🧵 Pull up an chasie, mes amis, I want to think out loud for a minute... (This is going to be a LOT more personal than 99% of my toots)
I've spent the last year helping to care for a sick family member who is very close to me... watching them fight like hell to live, and mostly succeed, but never easily.
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Now the latest thing is that my cat, my sweet furson, is suddenly pretty sick after his last vet visit with anesthesia, and it's kind of doubtful if he's going to be able to stick around very long (without way too much pain).
With all this somewhat soul-crushing stuff happening, I feel a sudden sense of clarity. I'm able to see how in so many ways I'm still a very self-absorbed person, and how I've wasted a LOT of years because of various issues that robbed me of a lot of life.
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With all of this sudden perspective, I find myself thinking,
Am I just wasting TONS of time with all of this privacy/alt-OS stuff? Am I just robbing myself of further enjoyment in life and spending tons of time with things that don't matter that much? Would I be just a lot happier if I just ran MacOS, had an iPhone, and didn't care quite as much? Is this the blue pill trying to tempt me after several years of being a total hard-arse about privacy?
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Posting this here, where I don't know people as well, because that feels safer (in a way) than posting where people know me personally (also, because I don't want to suddenly reverse course after being the "Linux and privacy" gadfly for the past three years, lol.
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I've already put a freeze on my plans to migrate away from Manjaro and Simplenote. Manjaro as an org is kinda ~weird~, and I simply don't respect Arch's lackadaisical attitude towards FOSS (sorry!), and Simplenote is 99% of what I want, so that's fine. (And the issue with doing my own syncing is eating tons of battery with syncthing or having to wait much longer for things to sync).
That's it for now, I think. I'm now going to respond to any responses I get.
Thanks all.
5/5 🧵 :)
@RL_Dane I'll share a realisation I came to in similar circumstances. I enjoy tinkering with my stuff. So I set it up in ways that let me play with it - notably, FOSS in many contexts. Now, this isn't always as polished as commercial software, and it sometimes presents obstacles. Working around those obstacles can be its own kind of fun, and it's very satisfying when I get it right.
Did you see the words I used? Enjoy, play, fun, satisfying... I'm describing *toys*. Not because I've stocked them with game apps, or because I don't use them for anything serious, but because I configure them such that I spend time I don't need to on them just 'cause I like to.
Be careful about how much time you spend on your toys vs the people in your life.
@khird
People are definitely the most important.
Then work.
Then hobbies.
Now... which is work and which is hobbies? I'm really honestly having trouble finding that dividing line, and always have. 🤷♂️
@tulpa