Today is the first day of October. It is the first day of many things, a life beyond constructs—those people, places, things and ideas that have limited me.

There is one less person among the 1.8 BILLION in the sphere of Google. After a relationship that has spanned back from when a Gmail account was exclusive, an invite-only among geeks, I return to the driver's seat of my data. Those data miners' pickaxes now shatter against a chest that powerfully guards this heart.

You can have my seat at The Cool Kid's Lunch Table; the view is abysmal.

On a recent install of Windows, I got fed up with all the machinations I gotta do to prevent content from being piped automatically onto my desk view. I'm leaning that way toward my M1 MacBook—who knew that its News app about what's now required to be believed to sit at The Cool Kid's Table is a critical core feature to the OS and CANNOT be deleted by the casual user?

I don't know why those who are circling the drain have to shout how wonderful it is to be dying and say I'm crazy for not jumping in with their lot.

Thus, I have installed Linux Mint 20.3 with Cinnamon as its window manager. This edition is a little older with its release date back on January 5, 2022, the last one based on Ubuntu's Focal Fossa.

That said, it is an LTS that also runs on my converted Chromebook print server that's stable: when I shut it down to move to a new house, it had 87 days of uptime.

I purchased a year of Tutanota to host my custom domain email. They went up 3x the price, but there remains a good value at $36.

My phone is missing its mama, but in time I'll blank it and remove Google with ADB...not that I'm wholly apart from Google's services. I am listening to Deckard's Blues from a music livestream.

When I began this whole process yesterday, I sang along with a live album I've never heard before, Simon & Garfunkel's Concertgebouw Amsterdam (1970). Funny how those songs have meant so very much in my life as the stories were written.

Now the years are rolling by me
They are rockin' evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I'll be, that's not unusual
No, it isn't strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same
After changes we are more or less the same

Simon & Garfunkel, The Boxer (extended lyrics)

A great feature in this moment of digital pruning and renewal is that I got to consider the value of things. Yeah, I still have active memberships, but to what end? Does it matter? Am I building anything by the end of their subscriptions?

There is substantive value in an analog life. I don't know if anyone sees this, paper-based tech mirrors a clearer portrait. What is the digital world? How does it change our perspective on the world around us?

The digital world exists solely on the whims of an electric charge. That world is created and then blinks off existence on whims promulgated by light switch logic. On the intimacy of an individual level, a person is no longer something spatially existing, but rather just a two-dimensional avatar fixation. If we so choose, we can flip their light switch off; they no longer exist...

Blocked.

Canceled.

Aren't these the words of these final times?

However, there's a problem with that approach: "I'm still alive."