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cryptograthor

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Quit a job 5 months ago. Working as a crypto engineer, have made a couple years salary in the last year, so I could afford to take a couple months off. Spent the intervening time with my partners, and doing personal writing. A lot of the reason I was building or learning felt driven by insecurity about what my peers were doing, and I was just going through the motions at work, and not feeling emotionally in control.

Taking time off put me emotionally back in the driver's seat. I don't build stuff because I'm keeping up with imaginary peers anymore, and my relationships have improved dramatically. I know what my values are again.

Also, I configured emacs.

what I've found to be super helpful when communicating the importance of privacy to my less tech savvy friends and family, is communicating that I don't want to participate in services that ask me to sacrifice the details of my inner life, especially to companies that I feel are disrupting the health of society, and that is what I feel they are asking me to do when they prefer to use platforms supported by surveillance models, like Facebook and Google.

Hard to disagree that no longer needing to distract onesself is the goal, but the difference between "be intentional in almost every action" and "be more mindful of actions, including picking up one's phone" is large.

Intentionality in every action is not a useful framing for most people.