It is already late October, and Sydney weather is playing up. The time of the year where either I am looking back and reflecting on the events gone by or winding up for the end-of-year festivities. It means I am actively foraging through my personal journals and work notes. It made for a chaotic reading.
I spent my year shuffling between a minimalistic approach of going totally digital for my notes and journal needs with my iPad, or I ran through a few inserts for my Paper Republic leather journal. Naturally, the retrospective was quite chaotic and needed assembling notes from multiple sources.
While I was going through some of my journal entries and work notes, I realized I spent so much of my time this year on social media - X, Instagram, YouTube, Bluesky, and even Mastodon to understand where I align the most. I am no closer to an answer, but I have managed to burn myself out with consumption. I have realized that it is hard to be productive and maintain the create rather than consume practice even when I go with total intention. Something to do with the nature of these mediums. If I am to take more of the responsibility, then I have let these mediums take over my time way more often than I should have let them.
It is quite difficult to distance myself from these mediums while I try to run a business. It is nigh impossible to totally ignore them. I am learning that the intentional approach is to find mediums that serve a specific purpose and access these mediums from one source- a laptop.
The ones with an app-first mindset always come with the overhead of an algorithm. Now, with AI at the helm of each of these services, it seems more important than ever to put fences around the consumption, creation, and indulgence with these services.
Hope my sanity prevails!