I’ve done the whole ascetic thing before (ask @Father.Torque about when I was into stoicism) I def feel the pitfalls of getting too into that. to me the whole Minimalism thing is more like. cutting out the digital stuff I don’t actually want, to make the space for the stuff I do want. hence why I haven’t made anything truly inaccessible - all I have to do is long press my phone screen and unhide my app icons with two presses. but I feel just these relatively small changes are having an impact.
for example…
I spent two hours uninterrupted last night setting up a personal music server to serve FLACs to my phone. it’s the biggest digital project I’ve done in… I don’t even recall. I felt like I used to feel, installing Linux in high school and fiddling with config files etc - stuff I enjoy. I think it has to do with the fact that my time felt abundant, because I wasn’t being pulled to and fro by social media, notifications etc. and now I have rare Bud Powell alternate takes on my phone! and can let @digs stream them too, and I learned how to use a mesh VPN, etc
really good stuff and it’s all under my control and not some techbro company. not to get early 2000s FOSS evangelist but they were kinda right about the pernicious impact of not owning anything and letting tech companies rent it to you, or rent your brain to other companies for that matter