• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
    1. Tildes Screenless Day Discussion - March 2022

      What is a "Screenless Day"? Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time...

      What is a "Screenless Day"?

      Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.


      When is it?

      It takes place over the weekend starting on the first Friday of each month. Participants will choose that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to take as their screenless day -- whichever works best for their schedule.

      Some people might not be able to participate in that window, and that's fine too. They can choose to shift their day earlier or later as needed. It is also completely fine (and encouraged!) to take personal screenless days separate from the event if you like. This thread will be posted the first weekend of each month, but it is open for comments the entire month.


      Does it have to be truly "screenless"?

      "Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.


      How do I participate?

      You do not have to do anything formal at all to participate -- simply take your screenless day in whatever way is best for you!

      If you’d like to, use this thread to share plans for your upcoming screenless day or summaries/reflections about it once it’s over.


      Can I chat in this thread if I'm not participating?

      Yes! The more, the merrier! Discussion from anyone, participant or non-participant alike, is welcome. Though, do understand that it might take a bit longer than normal for some people to respond. :)

      5 votes
    2. I need life/career advice

      Hi friends. I need your advice. For the past 7 years I've been self-employed as a writer. I self-publish books on Amazon and other platforms and I've had a lot of successes as well as a lot of...

      Hi friends.

      I need your advice. For the past 7 years I've been self-employed as a writer. I self-publish books on Amazon and other platforms and I've had a lot of successes as well as a lot of failures. It's been amazing and weird and fun and stressful. But I'm just not where I hoped I'd be this far into my career. Being a professional artist is really hard.

      I write under a pen name and the stuff I write--while I do think is good and I am proud of it--it's also slightly embarrassing. I don't share it with anybody, friends or family. Most people understand when I tell them why I can't share, but I know over the years my close friends have felt a little jilted that they don't get to know my secret.

      I've dabbled with leaving professional writing behind, but after so long it feels like a daunting prospect to get back into the job market. My background is in IT consulting (6 years), sysadmin and jack-of-all-trades type stuff. So I understand managing servers, virtualization, networking, troubleshooting, and so on. I do have a minor background in programming, and last year I spent a lot of time learning Python, I learned Docker, I learned Git, I spent some time diving deeper into SQL. I'm skilled in Linux (and love it, actually). I don't have any certs. This past summer, I applied to a handful of local IT jobs (I left the big city years ago and now live in a very small market, almost 3 hours away from a larger city) and didn't hear anything back. I spoke to a recruiter who wasn't very helpful at all beyond saying he thought my resume looked good. I disagree, though... I don't think my resume is that good at all.

      I just don't know what to do, though. I'm 40 years old. I've always wanted to be a writer, and I'm doing it. But I'm not writing the stuff I really want to write, and it's hard to pivot. Partly because of the sunk-cost fallacy, but also because starting a new pen name is very difficult and can take years to really gain traction. A lot of days, even though I work hard and push, I still feel like I'm failing. I'm not making the kind of money I'd like. The last two COVID years were pretty hard and I didn't work as much as I should have.

      My partner works at a small company on the web development team, and I'm considering trying to get a meeting with her boss (who actually really likes me) about possibly getting some kind of junior developer position. They're currently having a tough time finding developers because their pay isn't really competitive with the current market and they don't offer work from home. They mainly do PHP for client websites, and while that's not my jam, it would at least be a foot in the door for a development role. I learned to program in high school, understand a lot of the fundamentals, and had a blast with Python last year (it came very easy to me). I taught myself HTML in the 90s, know CSS, and have some basic PHP experience from my WordPress days.

      When I think about having a tech job again, I really just envision being able to work in Linux full-time, work on backend problems, and just solve higher-level issues. Not really a client-facing position. In a development role, I really don't know what I'd prefer. Just command-line, backend stuff maybe. I don't really care for frontend UX stuff. I'm most concerned with a good work-life balance, being able to leave my job at the office, and feel like I'm learning and doing and helping. I've got no FAANG aspirations or any desire to be some hot shot. I just want a chill life with chill people.

      But I'm really just feeling lost. What do you think I should do?

      12 votes
    3. What small purchase has vastly improved your life?

      Inspired by posts I've seen elsewhere, what small purchase have you made that has vastly improved your life? For me, one example would be this Gerber Folding Utility Knife. It's great for opening...

      Inspired by posts I've seen elsewhere, what small purchase have you made that has vastly improved your life?

      For me, one example would be this Gerber Folding Utility Knife. It's great for opening boxes. I've had several pocket knives over the years, but this one has replaced them. When the blade gets dull or gunky from opening packages I just replace it.

      60 votes
    4. Tildes Screenless Day Discussion - February 2022

      What is a "Screenless Day"? Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time...

      What is a "Screenless Day"?

      Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.


      When is it?

      It takes place over the weekend starting on the first Friday of each month. Participants will choose that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to take as their screenless day -- whichever works best for their schedule.

      Some people might not be able to participate in that window, and that's fine too. They can choose to shift their day earlier or later as needed. It is also completely fine (and encouraged!) to take personal screenless days separate from the event if you like. This thread will be posted the first weekend of each month, but it is open for comments the entire month.


      Does it have to be truly "screenless"?

      "Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.


      How do I participate?

      You do not have to do anything formal at all to participate -- simply take your screenless day in whatever way is best for you!

      If you’d like to, use this thread to share plans for your upcoming screenless day or summaries/reflections about it once it’s over.


      Can I chat in this thread if I'm not participating?

      Yes! The more, the merrier! Discussion from anyone, participant or non-participant alike, is welcome. Though, do understand that it might take a bit longer than normal for some people to respond. :)

      7 votes
    5. Tildes Screenless Day Discussion - January 2022

      What is a "Screenless Day"? Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time...

      What is a "Screenless Day"?

      Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.


      When is it?

      It takes place over the weekend starting on the first Friday of each month. Participants will choose that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to take as their screenless day -- whichever works best for their schedule.

      Some people might not be able to participate in that window, and that's fine too. They can choose to shift their day earlier or later as needed. It is also completely fine (and encouraged!) to take personal screenless days separate from the event if you like. This thread will be posted the first weekend of each month, but it is open for comments the entire month.


      Does it have to be truly "screenless"?

      "Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.


      How do I participate?

      You do not have to do anything formal at all to participate -- simply take your screenless day in whatever way is best for you!

      If you’d like to, use this thread to share plans for your upcoming screenless day or summaries/reflections about it once it’s over.


      Can I chat in this thread if I'm not participating?

      Yes! The more, the merrier! Discussion from anyone, participant or non-participant alike, is welcome. Though, do understand that it might take a bit longer than normal for some people to respond. :)

      10 votes