Category: general

I stole the title from this post from a post I saw the other day online.

Last year I spent more than six months extracting myself from the modern big-tech hegemony, rejecting the rapidly expanding surveillance state, its growing weaponization against citizens, and the commodification of our identities.

I took my time; allowed myself to try multiple solutions in pursuit of a finalized stack. I wanted something I could expand to our entire family, something polished, a worthy replacement for the consumer-sticky coordinated offerings from the big service providers, but free from their ownership and oversight.

I succeeded. I exceeded my expectations.

Because I had so heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, my kill-list reads as a bit targeted, but it’s just by virtue that investment. I got rid of our Google smart-speaker/home-assistant devices, our Google home security cameras, Google’s closed-source mobile operating system. I switched nearly every single one of my cloud-services from corporate owned/hosted to self-hosted, nearly every single mobile application to a free/open-source alternative. We aligned our shopping to places most aligned with our ideals, which led to a dramatic 40% decrease in overall shopping spend.

My motivations were manifold, and will no doubt feel conspiracy-thinking to many. At first I thought it was about personal privacy, about data/information autonomy, about putting our money where our hearts and mouths are. And it is about those things, very much about them. But I know now that it’s also about not “feeding the machine.” The reality is that systems we are increasingly incentivized and compelled to use are busy gathering and trading on information that’s being used to reduce us to datapoints, sales surfaces, and threat-assessment scores.

Yes, I know it sounds alarmist, doomy, paranoid. I’m not really here to convince, it’s OK if you don’t see it the way I do. Maybe I’m overreacting. Read this, though. And this, too. Some of what feels like a far away probability is truly a right-now certainty. But I’m going to stop there because it’s hard to not sound unhinged.

In perhaps a more palatable framing: we are saving $300 annually on SAAS and cloud subscriptions; we own our information again; we don’t get afternoon ads tailored to what we just spoke about this morning.

I have more to do, more strings to cut in 2026. But we are well down the road.

At the outset of the prior year I wrote down some goals I’d be pleased if I made progress towards before the beginning of this year. I thought it would be good to (1) check-in on how what progress I made, and (2) do the same for this new year we’re beginning now. Let’s assess how we did last year first.

Stretch: I failed entirely here. I did not stretch more, would would be stretching at all, ever. I did not even stretch a little, like not at all, ever. I kept right on not-stretching as I had(n’t) been. Poor showing, indeed, but I would like to keep at this one and have some small hope that I might make some progress on it this year, despite not taking it (again) as an explicit goal.

Read: Here I did better. According to BookWyrm, I read six books in 2025. Hardly record-setting, I know, but I feel good about reviving the habit with some regularity. I aim to continue this habit, and am currently reading.

Cook: Here is my personal best. My stated goal was to “Cook dinner for the family at least 3 days/month,” but in the end I’m confident I my per/month average would be around 4 dinners. Not only do I feel nice about meeting my goal with gusto, I had probably the most genuine fun with this goal.

Overall then, an F, a C+, and an A+. Probably averages out to average, which honestly feels pretty decent upon reflection. I’m happy I didn’t pick meaningless, softball type goals, and I’m happy I made some progress on a couple.

For 2026 then, here are my one-sentence goals:

• Serve those in my local community for at least one hour on at least six days each month
• Go for a walk outside for at least twenty minutes at least seven days each month
• Ride my bike to work and back at least twelve days each month

Those feel good for now.

In my adult life, I’ve often been told that I have a high emotional intelligence. But, sometimes I wonder if that perception isn’t real; if it’s simply the result of my uncanny ability to learn a system’s mechanics and reproduce them convincingly. That I’m just acting. Making the right faces, saying the right words with the right inflection, taking notes & setting reminders… executing the mime vs. being genuinely moved. An empathy that’s more procedural than alive.

I wish things felt less ominous; less like the whole thing is slowly losing ground, slipping off the edge of a cliff inch by inch. This is different than some personally experienced depression, I’m talking some sort of “corporate humanity” thing; the aggregate “heart-vibe” of society. Thankfully, for me, most of the time, the looming dark clouds are just that – foreboding and menacing, but at worst a kind of slow leak in my positivity, not barring me from feeling the day’s joys (at least, not yet).

A very prominent public figure said recently that, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” To be fair to this figure, even though I’m not sure it’s deserved, the quote in full context was supposed to be about not letting people “exploit” your empathy response. This sentiment seems to be popular at the moment. What constitutes intolerance or selfishness isn’t something we all seem to agree on (was it ever, I wonder?); self-serving opportunism reigns and fomenting anger is an armchair sport. The “I got mine; fuck you” crowd is out and vocal and proud.

When empathy and meekness are weaknesses, what sort of society are we building? What sort of future adults are we raising?

So yeah, I wish it felt less like this. And to talk to some people, it’s the 100% exact opposite. They feel more optimism and positivity than they’ve felt in a while, and it’s hard for me to comprehend. I reject the idea that it’s a binary good and evil and we’ll never be able to get along again – that’s how you keep a populace powerless. But man… we got a lot of bridge-building to do.

Help.

I reject monopolistic modern shopping/consumption experience and the cost of new goods and services. Our priority will be be to simply not buy, but when we must to buy used or use available public services. If I can learn a skill and do service work (home and auto maintenance, mostly) myself, I will do that as opposed to hiring out.

I reject the accumulation of stuff. Our priority will be to possess only what we need, and sell things when we no longer need them. If we need something temporarily, we will focus on borrowing or renting instead.

I reject the modern big-tech hegemony and commodification of our identities. Our priority will be to remove our family from the privacy-invading digital-economy/public-cloud ecosystem, self-hosting our own services and retaining sole ownership of our data whenever possible.

I reject smartphone dependence and digital dopamine addiction. Our priority will be responsible use of technology with a preference for face-to-face human interaction over digital entertainment and communication.

I reject ostentatious wealth and materialism. Our priority will be to measure success by relationships, personal growth, and contribution to community rather than by possessions or status symbols. We will avoid lifestyle inflation, conspicuous consumption, and the pressure to signal prosperity through purchases.

I reject performative religion and its use as a tool of social control. Our priority will be loving all people, actively engaging in and contributing to our community, and disengaging from religion as identity.

Probably should be more and better expressed, but I’m out of gas. No, I’m not gonna Unabomb anyone or anything… I’ve just been feeling these things more strongly and wanted to capture them for posterity.

Hugs.

Know what sucks? When your parents are gone and you want to know something about the family history that is has also gone with them. If you don’t know it, you won’t know it. If you don’t know it reliably, you’ll never get any more certainty.

One of the more interesting life-facts I learned about my father before he passed was his employment history/chronology. For whatever reason, being able to imagine him doing work-X at age-Y really helped me get some perspective on his years/experience before I came around. This weekend I got the idea to document my own, I guess because I so valued getting to know my dad’s.

In 1993, I got my very first “job,” if you can call it that, working over the Spring Break week at Sea World. It was some kind of work-experience partnership program with local highschools where you’d learn to make a resume, do a (perfunctory, I’m sure) job “interview,” and then get some experience. They bussed us early each morning from the school and back in the evening after our shifts. Everyone pretty much ended up in vending or food-service, and my lot was to cut whole roasted turkeys for turkey sandwiches. I had a little warming oven under my counter which was full with maybe six or eight whole roasted birds – they’d bring me new ones on rolling carts and re-stock me so I really only did three things all day lone: pull a bird, cut the breast meat, lay a portion on bread, and push it down the assembly line. It was so monotonous, and I saw my hands cutting turkeys each night when I drifted off to sleep.

After Sea World, and also in 1993, I got my very fist “longer term” gig working at Subway making sandwiches (seems I had found my passion). In 1994 I did a short stint at Arbys, satisfying the teenage fast-food work requirement we all have. From there I ended up getting a job in a small local accounting firm as a “go-for,” where I did everything from taking out trash to filing papers to washing the coffee pot. That job I sat down at, and was easier.

After leaving the accounting firm (perhaps a story for another time), I worked like two weeks at a local grocery store as a bagboy, but pulling in carts in the Florida heat was not for me, and I very quickly landed one of my favorite jobs ever to replace it: working in a record store at the mall. I would work at that record store, loving almost every minute of it, from 1995 to 1997, when I had to leave as I was shipping-off to university. One more brief summer internship in 1999 at Raytheon would be my last “pre-career” job before I’d land in Silicon Valley from 2000-2018. 2018 we tuned-in, turned-on, and dropped-out for a year, and in 2019 I started the “pre-retirement” SMB CTO role I’m still at today.

So, there ya go kids, you can read that and get a little better idea of what I was doing and when.

This country is so divided and, I think, for “feelers,” that general sense of discord and conflict just sort of… pollutes the emotional air. Even me, I feel it; sort of like a persistent cloud casting a shadow on the day-to-day. Pondering it a little this morning I realized that I’ve turned to an odd and eclectic set of things to sort of “brighten up” that dimness.

• Volunteering locally each week, serving meals and socializing with those in need
• A disciplined opt-out from participation in the discretionary economy
• Dipping my toes in some light activism by attending protests
• Extricating our family from big-tech (what I call “digital autonomy”)

A mishmash to be sure, but devoting some time and energy to these things yielded not only personal satisfaction but also more than a little “brightness.” And it’s not small amount of time and energy… been three months and counting on the digital autonomy efforts, which I’ve got planned as another separate entry.

Love and hugs.