I distinctly remember watching this year’s Apple event and being interested in absolutely nothing new. The yearly even that temps me into spending massive sums of money didn’t come across as well as usual. Most of the improvements were software anyway. Despite my bank balance thanking me, I felt a bit flat that I wouldn’t be picking up my usually iPhone and Apple Watch combination ready for my birthday in a couple of weeks time.
Turns out that I have more smaller thoughts than I thought (try saying that three times fast). Coupled with some nice feedback, has inspired me to publish some more bit sized posts for you to consume.
The Happiness Privilege I’ve just finished Happy, Sexy, Millionaire by Steven Bartlet. It’s a pretty short book that doesn’t fall into the same trap most books with a similar message do and become a series of cherry-picked anecdotal stories.
I was pretty angry this morning. With good reason, I thought at the time. I had lost 4-5 hours worth of work, but it still felt like a pointless emotion. It didn’t get me anywhere, changed absolutely nothing about the situation, and only made me feel worse.
Anger is, in most situations, a pointless emotion to feel. There must be some evolutionary advantages to feeling anger, but in the modern world in generally gets you nowhere.
I feel as if I start every post about Twitter with the same words. I both love it and hate it, blah blah blah. Well, this time a billionaire baby annoyed me, so I quit for a bit and then decided to set myself a new monthly challenge. I’m 10 days into “No Twitter November” and I have a few observations.
The Itch I’ve known for a long while I’ve had a deep-rooted muscle memory Twitter itch.
Since ditching my newsletter a while a go, I haven’t really had a place to share smaller thoughts with the world. It was effortless to fill it full of things that took up some space in my brain and perhaps would make a good talking point, but wasn’t worthy of a blog post. So, I’ve decided to publish them every so often anyway and see how it goes. Welcome to some small thoughts I have had over the last week or so.
Although my monthly challenge forbids me from checking Twitter, my reading stream and other social media is full of Twitter news. I honestly couldn’t care less what the business does, and what Elmo turns his attention on to monetise its user base, but most of the chatter seems to be about blue check marks and paying for subscriptions. Weirdly, I’ve been thinking about this for years and have a few thoughts.
There’s very little for me to comment on or add value to the conversation around Apple showing adverts on their devices. There are many more knowledgable about the situation than I, and couple with the fact I don’t care currently, means I stay quiet. That said, the recent moaning makes me think back to the days I used to love Samsung phones and the biggest reason I quit was ads.
I’ve been trying to formulate in my mind what I want to achieve with publishing online and my online life in general. Not to achieve like the world of content creation, worrying about metrics and income, but really what I do it for. What is the yardstick to measure things against if you aren’t really concerned about the yards or the stick that people usually use? My publishing and my browsing habits really come down to three things — tools used, time available and the energy I have.