Leaderboard

That was a great read @Boo thanks for sharing. I don't think I could share so intimately the details of my life as openly as I would have when I used to post here, but I'll give it a go. Basically, a lot happened in my life during and soon-after pandemic. A non-exhaustive list: My dad died. My wife and I got married. We bought a house in the suburbs. So I had to learn to drive a car. We bought our first car. Had our first son. Then our second. Changed jobs. Changed jobs again. Made friends. Lost friends. Lost touch with people who will always be my friends. Reconnected with people who have been my oldest friends. Disconnected from social media. Disconnecting from social media was a big one for me, actually. My phone is still logged in on Discord, Instagram, and all the big sites. But I basically use social media reactively; I stopped creating content after my first child was born. My YouTube channel has a video up from the hospital as my final upload. My Instagram might get the annual Santa Photo with my sisters but my wife and I intentionally don't have any pictures of our children online. We stopped sharing all updates of our lives like we did pre-pandemic so now the world doesn't get to know what I ate for lunch. Social media, and even this website, all feels too public these days. There was a sense is anonymity back in the day which is lost on the modern web. My career is actually also in software (Android app development) so maybe I'm seeing how the sausage is made too closely. I get to see how analytics data ties everything you do to your public identity. And, like you said, the political climate is so full of hateful rhetoric that I wouldn't want to make it easier for anyone to target me or my family in any way. I'm caught up on that last sentence and my usage of "you". I know I started this post as a direct response to @Boo, but the is a public forum. Others are able to read and respond to this response. It feels weirdly rude to continue directing my comment at only one person. I would have navigated this so confidently when I was active on this website all those decades ago. But, then again, I was always so confidently incorrect.