knocked down to the essentials
the environment is driving me, subconsciously, to choose the effective over the fancy.
In February of this year, I wondered whether the lack of desire was a stepping stone toward enlightenment or (more likely)a byproduct of lack of time:
There is a state, however, that can be experienced when the immediate availability of resources is severely limited. I am yet to understand whether it’s an abnormal and therefore temporary state, or a step to a more enlightened and permanent condition.
It is the state of satiety. It straddles saturation and satisfaction, and is neutral and colorless in sensation.
The resource that must be in short supply is time in our nearest future, which might be the oxygen that the mind needs to take flight.
My children have dialed up the chaos knob quite a bit since then, with the one turning three and the other reaching precociously the terrible twos. As someone reminded me: parenthood grants the privilege of meaning, but not necessarily the addition of happiness to our lives.
no things
The apathy toward buying tools, gadgets, or gear has not abated. Things were on sale during Labor Day Weekend and I tried to find something to fancy my appetite, and the search felt like a waste of time.
yes trips
Trips, on the other hand, find no resistance. Every weekend we venture on day or multi-day expeditions.
offloading
I shut the door to social media over a year ago. In August of this year, I reinstalled Facebook and Instagram on my phone. I encountered that the ratio of posts from friends to ads or “content you might like” was something like 1 to 3.
And this in spite of changing the settings to reduce the spam.
So, screw them. Accounts are closed for good.
plain text and other basic tools
There is a recent gravitational pull to using pencil and paper and plain text. At work, my notebook and pencil are my daily driver. I need to get things done in multiple fronts and there is limited bandwidth for elaborate or grandiose productivity systems.
Interestingly, when it comes to taking notes or writing blog posts or something more permanent than fleeting to-do lists, I’ve been looking for plain text editors. This blog post, for example, is being typed in source mode in Obsidian. I may migrate my personal journal from Day One to plain text as well.
value over luster
The hypothesis here is that the environment (the scant level of “oxygen”) is driving me, subconsciously, to choose the effective over the fancy.
Simplicity over complexity, substance over superficiality, value over luster.