It’s a little over 2 months since I walked the stage and got my super-fancy degree. The day-job started a new project, and I’ve been stressing about general economic uncertainty and the weirdnesses of being a fully remote employee. Somehow – the entire month of January managed to float by. I’ve been focusing a bit on rebuilding the nerd lab, and Fin and I have started making some active efforts to organize. While I know there’s been a lotta progress on both fronts, I can’t help but feel like yikes – that’s it – almost 2 months and WTF?

That’s not really fair though. Also, it ignores the realities of creeping untreated depression. At least currently, I don’t have bad management actively working to make things worse. With grad school done, I’ve been looking to get involved with other communities online.

Trying to answer honest tech questions on reddit has made me realize that online communities have sunk into further and further extremes of toxicity. I see it a lot professionally, where interactions that used to be carried out on mailing lists happen on social media. I gave reddit a pass, but I’ve realized – after watching Fin’s mental state after she quit, and watching mine as I get more involved – that even the more transparent ‘hive-mind’ of reddit is filled with the same poison Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram spread.

Social media in general is mental heroin. Reading my blog feed and old school forums, I feel myself substantially more energized than drained. Social media traps me in the ‘endless scroll’. Blogs, I sit, read a few, and find myself wanting to go outside. I’m looking forward to Spring on the farm. Hopefully, we’ve got a lot to share. Maybe Fin will make an appearance and start posting.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious about what I’m reading (top blogs for the past couple weeks for me):

• Average Jane (blogs.com) – one of the few old school KC bloggers still active
• The n-Category Café (utexas.edu) – Cool goings on in Category theory – really for Grad / Post grad academic math folks, but there’s a lot there that’s also very approachable. Disclaimer: I gotta look up every other word on most posts.

Blogging in general is in a sad state now. My list of blogs from the blogger meetup currently shows only Average Jane and Tony’s Kansas City (NSFW) active. Then there’s me. But I was blogging before it was cool, so keeping it going after isn’t too big a deal. There are at least more people out doing this now than ol’ Geocities pages. At least, I hope.