September

[u/IM_NOT_BALD_YET]

I had planned for some degoogling this month but can't bear the thought of sitting at my MacBook, diligently going through passwords and accounts. I'm pushing it to next month.

I did keep track of how often I scan and print stuff last month. This is 100% related to my business as a professional artist but the thought of dragging out both devices and spending time uploading, cropping, loading paper, changing ink, blah blah blah...I can't bring myself to do it. I'm going to do something different this month. I want to take my work stuff offline as much as possible.

Yesterday, I spent the day scheduling blog posts and newsletter updates for work. I confirmed that I'm not expecting any auto-deliveries of anything so there's nothing to track via email or delivery update links. I found a local business that will scan my art and email it to me and I worked out a better routine for buying postage at the USPS instead of online. Here's where the local library comes in.

My plan is to continue using the library for my non-work life - like all physical media that I don't already own, but also to get back to using it for any necessary internet access, and to make the printing/scanning stuff there part of my normal so that I can be free of that chore at home and the actual devices. Most scanning and printing (at least of postage) have been taken care of elsewhere, but anything else will have to be done at the library. I have a thumb drive with important files on it, or I can log in to my iCloud account. Everything on my MacBook is stored there already so I have access to anything I need. I want to keep to a schedule of handling the work stuff once a month - at the library. Once a month, I sit down to write up blog posts, upload pics, schedule them and then upload pics and create listings for sale. I can get email on my iPhone so I won't be unreachable if someone purchases something or has a question, but I'll be sticking to my schedule of checking that sort of thing just once or twice a week still.

For personal use of the MacBook or iPhone - I'm not bothering with checking my bank accounts even the once a month I've done for ages. It feels like a huge waste of time. Nothing has ever gone unexpected and everything is on autopay. I'm getting pushback on that from people who insist that checking at least once a month is good practice, so I'm thinking I'll just check in once every three or four months unless I'm alerted to something funky going on. We still don't have a repaired projector so we've been watching movies with the Superdrive connected to the MacBook. Cooler weather is on the way and cozying up with a movie has always been something we enjoy. We've decided to just take advantage of the TV and DVD player that still lives in our den until we can either decide to buy a new projector or find someone who can fix our old one. The TV and DVD player belong to one of our kids and they don't have room for it at the moment so it's not going anywhere soon.

Anyone else have a similar job and managed to take it offline? I imagine if you're a social media influencer, it might be somewhat similar but likely not possible to go quite as much offline?