Blog :)

I recently made the decision that I want to live my life differently than I have been. Each day I find it harder & harder to avoid the unfortunate fact that I have in some kind of way, become a drifter - passing by myself on a rainy day and barely looking up to meet my own gaze. Much of this I hesitantly attribute to the technology which has at this point, become an inevitable element of my life, to the extent that I have quite literally surrounded myself with the stuff. Cameras and consoles, storage drives and screens are all sprawled across my desk, the centerpiece in a room that is by name alone dedicated to an entirely different piece of furniture. Don't get me wrong, this is out of genuine interest and passion for the various intricately engineered pieces of technology that most of us take for granted. That said, in a world where individual tech companies can surpass the market cap of entire developed nations, and in a world where I cannot uninstall YouTube from my phone, I would like to have greater control over the devices that I own, and by extension, my life.

The place you likely got linked to this from, and a significant part of my decision to write this, is Instagram. At some point after writing this I will have announced that I'll be deleting my Instagram account, and this is something I've been considering for a while now. Originally I installed the app for the sole purpose of uploading a some of the photos I had taken. Since then a global pandemic happened, and TikTok exploded in popularity leaving all of the big tech CEOs and their mothers to pick through the rubble for scraps. I don't want to disparage Tiktok or Instagram, let alone anyone who uses them. I think that they can be fantastic tools for aspiring artists, businesses and the like gain traction or express themselves. Unfortunately, I find these benefits inextricable from the predatory design choices that have all but lobotomised an entire generation. At this point I've decided to leave well enough alone. I've seen too many racial slurs and read plenty braindead theological debates in the comments. I've had my fair share of short form content, and - with no disrespect to anyone who makes it - I would like to get off.

The way I see it, this isn't some magical fix that will solve all my problems, fix my mental state and fry my rice for me. Instead, this is the first step in my attempt to live more intentionally in a distracted world. I think most people would agree that to live a life you can be proud of, you should make decisions that you don't regret. If I'm trying to make conscious decisions free of regret, the last thing I need is to realise that, once again, I have closed Instagram only to reopen it mere seconds later. The next step is to write more, which is something I genuinely enjoy doing. A lot of this will likely never see the light of day, but some of it will be going up on this site. So stay tuned! And shoot an email to josh@impactmeme.com if you have any thoughts.

Anyway, that's all I have today. I wish you all the best, and hope we may all be able to find what we're looking for in this life, day by day.

- Josh