2020 liberation list

Since the beginning of 2018, I’ve been writing a liberation list for the new year, instead of resolutions. Inspired by Cate Huston, it’s a list of things I want to free myself from in the upcoming year. These are things I’m going to leave behind in 2019, things that I’m absolutely over. At the end of each year, I do a little private review of how successful I was, and every year I’ve done a damn good job, considering I also don’t usually revisit the list throughout the year. Here’s the list for 2020:

I’m liberating myself from…

  • Finding/telling narratives about other people’s behavior and thoughts without talking to them.
  • The idea that I have to keep my body at factory settings.
  • All the things I own that belonged to [deadname] that don’t belong to Fen.
  • Fear of editing my work and asking for feedback.
  • The hourly retail worker mindset of needing to be visibly productive every moment of the work day.
  • Fear of getting caught by authority while doing something weird or abnormal.-
  • Unethical companies that are really just a Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering.
  • Being scared to just start things.

scuttlebutt

Oh hell yeah, there’s an android app for Scuttlebutt now, time to dive back into this. Here are some bits of the Scuttlebutt Principles that really resonate with me:

Multimodal welcoming is how we on-board people via diverse connectivity modes (technological acts of inclusion) as well as with greetings (words of inclusion).

No one “signs up” but everyone is invited.

Our community is a web of friendships: relationships defined not by a follow button, but by the flexibility of subjectivity.

The edges of the social graph must extend to include all people and their diverse values, interactions, and customs.

Removing ourselves as arbiters of other communities, we must design platforms that are easy to re-design.

digital shabbat

I keep coming back to this idea of a digital shabbat, where I follow some sort of ruleset for low social media/tech use from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday.

Some ideas of what this could mean:

  • no twitter, reddit, pinterest or other social media
  • put phone in greyscale mode
  • use an alternate login profile on my devices, which has way fewer things installed
  • no devices or screens a half hour before bed and none until a half hour after i wake up
  • no mindless browsing
  • no solo video games
  • no solo TV, movies, etc
  • minimize discord use

Things that are okay on digital shabbat:

  • using tech for drawing or writing
  • using tech to look up information (ie wikipedia, google maps)
  • using tech to listen to podcasts, music, or audio books
  • reading ebooks
  • signal and discord to communicate with friends
  • playing video games with friends
  • watching TV or movies with friends

Essentially I’d only be using technology to make things, connect with friends, and very mindfully consume. I’d be doing restful things on Shabbat, instead of mindlessly indulging. It’s not so much about not working, but instead slowing down and taking care of myself.

I’ll think about this more, maybe talk to Adira about trying it out together in our own ways. Obv I’d start the night still by lighting Shabbat candles still, and eating delicious food haha.

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