But boredom needn’t be destructive. The discomfort of boredom, even the anguish of it, can spur us into flights of imagination, resourcefulness, and invention. It can prod us to seek more absorbing circumstances: a career more aligned with our interests, a partner more aligned with our needs, a livelier town, better hobbies, new forms of beauty and inspiration.
Boredom is the price we pay for a life rich with meaning. Recognizing this makes the feeling more endurable.
Even though my meditation practice helps with this, boredom is still tough to embrace. My best strategy so far is to generally leave my phone by the door, rather than always carry it around. Then, those moments when I’m tempted to pull out my phone for a distraction, can’t be avoided.
There’s renewed excitement around RSS these days, which is great to see.
Terry Godier received lots of well-deserved attention for the new app Current and its approach to the “river of news”. Manton Reece has also recently released a beta of Inkwell, as his take on a modern RSS reader. Having tried Inkwell out for a few days, there’s a lot to like here too. The emphasis is on what is new today or in the past few days without any unread counts. Then there’s a “fading” tab for older items that includes an AI generated summary for recent posts in each feed, along with an option to receive a weekly email with these summaries. As a companion to Micro.blog, there’s also great integration with blogging that looks compelling.
My approach to news has been different. I’ve tried to minimize the number of feeds, newsletters, podcasts, and other inputs that I’m subscribed to. This is much more of a trickle and I have no issues with keeping up. I augment this with a subscription to The Economist as my main source of general news. Each day they highlight a few different articles from the weekly issue, along with a daily summary of major events. I appreciate that The Economist has a broad, international perspective and many clever writers. They also seem fond of Mark Carney, so Canada has shown up fairly frequently in their reporting.
I’ve been using Reeder as my integrated source for everything: RSS feeds, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube subscriptions, and the Micro.blog timeline. Having just one app for all of this has been satisfying and, I believe, reduces distractions from bouncing around among apps. Reeder is really well designed and has an often used swipe gesture to mark an item for reading later. My usual morning routine is to scroll through the inbox, sending interesting items to Later, and then reading through these later in the day. Opening up the app just a few times a day is plenty for keeping up.
Despite all of this, I’m going to try using Inkwell for a few weeks. I like Manton’s overall approach and the integration with Micro.blog. A good test of success will be if I find myself posting to my blog more frequently, thanks to this integration. I’m also going to experiment with also following the blogs of many people whose social feeds I’m following. This has been an area of friction in my approach. I have a mix of RSS and social feeds from the same people that often overlap. Switching to Inkwell for these might help.
After a few weeks I’ll have a much better sense of if this approach is working. Easy enough to go back to my old ways, if not. I think it helps to experiment with different tools and approaches every once in a while. As long as I don’t forget my general principles: subscribe to just a few, high-quality sources, based on my interests. There are many things I’d rather be doing than refreshing my news feeds.
The BeeStation was very easy to setup. Within about five minutes of plugging it in, it was available on the sidebar of Files.app on my devices. Although it comes with two apps: BeePhotos for photos and BeeFiles for files, I found both rather clunky and unnecessary, given I’m using Parachute.
Parachute is a great app focused on one thing: backing up an iOS device. The only trick with this is that it can’t use the standard Files.app interface to access the BeeStation. Rather, I had to enable local access on the BeeStation to turn on the SMB Service that is then accessible by Parachute. Once you know this, it is an easy toggle of two checkboxes in the Advanced Settings of the BeeStation.
Once Parachute had access, I set up a source and destination for files and one for photos. Both of these backups are then automated via Shortcuts to run late at night (there’s a clear help video in the app on this). Parachute takes care of the incremental backups (that is, only backing up new or modified files). These are my regular backups. I then also make “restore points” manually via dragging and dropping files in Files.app.
I feel much better having a backup solution that is fully independent of Apple. I also appreciate having a physical device on my shelf that has all of our files and photos on it. Good to have some peace of mind.
The office dishwasher broke and my colleagues have reverted to university dorm habits. Eventually someone will have to wash these
🏊♂️ 10 weeks since my last swim. This might be tough.
Although I am feeling better after a couple of weeks of being slightly off, this seems a bit too enthusiastic for me
⛑️ Recertified my first aid today. Although I’ve never handled more than a small cut over a few decades with first aid, I feel better knowing I’m at least partly ready if something goes wrong. A good reminder of how fragile we are and how just a small amount of training can make a big difference
Finished reading: Mavericks by Peter C. Newman is a fun collection of vignettes of infamous Canadians throughout history 📚
A nice video from Becca Farsace about leaving home without your phone.
The portable tape player was especially nostalgic. Reminded me of my bright yellow Sony Walkman. I used to make mix tapes by recording songs from the radio. Took great patience and precision. Hovering over the pause button, waiting for your favourite song, and hoping that the DJ wouldn’t talk over it.
My version of leaving without my phone is taking only my Apple Watch. Far fewer distractions, but I still have music, messages, maps, wallet, and notes. The main missing piece is photos, which was an emphasis in Becca’s video.
🚴♂️ Getting back into a routine with today’s ride
Finished reading: In Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of Canadian Book Publishing, Richard Stursberg gives a stark review of the collapse of Canada’s book industry. Tough to maintain a culture without a literature and ongoing national conversation. Fortunately he includes recommendations for how to fix it 📚
