Winter Cleaning
I just closed all 228 of my open mobile tabs. I went through each and every one first, putting the ones worth saving in appropriate places in my notes, TODO lists, to read lists, and wish lists.
My open tabs had become a sort of an awkward unstructured TODO list of their own. I had tabs open for things I wanted to buy, articles I wanted to read, websites people had shown me on Discord, articles that bloggers had referenced. Some of those tabs had been open, and not looked at, in over a year.
The process of closing them went something like this:
- Select all tabs in Android Chrome (Tabs -> … -> Select tabs -> … -> Select all)
- Bookmark all the selected tabs (… -> Bookmark tabs)
- Name the folder something easy to find
- Open Chrome on my desktop
- Go to Bookmark Manager
- Select the first bookmark in that folder
- Ctrl + A to select the rest
- Ctrl + C to copy them all
- Paste them into Obsidian
- Open each one and triage it
At the end I moved articles I had already read and wanted to reference into their relevant long running topic page in Obsidian. Articles I hadn’t read yet went to the “to be read” list. Items I wanted to buy were moved into either my general wishlist, my video game wishlist, or my reading material wishlist. A lot of links were deleted.
Of course, now my various TODO lists and wishlists are longer than they used to be. Each of them probably should be reviewed and refined as well. I’ll need to make a regular practice of this if I want to get to a point where most of these things make sense most of the time.
I’m also working through my email. I have 121 emails left in my inbox right now. Almost all of those are newsletters that I promised myself I would read but haven’t yet. The oldest of these is from January of last year. I don’t know what I did for all of 2023, but apparently reading email newsletters was not one of those activities.
Over a year ago I aggressively unsubscribed from most newsletters. I got it down to just a few, but it seems like I still didn’t end up reading very many of them. This is probably complicated by the fact that I am double subscribed to several of these - as I also get the same content in my RSS reader. I want to keep the emails in case the RSS feeds break and vice versa. Perhaps it would make sense to filter those down in my email and set them to be marked as read automatically.
One of the problems with reading through all of these is that I will inevitably find more stuff to put on my to be read list. But I guess that’s better than running out of things to read. I need to find a better way to manage the capture of these things. Also a way to be more discerning about what I hold onto.
Reading
I picked up and quickly finished Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell this month. It was fantastic and I immediately started writing again after reading it. Honestly it probably won’t last. This spurt of writing has much in common with my other hobbies that I’ve picked up and dropped - swimming after watching Free! being the most obvious.
I’ve now started in on Legends & Lattes, which is a fun business building book. It reminds me quite a lot of many of the Japanese light novels that I’ve read - Ascendance of a Bookworm is an easy example.
Meanwhile I’ve been reading dozens of Webtoons on the Webtoon and Tapas apps. The standouts so far are Baby Tyrant on Webtoon and I Shall Master this Family on Tapas. Both apps have a kind of predatory free chapter unlock model that I’m very concerned about. I need to think more about how I want to consume these things moving forward.
Sports
I don’t think I’ve written a regular post here since the Crew won the MLS Cup! I’m so happy that they were able to pull it off, and grateful that I was able to watch them win another championship with my dad.
I must say that the team’s current style probably took a year off of my life this season, but risky play was rewarded.
Games
I sold my Xbox Series X. Current trends in modern video games are looking bleak. I mean they’ve looked bad for a while, but they look much worse after 2023 than they did before it started. Microtransactions are increasingly problematic - and this is coming from someone who has played and enjoyed Honkai Star Rail. The use of AI is starting to ramp up. The final straw for my Xbox was a splash screen ad on system startup. I only turned it on once after that - to do the factory reset and take pictures of it running for Craigslist.
I’ve taken a step back to focus on older games and indie titles. I bought a few new Sega Genesis games and I played through all of Power Rangers the Movie and Sailor Moon again. I also picked up an IPS 16-bit Pocket MD HD so I can play my Genesis games on the go, or in a room other than the living room. It has a region switch so I can play Japanese games without the Game Genie, which I really appreciate!
As for newer games, I can still get them on PC for the most part if I want, but I’m putting a moratorium on any purchases for a while.
The Journey Continues
So yet another post in my ongoing series about Intentionality. I’m still struggling through a year later after the initial post on the topic. I probably always will be, but I did have some successes last year. I hope to have many more in 2024.
Until next time, stay chill and enjoy