A Small Web July, Because Holy Shit!

When I feel the pressure of this crazy world getting to the point where it feels like it’s too much, I tend to lean into the things I love. Whether it’s writing, cooking, getting outside, watching good television, or listening to music, these are the things that help me feel grounded.
I’ve been seeing posts about “Small Web July”, a concept pushed out by small cypress, which seeks to help us all disconnect from the big web, you know Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and so on. This also includes changing how we digest news, getting away from the big sites and curating RSS feeds instead. This feels needed more than ever right now, so I'm leaning into it.
So, for the next month I will:
- Severely Limit Social Media - My exception to this rule is Mastodon, since it doesn’t rely on algorithms. Follow me at @skoobz@social.lol, if you’re so inclined. Otherwise, I’m limiting myself for the rest of the month. I’ve already been using an app called Opal to set up downtime from social media. But, I think I’m just going to delete Facebook and Bluesky off my phone, only interacting with them through a browser off my phone. The former is mostly political bitching for me and the latter is dead anyway, at least for me. Both just waste space and resources on my device. Further, for what remains, I’m letting Opal take control, as you can tie it to the iPhone’s focus modes, so Work for example, and have Opal activate downtime for any other problematic apps I have.
- RSS, RSS, RSS - If you’re not old school web like me or just never got involved yourself with RSS when the web was younger, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and is a way to view content from websites in a clutter-free and organized manner. For example, for news articles, I’m only following Politico and NPR currently. Everything shows up as it goes live and is displayed chronologically. Even YouTube has RSS feeds for profile pages, making it a great way to consume content from there without sucking you into the website itself. I use the app Reeder for this, but there are plenty of options out there.
- Writing/Maintaining my website - What I’m doing now. This is my brain exercise of choice right now. It allows me to think and flesh things out into the open. And if you have a crisis, trust me, a weblink is so much nicer to get than word vomit in someone’s text messages. This is cathartic. But, it also allows me to create and build, which I feel the need to do.
- Build out my media diet - I’ve talked a lot about this lately, but it needs to be done and this is a good excuse. This includes TV shows, movies, comedy specials, music, reading, and using my MasterClass subscription. Plenty here to do that doesn’t involve doomscrolling and brain rot.
So, how am I going to achieve this?:
- Pen & Paper - Physical writing slows my brain down in a good way. I just elaborated about this earlier today so I won’t go too much into it, but I’m getting there.
- Creating - Cooking, writing, photography, or anything else that allows me to start at nothing and end with something. Those things give me more to talk about, which hopefully leads to more writing.
- More actual connections - I need to see people more. I’m more than willing to chat over coffee, a drink, or a meal. I’m easy to find and typically bored.
- Exercise - Mostly walking, but I’ll probably get back to doing Apple Fitness strength workouts as well. Anything to help me not feel like a lazy potato. I used to take three-mile walks when bored. What’s stopping me now?
Come August, I hope I’ll feel a mental health boost. I’ve taken sabbaticals from Facebook before and felt better about it, so I know it works. I need to do this for myself, but I hope others will join me as well. Let me know if you do.