“The birds are singing,
The sky is bright,
The sun is shining,
I’m feeling ALRIGHT!”

Let us not waste an opportunity to appreciate the days we have in front of us and those we left behind.

The digital landscape is changing so frequently I often get a headache just thinking about what’s coming up next.

While the attraction of shiny and new has always been an alluring temptation, it’s now wearing me down. Considering over the past ten years, it’s now commonplace to see:

• Services you once relied on get bought out or shut down
• Compatibility issues with files you’ve been working on… even when it’s still in the same program/ecosystem
• Data breaches at companies that obtain personal information
• The birth of the “endless scrolling” on social media, which quickly turns into doom scrolling depending on the news cycle
• A thousand different services offering a thousand different conveniences, forcing you to remember a thousand different logins (or store them somewhere and hope where you stored them is safe)
• Programs you’re used to that suddenly change and lose the functionality you enjoyed about them
• Relying completely on cloud based services only to have your Internet service go down because a construction project near your service provider accidentally cut a main wire
• A lot of time wasted just mucking about within programs/services instead of actually doing something

All of this for the sake of making your digital life, and supposedly your real life, a little bit easier.

Yes, there are some conveniences that are hard to live without now—especially in a world that’s locked down. But for the rest of it? I’m done.

My goal now is to make my digital life a lot more inconvenient so that I’m more purposeful in what I do online. A few steps taken:

• I’ve set my browser to never remember any of my logins or passwords… or to keep me signed in anywhere—no more “quick checks”
• After Evernote lost its way, OneNote dumped its desktop version for a web based one (thereby losing all the features I liked about it), I now use plain text files for all my notes
• On that point, all my writing is now done in plain text (using markdown syntax if needed)
  • Plain text has been around forever and I never have to worry about compatibility issues with any system, nor wonder how to extract all my notes and port them elsewhere
• My phone hasn’t given me a notification in over a year (I turned them all off and it’s been quite satisfying)
• Abandoning almost all online services in lieu of just a few and replacing the rest with desktop equivalents

I’m still going, but what what’s really happening is I’m making digital life harder by making things simpler.

When you simplify your tools to the essentials, what you find is that it’s difficult to create something, but easy to tinker with it. The convenience tools are nothing more than a distraction from actually doing something worthwhile.

There’s also less to worry about because you don’t have to worry about updates, iterations, abandonments or corporate takeovers.

In fact, making a digital life harder could be key to making your personal life better.

It’s Remembrance Day, which is a time to honour all the veterans and people who served (and are serving) during times of war.

While we can speak endlessly on the tragedies, atrocities and horrors of war, there’s one particular moment that gets me every time:

A truce on Christmas.
A day to stop.
People meeting each other on the battlefield to discover… other people.

What can of world could we have if we looked towards the humanity in each other instead of the villains we’ve created in our minds?

On the frontlines of every battle are real people.

Lest we forget.

Get up,
run through your day,
wait for the weekend.

Enjoy what you can from it,
dread Monday,
start again.

If we’re ever wondering why life moves so fast, consider how many people only live for two days of their week (add a half-day for some Fridays).

That’s 104 out of 365 days.

But even that is an inflated number when you account for hours of sleep.

Perhaps it’s time to look forward to something each and every day we’re alive. Then, we really will be getting the most out of our days, savoring the moments as they come.

The list of things I was hoping to get/achieve ten years ago:

• A permanent position
• A house
  • With a study built in (and globe that opens to reveal adult beverages)
• A spouse
• A child
• A budding writing career
  • With that, a growing readership for my blogging
• Vacations outside the country
  • Including another visit to California

I’m sure there were others, but those were the main ones. What’s interesting is that I accomplished all of them (minus the study with the globe, but I feel like I’ve almost changed my mind on it anyway)… and yet, here I am, ten years later, thinking about the ten years ahead.

I’m living the life I wanted and rather than appreciate it, I’m looking towards the future.

What could be? What’s down the road?

Yes, it’s always good to set lofty goals and aim for the next level, but every so often, you need to step back and say:

“Look where I am. Can I appreciate everything that’s in front of me?”

If I can’t do that, there’s no point in looking ahead because even if I get it, I won’t appreciate it either.

Let every milestone on our paths be celebrated and may we come to the end truly appreciating everything along the way.

Remembrance Day is coming and while there have been many stresses in 2020, I’m almost certain the late 1930s and 40s has this year beat.

In spades.

Both my grandfathers were there on the front lines and at the age I’m at now, after having fought in a world war, were boarding ships to come to Canada.

They wanted a better life for themselves and their family. After the sacrifice they made for their country, they made another to leave everything behind and start anew.

I think to myself, would I be so bold as to venture completely into the unknown?
To give everything familiar up?
To have to start again in the middle of my life?

I marvel at them because they didn’t think twice. This is what they had to do and were willing to pay any price to make it happen.

There was no choice—it was here or nothing.

How comfortable have we gotten where we forget that a price was paid for us to be here?

That someone is still paying that price?

It’s a price that many of us will never know.

Many moons ago, when Facebook was just emerging as a social media superpower (2008), my good friend Thomas Jast wrote an article about it being the end of humanity.

While the site we wrote for/created was steeped in satire, this definitely edged on the social commentary side of things.

Jast is known to be a little dramatic in his outlook, but his article was largely received with commendation. A few even plagiarized it on their own Facebook accounts, which became a fun exercise for me in posting a link back to the original article. Of course, this was back when people actually cared for sources.

However, there were others who mercilessly mocked him for being an old dinosaur who can’t get with the times. Again, we both found this amusing as we were in our mid twenties. “Gramps” indeed.

Looking back at that article now (here it is on the Wayback Machine), I can’t help but think of its prophetic nature. The last paragraph of the article ends on this note:

I, as a human being, implore you to stop using Facebook. Delete your account. You’ll be surprised when no one even notices. It is one of the most evil devices ever created and it’s destroying your life. You are hopelessly addicted and it will be the end of your natural life. I guarantee if you can make it 2 weeks without it, your life will become better in every way.

Yet, here we are almost twelve years later coming to the same conclusions my “dinosaur” of a friend figured out pretty quickly. I see people being quick to share the latest documentaries about the insidious nature of data tracking and the ubiquity of doing everything on your mobile device to aid that along.

The problem has gotten worse and it’s time we collectively put a halt to it.

Let’s take back our private lives by making them private again.

Medical researchers have more than figured out the health benefits of a good night’s sleep. While the idea brings the ire of parents with young children, it is a necessary habit to build.

However, in a world hyper-obsessed with going full-tilt all day, aided by the endless caffeinated options, sleep seems like the end result of exhaustion. You get there by passing out.

It’s time to slow down a bit.

Let’s hit the pause button during the day and appreciate life, rather than letting it fly by.

Let’s enjoy our evenings, rather than have them be the mindless unwinding from an over burdened day.

Let’s take a break in our day to relax.

And let’s do it with a nap.

It’s the extra sleep we need.

This year, there was a an initial disappointment there would be no trick or treating for my kids. Well… a bigger disappointment for the parent tax that goes along with it, but still off putting for them.

Knowing this was going to be a reality, we prepared them ahead of time.

They knew the situation.
They knew what to expect.
It wasn’t going to be the same as last year.

The usual excitement on the streets was all but dimmed as only some homes continued to decorate their homes in preparation for the night.

However, knowing this is the reality we face, other plans were made.

We spent the day together: making pizza dough, baking said pizza with their choice of toppings, hanging out, visiting grandparents in our bubble, watching a Halloween movie, and then breaking a piñata with enough candy to fill their bags.

Neighbours stopped by to drop off small baggies with treats and in turn, hand drawn thank you notes were returned for the favour.

It was a day full of excitement, costumes and fun.

To be honest, it was one of the best Halloweens we’ve had.

The only thing broken about it was a tradition that, maybe, needs to be rethought.

I’ve been intrigued over the past year with the surge of interest in the Zettelkasten note taking system as popularized by sociologist scholar and systems theorist, Niklas Luhmann.

As someone who makes tons of notes, scattered all over the place (paper and digital on multiple platforms), having something standardized would be a welcome addition to my life. Especially when I scurry through my old notes and find absolute gems I should really follow-up on.

However, the more you look into how people have been adapting his system, the more puzzling it becomes.

Luhmann originally designed his paper slip box system as a thinking partner. A way to connect ideas together and to think through the ideas running through his head.

His methodology is hailed as outstanding because of its forward thinking nature of interlinking notes (rather than being hierarchal) and the fact it helped him write hundreds of essays across multiple disciplines and over seventy books.

Yet, I question how many people assume that rushing to replicate his methods will somehow result in them becoming prolific academics (I also question how many people have actually read his work).

Being a prolific writer, for instance, is a matter of sitting your butt down and spending time at the keyboard. All those words you create add up very quickly over the months until they become mountains over the years.

Likewise, sitting down every night to think through your notes, write your thoughts and find connections with your previous thinking will compound quickly over the years.

But… here’s the catch… you still have to do the work and it needs to be for the long haul.

You still have to sit down and think, write and create.

Instead, what I’m seeing are posts, articles and conversations about how to tag, link, title and what content should go into notes. I fear this is nothing more than people creating an overly complicated system in an attempt to find a shortcut to doing the real work.

In other words—glorified procrastination.

Sure, take his ideas, but do so under the context of a much bigger question:

What is all this for?

Never miss the big picture of what you’re doing.