I'm back!
why I "disappeared", why you should do the same, and what next
My last post was about six weeks ago.
Nothing bad happened! Quite the contrary, actually.
Right now, I am both happy that I disappeared, and a bit sad that it was for so long.
The happy part of my disappearance
I am happy because I could spend more than two of those six weeks offline, and when I say offline I mean it. No internet access of any kind, no phone, no TV, no radio, no newspapers nor magazines for two straight weeks, from the first to the last minute.
Personally, I do it because, as much as I like and need the internet, I need breaks like this every year, plus weekends whenever possible, to stay sane. I would go mad without. But I dare claim that a 2+ weeks long, totally offline break every year would would greatly benefit pretty much everybody.
Unless your personal or work situation is such that somebody would die or really, greatly suffer if you totally unplugged for two weeks, just try it, at least once. Where, how, with whom… it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be alone. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a vacation from work. What matters is to turn off every source of both “news” and “tech-mediated interactions” with other people. Trust me, it’s great.
The “sad” part, and how you can help
After a break like that, it takes days just to get back in the flow for any kind of “knowledge work”. But I am sad because, from the moment when I got back and wired myself again to yesterday, I had to work on stuff that merely pays the bills, instead of work that may really matter, including making this newsletter as useful as possible, for as many people as possible.
How you can help if obvious: if you can, please upgrade to a paid subscription. If you cannot or don’t want to do it, no problem! You can still help a lot by telling others to subscribe, or helping me (my email is mfioretti@nexaima.net) to find speaking, consulting or research work on the topics I plan to cover here. Requests for specific posts, as well as pointers to other resources or people covering the same topics are also very welcome. The more direct support I get, the more I can do stuff that matters.
While we’re here… Stuff that happened “today”
Being a compulsive reader and wannabe polymath, I have tons of bookmarks, some of them from the late 1990s, about everything. A tiny part of them is about stuff that may be still relevant, or at least interesting to know for everybody, not just me. So, here is a sample of what happened or was published on August 8th, in the last 14 years. If you would like similar listicles in future posts, please let me know:
2009
2011
2015
2016
2019
2021
2022