If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I’m in the process of stripping away all my various web services right down to the bare essentials. I began by cleaning up my blog and pulling it into the wonderfully naked Erudite theme by Soma Design, and then I shed Facebook. #
This week is about laying all the other services and accounts I’ve put on over the years and deciding which, if any, are worth keeping. Later this week, I’ll have a rundown of all the services I have and a short explanation about why I’m keeping or not keeping each one. #
One thing I’ve learned so far is just how obnoxious it is to try to pry your own data away from services like Facebook. It took me several hacks, cracks and acrobatics not only to disrobe myself of Facebook but to collect all the various important things I had in its pockets. #
I did successfully manage to gather up all my contacts, though. I also saved my many status updates. That was important to me, because I treated them as a creative outlet. I even held out on dropping the “is” from them for as long as possible, because I enjoyed playing with that verbal constraint. #
I’m also putting together a list of things that I need on this site, including some basics that people have either asked me for or that I know would be helpful. One thing that will have to happen for sure is replacing my current placeholder landing page, probably by making this my main site. If there’s anything you’d like to see, please let me know. #
It’s a lot of work, this digital strip-down. But I’m already finding it helpful. I don’t even miss Facebook a little bit. In fact, a good number of my connections on Facebook have gone out of their way to send me actual emails of real substance. Friends who would send me the occasional “poke” have taken the time, now that I’m gone from Facebook, to send me sentences and paragraphs about how they’re doing and what they’re up to! #
I think the more of these I remove, the clearer the channels will all be. #