No updates here for a long time. And 2023 has ended, so why not to journal some results. Then I saw others' posts online and realized I would be writing roughly the same, and for some reason, it stopped me. Then, having found no rationale why not to, I thought it still was worth writing about the disenchantment which feels now not transient but getting deeply rooted.

It probably all began during the pandemic, with disenchantment in governments and states in general. Then it was affirmed and intensified due to the war. This year, I keenly felt it from social media and from the internet. At some point, I realized that I gain no interest and knowledge reading my RSS subscriptions, with rare exceptions. I didn't renew my FeedBin and didn't notice much difference. I did transfer a couple of subscriptions to email and that's it. I tried to read books and listen to audio versions more. Not a strong habit yet but feels much better in comparison.

Also, I decided to try to transform email into what it used to be. You receive a letter, sometimes a long one, and you read it with interest, instead of an impersonal stream of spam in the form of updates for the sake of updates and news for attention-grabbing. Simultaneously, I took a break from Twitter, which was the only social media I used. In the beginning, I tried moving to Mastodon, found no one there, and eventually quit both. But to feel all this more vividly, I had to return to Twitter in December to sense this contrast. What a place!

At the same time, there are no hopes and expectations for 2024. As Dan The Stranger said, at best, it will be average. The only thing I find interesting to follow now is Argentina, but as they reminded us recently on the Reason podcast: all politicians are garbage and will disappoint you in the end.

So how about your 2023 and 2024 plans? Let's start a correspondence?