Asocial? A Life Without Social Media

In November of 2018, I logged out of Facebook and Instagram for the last time, deleted my Snapchat account, and removed the Twitter app from my phone. A few months later, I also shuttered my Twitter account. After debating it for many years, and attempting (and failing) multiple times, I was finally done with social media.

It’s been almost a year since that time, and so I decided to do a quick retrospective to answer the following question, something I wish I would have had to read before making my choice: what’s it like to be 30, in the tech sector, and not on any traditional social media platforms? In short, it’s both amazing, and also sometimes slightly annoying.

Leaving Android Behind

If someone were to have told me that I’d be leaving Android at the start of 2019, I’d have told them they were crazy. After all, when I switched to Android from iOS in 2015, I decided that I would be staying with the platform for the foreseeable future. And the further I got into that future, the more entrenched I became in the Android ecosystem, to the point that switching would be painful on both my pocketbook, and on my daily life. But here we are: it’s September, and I’m officially leaving Android behind, and switching to an iPhone. So… why an iPhone? After all, I’m a Linux user, right? Wouldn’t it make more sense to move to another Android-based system, or a Linux phone?

Abandoning Audible

Every year, when it comes time to renew memberships and subscriptions to various online services, I sit down and re-evaluate if they are still worth the amount of money that I am spending. It is relatively rare that something gets added to the yearly subscription list, and even rarer when a service gets removed. I’ve also found that, year after year, there have been a collection of services that I haven’t even considered removing. And up until this year, Audible was one of those services…

2018 Year in Review

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Gandalf

Well, it’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone! I was told growing up that time flies the older you get, and I’ve generally noticed each year seeming to go by slightly faster than the one before. However, this year seemed to go especially fast for me. In a recent sermon from my pastor, I was challenged to look back at 2018 and what God has done in my life. And so, with that goal, here’s a brief recap of what I decided to do with the last 365 days!

Mycroft Mark 1

I have been dabbling in smart home technology and voice assistants for several years now. I was one of the first people I know to own an Amazon Echo (the original black tube), and used it until November 2016, when the Google Home first came out. Since I am an Android user, and I use Google’s services heavily in multiple areas of my life, I made the switch to the Google Home and never looked back. That is, until mid-2017, when the Mycroft Mark 1 Kickstarter was first announced.

2017 Year in Review

Wow. It’s hard to believe that today is the last day of 2017 already. Since this has been a very busy year for me, I thought it would be good to look back at some the major events in my life. This is more for my own benefit than anyone else’s, if I’m honest. It’s always good to remind myself of what God has done in my life over the year, and what he’s helped me to accomplish throughout the year. So, as Ro (from Nerdy Nummies) would say… Let’s Get Started!

Change: The Only Constant

“Everything changes and nothing stands still.” Heraclitus of Ephesus

That quote could not be more accurate. Since the last time I wrote a blog post, I have gone through almost innumerable changes. I have changed jobs, moved to a new state, rented a house, and begun the process of finding a new church. You could safely say that pretty much every facet of my life has changed.

At the end of September, I accepted a new position as an Embedded Software Engineer with Precision Planting LLC. I summarily left my position as Lead Software Engineer at InSource Technologies, Inc, and moved from rural Northwest Ohio to Central Illinois. While not a drastic move, it was definitely a change of scenery, and is taking some getting used to.