes your mind to expect likes/hearts. It gives me the urge to want to check the app over and over again.

Anyway, like I did in the past, I plan on only having the Instagram app installed on my phone during weekends. That should limit the amount of time I have the app installed on my phone. And if that doesn't work out, I'll just call it a day on my photo-blog and move on.

While I'm on the subject of Instagram, I thought Sunlit was going to replace Instagram for me. It did not, or more specifically, it couldn't. While it is a great place to post photos (because there's no likes/hearts feature in it), I also have no way of curating a feed like I can with Instagram.

To be fair, I don't think the creators of Sunlit intended it to be a replacement for everything that Instagram does. I'm just saying, that to get my car photos fix, I still have to login to Instagram every now and then. Because that's where you can find the best Mazdaspeed3 photos on the internet.

On the subject of Mazdaspeeds, I installed a Chicco Myfit car seat, alongside a Chicco Nextfit convertible car seat in the Speed3. There's just enough space for me or my wife to sit beside the Nextfit, which is set up as rear facing in the middle. So, it turns out you can install car seats two across in a Gen2 Mazdaspeed3.

And lastly, finally bought lowering springs and shocks for the Speed3. I decided to go for the Eibach Pro-kit/Koni STR.T Struts combo. I'm refreshing the suspension because for the first time since I've owned the Speed3, some of the tires are showing signs of cupping. And well the ride can sometimes feel choppy. Not surprising since my Speed3 has now over 105,000 miles.

If a literature note contains thoughts and ideas from another author, then my own blog posts and journal entries cannot be thought of as literature notes. The ideas contained therein would be considered permanent notes, because they were my own thoughts and ideas.

This is me attempting to understand how to use the Zettelkasten method to build my personal knowledge base.

Wouldn’t digital be easier? Yes. But I don’t want this to be easy. Writing them down by hand forces me to take my time and to go over everything again (taking notes on a Kindle is too easy and that’s the problem).

~ The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read by Ryan Holiday

So, with the Zettelkasten method, you create “literature notes” when taking down notes while reading a book. Ryan Holiday uses something called a Notecard System. It's another way of taking notes while reading a book.

If you're looking for more ways to take down notes while reading a book, there's also the Idea Index method that Cal Newport mentioned in his blog.

We are all experts in something. Teach everything you know. Knowledge is squandered unless it is shared. Don't die with your greatest lessons still inside of you.

~ “Email is Where Keystrokes Go to Die.” by James Clear

No matter what you think of yourself, you are an expert in something. So, don't keep all your knowledge to yourself. What's the point of acquiring all that knowledge, of building a digital garden, of building a personal knowledge base, if you let it go to waste by not sharing it with others? Pass it off to your kids, to your peers, to anyone willing to listen and learn.

Going meta here, but the above is what I believe to be an example of a “Literature Note” in the Zettelkasten method. You find a good quote or idea from something that you're reading, you then write it in your own words and file it in a literature note.

I previously mentioned that migrating notes from my bullet journal into Obsidian seemed redundant. Well today's brilliant idea, is to not migrate them at all. If I need to look up info for writing my weeknotes post, then I'll look on both my bullet journal and Obsidian vault.

Spent some time watching Sword Art Online this week and it has its hooks on me once again. The ending to the first half of Season 1 was a great cliffhanger. Then the plot twist in the second half of the season caught me off-guard. If you love MMOs, or have played MMOs, you'll find plenty to like in this anime. If you love MMOs and anime, then you'll love Sword Art Online.

I have also noticed that this is the first anime that Davin has shown an interest in. It could be very well be that he is old enough to be interested in anime. But I also think it's the story and the characters. To an extent, Sword Art Online draws some parallels to Minecraft Dungeons. And I think that's what draws him in.

As far as blood and gore, there's not much in Sword Art Online. So, I'm not worried about Davin watching it. My only concern is that in the second part of Season 1, there's noticeably more sexy scenes and some nudity implied in the episodes. It's not enough to stop me from watching it around him, but it makes me a little wary of it.

Just realized that I'm publishing posts from my music blog, which has music exclusively shared via Spotify, into the read.write.as feed, where a lot of people seem to not be a fan of Spotify. I kinda feel like I'm putting a target on my back for doing so. Maybe this is not where I should be publishing my music blog posts to.

It's been awhile since we've had a Tornado warning issued where we live. Was trying to rock baby Caleb to sleep, when I kept hearing what sounded like a motorcycle going back and forth. It took me awhile to realize that it was the tornado sirens making the sound. Grabbed the wife and Davin and lead them into a closet, where we hid until the threat passed. Thank God that nothing serious happened around our home. Though I heard other people were not as fortunate.

New idea is to listen to “ambient” music while coding. It is an interesting idea, because it means I can stop getting interrupted by running into really good rock songs when working. Got this idea from Vincent's about page.

Tags: #Weeknotes #Bookmarks #Blogging #Mazdaspeed3 #Meta #SocialMedia #Zettelkasten

I already have a .NET wrapper library that can query their service for my posts. It might be a fun project to try in the future.

Struggling so much with the “ASP.NET Core 3 and React” book. I am simply following the instructions in the book, but I keep running into compile errors. The compile errors are brought about by the use of other libraries to help with development. I've had to spend more time troubleshooting the errors than actually reading the book.

At the end of another frustrating night trying to troubleshoot the errors, I realized the crux of the problem. The reason I was running into so many errors, is that the latest version of the libraries I was using, was not compatible with each other.

I'm moving to a new team mid-December. It's a front-end web development team. So, I have less than a month to learn React JS and ASP.NET Core.

And now you know why I'm struggling through an ASP.NET Core and React book.

Caleb is in full-on sleep regression mode this week. One night, he woke up a little past midnight and kept waking up every hour until like 5 am. We barely got any sleep. Even when Coney and myself took turns watching him, we both still had a rough night.

Migrating notes from my bullet journal into Obsidian seems kinda redundant. I've been trying to differentiate between what I write on my bullet journal and what I put on Obsidian. But at the end of the day, I still migrate notes from my bullet journal into Obsidian. So, why not just write exclusively in Obsidian? If I did, I could actually switch to a smaller Field Notes notebook for managing tasks. Maybe something to explore in the future.

Make a list of your 12 favorite problems and use them as a guide for what to tackle going forward. These problems will help you figure out what you need to be researching going forward. This seems like a great idea to help get started on a digital garden or personal knowledge-base.

I found it on Maggie Appleton's site, but the idea is supposedly from a certain Richard Feynman.

If permanent notes are the only ones that go into the “slip-box”, then they need to be worthy enough to be considered a permanent note then. And as far as digital gardens go, I think they are the best ones to share online. Fleeting notes get discarded. But literature notes, that served as inspiration for creating a permanent note, should be saved in a “reference box”.

Right now, all these boxes go against my workflow. I have multiple folders based on a certain topic. So not exactly the same setup. Though I'm starting to think that having just three folders – Fleeting Notes, Reference Box and Slip Box – would make everything simpler.

We post pictures of our lives. Okay, that’s nice. We share stupid memes. We all need a little humor. We debate politics, religion, economics, and a few dozen other topics. And what do we gain? Not much. Very few truly listen, and nobody really wins. We’re basically throwing hours of our lives away.

~ Dan Erickson, Social Media Is Mostly a F@cking Waste of Time

So I knew that pressing WIN + D in Windows will minimize all screens. I didn't realize pressing it again will bring all those screens back up. Useful, in case you accidentally minimize all screens.

I understand the “digital garden” metaphor as this — You plant seeds (ideas, thoughts) and tend to them until they grow into a tree with multiple branches (interconnected ideas and thoughts). You tend to the tree and in the future it will bear some fruit (articles, books, essays, videos). You do the same thing with other seeds and pretty soon you'll have a forest?

What I'm starting to realize is that I don't seem to be building a “digital garden” with Obsidian. What I'm building seems more of a personal wiki, a personal knowledge-base, a second brain. It's less of a garden and more of a collection of thoughts and ideas that I don't want to forget. There's not enough space in my brain to store them all, so I dump them out into Obsidian and build on it separately. So, really it's more like a second brain then.

Nothing in this world last, therefore nothing in this world must be the subject of our deepest desires.

Tags: #Weeknotes #DigitalGarden #Zettelkasten #BulletJournal #SocialMedia

Working with Obsidian and building a personal knowledge base has me on a high. I've been writing so much today (this week), it's crazy. And all this writing was done offline. If that isn't “writing for myself”, I don't know what is. I may be getting tired of writing blog posts, but apparently, I'm not tired of writing.

This leads me to thinking that this might be a better way to pass down my journal entries to my kids. Plain text files should hopefully outlive me. I don't have to do it through an online journal or a blog. I can just pass off my collection of text files to them.

It's interesting that, I am using a blog/journal, to post on social media to let my friends know I'm still alive. The problem is that the feed on social media runs on an algorithm. That means, my post might never even show up for my friends before they stop scrolling. Which means, what I'm using social media for, is actually not working for me.

Another interesting thing, is how logging daily notes in Obsidian, means I write down less stuff on my bullet journal. I don't know if this is good or bad. Cal Newport would probably say it is bad, because then I am increasing the time I spend looking at computer screens.

Have been dealing with WCF errors this week. I am so ready to leave behind WCF and move on to Restful API services.

I am little by little, slowly getting addicted to Obsidian. I even have it on my work PC now.

The description on my online journal was, “A peek into the mind of a software developer, husband, dad and gamer.” While somewhat true, now that I think about it, it's more of “A peek into the life of a software developer, husband, dad and gamer.” That's because a lot of the content I put out on there (here), is about stuff that's happened to me and to the people around me. There are occasional instances where you get an idea of what's on my mind, but mostly, it's about what happened to me. It is more like a diary, or a journal.

What I'm trying to get at is, the description — “A peek into the mind of a software developer, husband, dad and gamer” — is actually a better fit for a digital garden. A digital garden is exactly that, a peek into someone's mind. While a journal, or a diary, is more of a peek into someone's life.

For lunch, I ate a heavy meal from Panda Express. Later in the afternoon, I got a free Venti Vanilla Bean Latte from Coney. According to Fitbit, with the Venti Vanilla Bean Latte, I've already hit my target goal as far as amount of calories goes for the day. This shows how useful food tracking is. If I weren't tracking, I would have ate normally at dinner, which means I would have ate more than I was supposed to.

Currently trying out two other alternatives for my music blog. I'm trying one with Tumblr and another with Wordpress.

So, everytime I share a song, I try to do it on all three blogs. I find it easiest to share music to Tumblr. Next is Write.as. Last is Wordpress. Posting on Wordpress feels slow and can sometimes feel clunky. It's unfortunate because the Wordpress blog is the best looking of them all.

I'm starting to notice a difference between what I write on my bullet journal, and what I write in Obsidian for my digital garden. The things that happened to me, the things I did — those are the ones that go into my bullet journal.

On the other hand, useful realizations, ideas, thoughts that I've come across while reading or watching something — those go into Obsidian to grow my digital garden.

I noticed that Davin had a small nick on his wrist. It's close to the spot where he wears his Potty Training Watch. I'm not sure how, but we've stopped letting him wear the watch. It is unfortunate because it was pretty effective at getting him to pee on a schedule. But I'd rather not have him hurt himself in the process. Especially since he has this tendency to say he's okay, even when he's hurting.

Another night, another game of Protect the Pride Lands with Davin. This board game has been such a hit with Davin. He's requested to play this game every night since it arrived. It's good father and son bonding time for both of us.

You think compromise is a weakness. It’s not. It’s survival. ~ Waldo, Into The Badlands, Season 2 – Episode 4

God gives us his gifts, so we can be gifts to each other. ~ Fr. Anthony Densmore

If you don’t know about your past, you can’t shape your future. ~ Kemal, The Protector, Season 1 – Episode 5

Okay this post ended up longer than I expected. I'll try to be more selective next time. Otherwise I fear I'm going to get tired of keeping this up as well. Anyway, until I get a digital garden website up and running, this will have to do. I'll catch y'all later.

Tags: #Weeknotes #BulletJournal #DigitalGarden #Meta #NoteTaking #SocialMedia

Links: On Social Media and Character – Cal Newport Why Ditching Instagram Earned me the Podium – Madison Fischer

It was then that Madison’s athletic career moved to the next level. “There’s nobody I’m here to perform for,” she writes. “I just train and silently work on achieving my own definition of success.”

That quote above made me reconsider keeping my blog “public”. By that I mean having my posts show up on the read.write.as feed. I sometimes feel that I'm performing for someone when my posts show up on the read.write.as feed. Like I'm in a competition, trying to keep up with everyone else.

“I wanted to see what I could do. Nothing to do with you, or your friends, or the neighbors, or the members at my gym, or my competitors, or family. It was all within, as it should be, and as it has to be.”

When Madison said that, she was talking about her sport. But I can't help but feel that it also applies to my websites and how I blog. I want to see what I can do. It has nothing to do with you, or how everyone else does it really. It is all within, as it should be.

This post is Day 9 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.

Tags: #Bookmarks #SocialMedia #CalNewport #DigitalMinimalism #Blogging #100DaysToOffload

The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company’s failure to protect millions of users’ data, to the proliferation of “fake news” and disinformation, mounting crises have raised the question: Is Facebook more harmful than helpful? This major, two-night event investigates a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to a global empire. With dozens of original interviews and rare footage, The Facebook Dilemma examines the powerful social media platform’s impact on privacy and democracy in the U.S. and around the world.

Overall, it was a pretty good documentary. They weren't lying about the original interviews and rare footage. It reveals insights into company culture — why Facebook is the way it is now and how they got there.

Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

The bits on privacy was eye opening, even when I already expected it to be. I was still surprised at what I saw in the documentary. One thing I learned, is that Facebook doesn't actually care about the data that I thought they would care about. They don't care about the personal details in your life. They don't care about your embarrassing photos. Or the personal drama that spills into your wall. They don't care about all that, unless that data can be used to target specific ads. It is all about revenue and growth for them. These were the main considerations for determining what Facebook would do next as a business.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine that played out on Facebook was alarming. That was the first time I saw how a country could weaponize Facebook to further their agenda. It is on Facebook to be smart enough to stop this from happening again in the future.

Back when I was looking into ways to lower my social media consumption, I kept running into the same comment online — that something horrible happened in Myanmar and the Philippines because of Facebook. After watching the documentary, I now understand what happened in those two countries. Facebook could have had a hand in stopping what was happening, but didn't.

An interesting revelation in the documentary was how people in Macedon were making money off Facebook. They did it by writing and posting about Trump. These people had no hidden political agenda. They didn't care about politics. They were just trying to make money. And they were making money because Facebook's algorithm favors controversial articles and posts.

I think one of the most important lines in the documentary was from Alexis Madrigal, who writes for The Atlantic. He said something like, “Facebook took on the role of a news editor, but did not want to take on the responsibility of being an editor.” The result is the proliferation of fake news on their news feeds.

This PBS documentary and The Great Hack from Netflix, are must-watch documentaries if you want to educate yourself on the dangers of social media. Anyone who uses social media, or has family or friends who use social media, or anyone who cares about a working democracy needs to educate themselves on the dangers of social media.

Lastly, and this is more of a rant than it is commentary on the documentary — it frustrates me that people don't take the threat of behavior manipulation on social media seriously. It has happened before, it will happen again. Unless Facebook takes responsibility for content on their site, this will happen again. I probably sound like a middle-aged paranoid netizen to my friends. But I believe that there is a danger to social media, especially in the way that most people use them today.

And before I sound like a hypocrite, yes I do have a new Facebook account. No, I'm not using it the same way I did years ago. Here are the guidelines for the use of my Facebook account. I'm only on Facebook because 100% of the people I want to stay connected with are on Facebook.

Anyway, I have my Facebook news feed locked down tight. The result is that there are no controversial posts that show up on my news feed. I could scroll to the bottom of my news feed in less than 30 seconds. There are even days when my Facebook news feed comes up empty. What a glorious sight that is. And that is important because it cuts down on behavior manipulation from my news feed. For folks in the US, this is more important than ever because 2020 is another election year.

I'll end this post with a quote on what I said after watching the The Great Hack on Netflix:

Watched the Netflix documentary The Great Hack. If you need any more reasons to quit Facebook, then watch this documentary. At the very least, if you live in a democratic country, you should watch it to see how Facebook could be a threat to democracy. I'm not saying they are actively trying to undermine democracy. I'm saying you should inform yourself about their capabilities and what they have done with it in the past.

My biggest takeaway from it is, people need to be mindful of the possibility of their behavior being influenced by the feed on Facebook. If there is an election coming for instance, you should quit Facebook, or at the least, avoid it until the election is done. This is so that your judgement will not be influenced by what you see on your feed.

This post is Day 5 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.

Tags: #Bookmarks #SocialMedia #Facebook #100DaysToOffload

Rules for Logging In

No installation of the Facebook app on my phone. I'll only login to Facebook using a browser. Ideally, only via a browser on a laptop or PC.

Right now I'm allowing myself to use the browser on my phone to add friends and to reply to comments. That is only temporary, until such time that my friends list stabilizes. I'm giving myself a week at most. After that, I'll only access Facebook via a browser on a laptop or PC.

If need be, to avoid distractions and preserve my attention, I will disable the browser on my phone, or I can block the Facebook website on my phone via the iOS Screen Time settings. – I'm hoping I won't have to do that.

I'm going to be using a modified version of the 3/60 rule to determine how often to login to Facebook. I'm thinking mine will be the 5/60 rule, where I can only login to Facebook at most 5 times in a week, for no more than 60 minutes total. So that would give at most 12 minutes per login. I think that should be enough to reply to comments, share new posts and visit a few profiles.

Rules for Managing the Newsfeed

No following of any accounts/profiles or pages except for my wife’s account. This should cause the newsfeed to be pretty much empty, except for the posts that my wife makes.

An exception to this rule is if I find a profile that has consistently interesting posts. Similar to following a good blog or website, in such a case, I will allow their posts to show up on my newsfeed.

If for any reason my newsfeed starts causing me pain, I will unfollow everyone, including my wife. – Don't worry, I already told her about this and she said she will still make me sandwiches for work.

Rules for Posting Content

No posting of Facebook only content. By this I mean content that can only be found on Facebook, or content that is only shared on Facebook, or content that only Facebook users can see or any variation of that. I'll only post content that links to this site. The point is to get people out of Facebook and into my website(s).

No posting of photos of material things. No posting of any photos that fall under the “my life is better than yours” category. No posting of any “highlight reels” photos or any photo that can be considered “fake lives online”.

If you are a friend on Facebook and you see me violating this rule, please feel free to call me out on it.

Rules for Facebook Groups

No joining of any Facebook groups, except groups whose members I know personally.

Rules for Notifications

No notifications for Likes or any other superficial activity that Facebook wants to notify me about. – Right now I have it setup to where I only get notifications for comments, tags that need to be reviewed and accepted friend requests.

Rules for Interacting with Friends

No clicking of the Like button or any of the available emoji reactions unless I already made a comment. If I can't be bothered to make a comment, then I cannot click the Like button.

Ideally, I just write comments and leave it at that. The point here is to try and initiate a conversation with my friends.

Rules for Managing Friends List

How to decide who I can add to my Friends list? I can only add family and friends who I know personally, who I have talked to personally in the past and who add value to my life. If you do not fall into these categories, feel free to make an appeal by sending me a message. Otherwise, those rules are set for my own sanity, not yours.

An exception to this rule are good friends I made online back when I was still playing MMORPGs.

Can I add co-workers? Co-workers from a previous job, sure why not, as long as they fall into the criteria I listed above for adding friends. Other co-workers are better off adding me on LinkedIn instead.

Lastly, I'm going to limit my Friend list to no more than 100 people. This is based off Dunbar's number, which is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

Clarifications

So if I'm only following my wife’s account, what's the point of adding people to my friends list? Good question. The point is to be intentional of my use of Facebook. I want my newsfeed to be as short and tidy as possible. I'm even willing to unfollow my wife’s account if the newsfeed starts giving me problems. I will be scheduling days when I will visit my friends profiles to see what they're up to. It's as simple as that.

How did I come up with these rules? If you're wondering why the guidelines/rules I have are the way they are, you should look into why I tried quitting social media in the first place. In addition to that, I got some of those ideas from Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism book and from the various comments you can find on his blog posts.

Tags: #SocialMedia #Facebook

They're not going to do this as long as they're doing so well financially and there's no regulatory oversight. And consumer backlash doesn't really work because I can't leave Facebook, all my friends and family around the world are there. You might not like the company. You might not like its privacy policies. You might not like the way its algorithm works. You might not like its business model. But what are you going to do?

I feel trapped in the same way. All my family and friends are on Facebook. None of them maintain personal websites or blogs like I do. It's not that FOMO got to me, but more of the fact that they can't seem to reach me after I've deactivated my Facebook account. It doesn't help that all my really close friends, my “barkada” as we call it in my native tongue, they all live in a different continent than me. So, I don't have the luxury of hanging out with them on weekends to maintain our friendship. Had I had that option, I'm positive I could have gone on without a Facebook account.

The second event is a comment a good friend of mine made on Facebook, on a post my wife shared from Valentine's Day. He asked my wife to send his regards my way. I was like, “Why does he have to do that? Well because I'm not on Facebook.” I kinda felt bad that it seems like I’m making it hard for them to reach me. It’s really not that hard, they can send me a message through Facebook Messenger or send me an email, but they probably didn’t know that they could do that. When I deactivated my Facebook account over a year ago, I didn’t have a personal website yet at that time. And when I did get my sites up and running a couple of months later, I didn’t exactly go back to let them all know that I now have a personal website they can visit.

Some more notes and observations I made from a year away from Facebook:

• People are just not going out of their way to communicate with me outside of Facebook. Usually they would just tell my wife, who would then tell me. They have the option of sending me a message or an email, but that didn't happen. Anyway, the point being, they would rather stay in Facebook, most likely because it is easy, it is convenient. I can't blame them for that because it is true, Facebook makes it easy and convenient.
• The experiment with Instagram didn’t work out. I was hoping they (my family and friends) would find my site through Instagram, but that just isn’t happening. Also, I was hoping my friends would share more photos in Instagram, but most of them just post photos on their Facebook accounts instead. This was evidenced by the lack of photos in my Instagram feed during the holidays. In the meantime, my wife kept telling me about how big the sons and daughters of my friends were based on photos she was seeing on Facebook. So yeah, they weren't really posting to Instagram like I thought they would.
• My friends exclusively post to Facebook. I don’t know anyone who maintains a blog like me. To comment on their posts, I have to be in Facebook. I mean I could send them a message through Facebook Messenger, but then my comment would have no context.
• I need a way to let them know that I have a website without having to message them one by one. I don’t want it to look like I’m promoting my site via messages. I want to try and get people out of Facebook and into the world wide web, by sharing links to this site on my Facebook wall.
• There’s built-in comments section for my friends only since they stay in Facebook all day. If that doesn’t get them to comment on my posts, I don’t know what will.
• Nowadays people announce events on Facebook first, versus any other option. My friend invited me to their wedding on Facebook. Thankfully my wife is still on Facebook, otherwise I’m not sure how we would have known.
• People are reluctant to move on from Facebook. They don’t have the same motivations I do and I don't blame them for wanting to stay. So, I need to adapt to the current way of life online. My friends live in a totally different continent than me, so it is hard to maintain that connection when I could not hang out with them every weekend. Since my only way to stay connected is through messaging and social media, a new Facebook account is a compromise I'm making. If I can't reach them from the outside, I'll try to reach them from the inside.
• Mastodon would have been a nice alternative to Facebook, but most of my friends don’t even know it exists. I asked friends of mine who are also software developers and not one of them have ever heard of Mastodon. If my techy friends didn't know about it, you can bet my non techy friends didn't know about it either. Just knowing that it exists is one thing, convincing them to ditch Facebook for Mastodon is a totally different undertaking. There's no point for me to be on Mastodon, if I can't convince my friends to join in.

At the end of the day, my attempt to replace social media (Facebook) with a personal website didn’t really work out. Most of my friends still probably don’t know that this site exists. (I'm working on changing that with my new Facebook account.) The others know for sure, but that’s because I share links to this site in our group chat. I always feel slightly embarrassed about doing that though, because it feels as if I’m promoting my website to them. So, I’ll share links to this site on my Facebook Wall instead. Nothing is changing as far as this site is concerned. I'll still be posting on here regularly as this is still my preferred home on the web.

I have to admit to feeling like I lost my battle with Facebook. With all my posts on #DigitalMinimalism, I felt like a fraud creating my Facebook account last night. However, I also know that it was not really working out for me. More than one year away from Facebook taught me that. That said, I'm not going back to Facebook empty handed. I have since learned a number of tips and tricks that I can apply on the use of this new Facebook account of mine. In a future post, I'll share some guidelines for how I'm going to be using my new Facebook account with the goal of minimizing distractions and keeping my attention intact.

Tags: #Facebook #SocialMedia