#write-a-daily-post-on-my-site — Public Fediverse posts

Two months into 2024 and my goal progress continues, though not at the same pace. Some goals have slowed down, while others have caught up, if not surpassed, their planned pace. Let’s take a look.

Goal #1 – Read every day

After my crazy reading pace in January, I’ve come back down to Earth here in February. While I’ve continued to get reading in every day of the month, the books I’ve read have been longer, so I only finished five books, bringing my total to seventeen for the year.

• The Universe in a Nutshell (Audiobook)
• Babel
• Beneath the Sugar Sky (Audiobook)
• Exam Red MS-900 Microsoft 365 Fundamentals, 2nd Edition
• Attack on Titan, Volume 2 (Graphic Novel)

Goal #2 – Post to my website every day

The streak continues. As of Thursday, I have posted for 62 consecutive days, including all of January (31) and February (29). With this post, the streak will reach 64.

Goal #3 – Minimize reliance on Big Tech

My focus in February was on my email, specifically getting more and more off of Gmail and onto the open source and privacy focused Proton Mail. It turns out there is also a Proton Mail app for Mac which, while currently in beta, is an excellent replacement for the built in Mail app, ensuring I am completely in the Proton environment, at least from an email standpoint.

Goal #4 – 2024 Winking Lizard World Tour of Beers

Unlike my reading pace, I’ve exceeded my beer tour pace thanks to purchasing a 6 pack and more regular weekly visits to the Lizard. I sit at 15 as of the end of February.

• Sam Smith Organic Chocolate Stout
• 3 Floyds Turbo Reaper IPA
• 3 Floyds Gumball Head Wheat Beer
• Abita Purple Haze Raspberry Lager
• Aspall Dry English Coffee
• Avery White Rascal Wheat Beer
• Ayinger Braiweisse Hefeweizen
• B. Nektar Kill All the Golfers Mead
• Abita Mardi Gras Maiboxk
• Abita Andygator Doppelbock
• Southern Tier Irish Cream Stout
• Fat Heads St. Fatty’s Red Ale
• Great Lakes Conway’s Irish Red Ale

https://medi-nerd.com/2024/03/02/2024-goals-february-report/

#1 #2 #2024Goals #2024WinkingLizardWorldTourOfBeers #3 #4 #MinimizeRelianceOnBigTech #ReadEveryDay #WriteADailyPostOnMySite

The good news is that this post gives me a week of daily posting to start the year!

Many of us post to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites on a daily basis, usually multiple times throughout our day. They’re usually free and easy to access, plus it’s a way for us to stay in touch our friends and family. Social media sites have a number of issues, however:

• If you’re not paying for it, you become the product – An issue with any free service on the Internet for years, their terms of service (TOS) usually give them the right to use anything you enter, from your contact information to your photos to anything you post in your social media feeds, however they wish, including selling that information to people and companies you may not want association with.
• The “enshittification” of social media sites – Author Cory Doctrow coined today term in 2022. It was named the word of the year in 2023. In short, enshittification is what happens when sites like Twitter and Facebook lock their users in with high switching costs (“all my family is on Facebook!”) and then keep making changes that makes the site/service worse and worse until the site loses advertisers and, finally, users. Elon Musk bought Twitter, for example, and made sure to accelerate the enshittification of the site to the point that it’s a ghost of its former self.
• Social media is limiting – Twitter has a character count limit of 280 characters. Mastodon’s limit is usually 500 characters. Other social media sites have similar character limits, while services like Facebook are limited more by their interface, which isn’t designed for long form writing and publishing. Posting on my site gives me the ability to combine my writing along with photos, music, videos, and other media, as well as the ability to format it the way I want.
• Censorship (or lack thereof) – Many times, I’ve seen friends post screen shots of posts they’ve made which were blocked by Facebook or Twitter because they “violate community standards”, though what standards are violated are never made clear. Twitter even suspended my account twice for similar reasons. Meanwhile, fascists and bigots post with near impunity, even after reports from multiple users. I don’t have to deal with any of that on my own website.

I will continue to post on my social media accounts, but you may have already noticed that most of my posts link to my website. My main writing will take place on my site, while I’ll use my social media accounts to amplify my posts. I may drop a comment or reply here or there, but I hope to keep my “doomscrolling” on social media to a minimum.

https://medi-nerd.com/2024/01/07/2024-goal-write-a-daily-post-on-my-site/

#2024Goal #CoryDoctrow #Enshittification #Facebook #Mastodon #SocialMedia #Twitter #WordPress #WriteADailyPostOnMySite