Excursions

I am on Threads. Talking about Threads. Might manually cross post as I usually do on Mastadon.

Threads is closest to Twitter and that’s exactly why it may work. Twitter left a big hole and this (without any shame of copying) fits that perfectly.

Also, Meta understands you can’t launch a social network available for iOS only and expect it to grow. Welcome to see Android app on launch.

Recently, I have seen many people get nostalgic about Google Reader. The argument is that if Google Reader hadn’t died, the internet wouldn’t have been in the dire state it is today. As if the demise of Google Reader caused the rise of proprietary timelines of Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, it was the other way around.

Plus, Google Reader was a flawed, terribly designed, niche product only used by a handful of tech-savvy people. I say this even though I was a big fan of the product. It could never have survived in the form it was in.

Sure, web browsing does feel horrible today, as Tim Sweeney of Epic tweeted.

The internet feels increasingly broken. News sites are paywalled or account walled, Reddit is nag walled, Google search spams ads and SEO to the point of uselessness, and now Twitter is account walled.

I agree with all of it. But I don’t think Google Reader could have addressed any of it. RSS, for sure, cannot. It’s just a standard to simplify consumption. The problem lies at the source.

What if I pressed reset on all that I have published till date? Get rid of all of it. Archive it, maybe. And start afresh. What if I do it every year? Or every month?

I have forgotten how to write.

I am frustrated with my recent tendency to choose the easy option whenever an opportunity arrives. Watch rather than read. Read rather than write. Get tired doing both. And then sleep. I am doing this way too often these days. I have made this my routine. I am aware this behaviour isn’t good. But I still do this.

Passively scroll through the news. Or YouTube shorts. And when I feel bad about my choice, I skim through my RSS feeds. Or newsletters. I attempt to fool my mind that I am reading the good stuff, following a good routine. I very well know that I am fooling no one. Especially not my mind. It continues to feel shit.

There was a time when I would take steps to correct the habits of bad choices. Move away from my smartphone. Uninstall apps. Or disable notifications. Track. Measure. Force me towards, or give me more opportunities to make better choices.

What pains me is I have stopped doing any of that, either. Every wasted day ends with a promise that I will start following a good routine from tomorrow. For that matter, routine of some sort, as I lack any at this point.

Weeks have gone by, but that tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I am afraid it never will if I don’t take measures promptly. Being aware is useless if I don’t act.

I haven’t been able to write for the last few days. Or has it been months? I have no idea any more. I did quip now and then. But to me, that does not count. Life kept me busy, and my inclination to think dries up whenever that happens. If I ain’t thinking, writing I am not.

I hate this behaviour of mine. Why must I be in a routine to find time or energy to write? It isn’t as if the words dry out. I just can’t put them out.

A possible answer is that I love my comfort zone. Anything out of the ordinary and I shut my brain down. I can’t think. I can’t do anything that I routinely do. Or so I convince myself. I enter a shell waiting for things to get back to normal. Waiting for me to find my comfort zone again. And then, and only then, do I begin living again.

Until then, I find cheap getaways. Scroll through YouTube. Or news. Rewatching already watched shows. Feel tired. Sleep a lot.

Such a menacing beast this comfort zone is. It makes me feel comfortable with and in control of my life. Yet soon, the same control shackles me down to the routine. The lack of stress the routine brings suffocates me. Stagnates me. Am I then even alive any more?

I’ve been watching Seinfeld’s reruns recently, and one device has always puzzled me. The phone machine. It is a critical element in almost every episode and plays a central part in a few. And yet I have never owned such a device.

A landline was itself a luxury while I was growing up. Very few homes in the neighbourhood had them. Even we got it pretty late. I remember when we eventually did, our house became a switchboard, and we were the telephone operators—connecting folks all over to ones in our neighbourhood.

We received calls at home and took the messages. Sometimes, my parents held the line while I, being the only kid in the house, ran to the neighbour’s home to invite them to receive the phone call.

It was all fun, to be frank. It felt good to hear the stories after the phone call. No one left away without sharing what the call was all about. A few wanted to add more context to what we unintentionally heard on one heard by narrating what was said on the other. It all felt customary.

We never had an answering machine. There was no way to leave a message for us while we were away. So instead, I was the answering machine for others while they were away.

Also, I am not sure I would be comfortable using such machines. I could never convey the message on the spot in short. All I would say is, “Call me back”. What else can one say without rambling on and on?

So when I see these machines screw up the main characters’ lives in the shows like Seinfeld and Friends, I only chuckle. You know, I have been an answering machine, and we tend to screw up.

Writing should not be boring. If that happens to me, it means that I am doing it forcefully or that I do it out of habit. Yet, in either case, I won’t stop writing.

I don’t write because I have to. I write because I have something to say. That’s why I cannot write on a schedule. Sure, I can sit in front of the screen and wait for the words to turn up. They generally do, which is why I have been a blogger for around 15 years. But I cannot force them to.

There are times when I write every day, multiple times a day. And then weeks go by, and I hardly publish anything.

This reminds me of a curious thought from James Clear. While talking about achieving mastery, he says.

Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes.

It makes me wonder - can creativity be routine and boring? I hope not. Maybe that’s the reason one can never master an art form. They are always learning. The same applies to writing.

I don’t intend to master writing. All I want is to share my thoughts through words.

While working on my blog’s recent redesign, I decided not to display the date/time as part of the post. Sure, I am not the only one who does that.

Although debatable, I find that detail useless for my type of writing, and I was ridding the interface of every element that wasn’t essential. I don’t write posts which are relevant only to a particular period. I am not writing news articles that will go stale. Plus, if there’s an article that forms the context for a post, I explicitly link to that.

So why does it matter when the words are written? I stand by and am even proud of every post I have written. Short or long. On the contrary, I don’t want the age of the post to impact what it says. It’s still me saying that. Just younger. It is the same reason I don’t correct my old posts.

I have also seen people put a disclaimer on old posts saying it may not reflect one’s current views. Colin puts such a disclaimer on his older posts and writes.

Just because I may not think a certain way, however, doesn’t mean that I can’t be proud of what I have previously written — some of it is among my best writing.

I agree with Colin. But for the same reason, I don’t want to put any such disclaimer. Isn’t it obvious that one’s perspective towards things changes over time? Why call it out, then?

I accept that not showing the date is extreme. After all, I still include the date in the source and RSS feeds. But removing a detail is the best way to determine if it is essential. And currently, I am all for a reset.