A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

Again, taking a nod from Leo Babauta, I’ve been streamlining my online life. From separate accounts and separate emails to separate blogs and facebook accounts and stuff, I had too much shit to remember, too many passwords to keep up with, too much to read and to answer. So, I decided on the path of minimalism - trying to cut things down to just what I can manage easily. All of my other blogs are gone, except for a personal one that is not musically related. Soon my extraneous facebook pages will be gone, with only my civilian account and artist/fan pages for the bands and my public persona. Once that’s done, it’s good-bye to my extra email accounts.

But what you don’t realize is how tightly all of these are wound together. You need email to get accounts, and then when you add content or links you end up linking through accounts to various pages - which is fine if it’s all left in place, but trying to streamline it is light fighting crabgrass. The roots run deep, and they’re all woven into everything else, and pulling shit up will inevitably unroot things you wanted to keep.

Part of what kept me from doing this was how hard it was. Or, rather, how hard it seemed. I’ve hit delete on two blogs tonight, and it actually felt good, even when I had to redirect links on this blog to other sites. It’s worth the effort. Killing that extra facebook will feel even better, and then killing the extra emails will be like hitting the jackpot. It’ll be worth the effort, even if I’m still fixing links six months from now - because that temporary discomfort of pain-in-the-ass effort means it’s over, and I don’t have that nagging “man, I have to check all those accounts…” weighing on me every damn day.