Hello friends, I hope this letter finds you fit and well?
2020 has been hard for all of us. Things haven't gone as we expected, meaning that we shelved our plans. Sometimes it feels like we're on a crazy rollercoaster ride, wearing a blindfold. Many of you already know that I have a love-hate relationship with social media, smartphones and other invasive technology. As we head towards 2021, I have been thinking about taking another digital sabbatical.
Here's my thinking. At 0001 hours on the 1st of January 2021, I will stop all online publishing. No tweets, no photos, no status updates. I expect this to last at least a year. In that time, I'll be writing, reading a lot of books, visiting the great outdoors, taking photographs and working on my health and fitness.
My goal is to avoid the use of social media and to reduce my smartphone use for as long as possible.
This newsletter and my blog will be my primary means of communication with friends and followers "out there" (that's you). I will continue to share occasional and infrequent updates, thoughts, and missives, just not via any social media services.
My smartphone will be kept at home, only being used for secure messaging, and as a security device for Two-Step Verification for my cloud storage services. Instead, I will use my Punkt MP-02 phone for calls and texts and my Canon G9X Mark II for taking the majority of my photographs. WhatsApp will go in the bin; I’ll use Threema or Signal instead (email me for my Threema ID).
My social media accounts will be put into hibernation, and I'll pin details about this newsletter in the bio of each of those; the associated apps will be removed from my smartphone. I’m also going to stop consuming the news and choose instead to listen to my favourite podcasts and read a few carefully selected newsletters.
This sabbatical will not be easy, but I am certain that I can find a better use of my time.
So, that's it for this newsletter. I will publish my final email of 2020 just before the end of December, so look out for that. Email remains the best way to keep up to date with what I’m up to, drop me a line, and I’ll write back to you at some point.
Until next time, adieu.