The Slow Exit: Reclaiming My Digital Life

For most of my life, technology was something that energized me. The early web felt alive — personal blogs, RSS feeds, small communities, native apps that felt crafted rather than assembled. It was a time when the internet felt like mine, and my computer felt like a personal space rather than a corporate terminal.

But somewhere along the way, that world disappeared.

The Collapse of the Personal Web

The personal web didn’t die because people stopped caring. It died because the environment that supported it was dismantled. RSS vanished. Blogs faded into obscurity. Platforms replaced websites. Algorithms replaced communities. And the open, creative, weird internet I loved was swallowed by Facebook, LinkedIn, and other engagement‑driven giants.

The result is a web that feels less like a neighborhood and more like a shopping mall.

Windows Lost Its Soul Too

The same forces that killed the personal web hollowed out Windows.
Native apps vanished. Design coherence evaporated. Everything became cloud‑first, telemetry‑heavy, and enterprise‑focused. The PC stopped being personal. It became a delivery vehicle for services I never asked for.

The excitement I once felt for tech slowly turned into fatigue.

The Decision to Step Back

I realized I wasn’t “overreacting.” I was responding to an environment that no longer respected my attention or my identity. So I started pulling back.

• I emptied my Facebook account.
• I stopped posting.
• I removed photos, posts, likes, and groups.
• I turned my profile into a quiet, minimalist shell.
• I’ll do the same with LinkedIn.

Not as a dramatic exit.
Not as a statement.
Just a quiet withdrawal — a way to reclaim my mental space.

Minimalism as Self‑Preservation

This isn’t about abandoning technology.
It’s about abandoning bad technology.

I’m keeping the parts that serve me.
I’m removing the parts that drain me.
I’m shrinking my digital footprint until it feels calm again.

A minimalist Facebook profile.
A quiet LinkedIn presence.
Less noise.
More ownership.
More peace.

What Comes Next

Maybe I’ll rebuild a small personal web presence — something simple, something mine. Maybe I’ll move more of my digital life to tools that respect me. Maybe I’ll switch platforms entirely.

But for now, the goal is simple:

Make technology small again.
Make it quiet.
Make it personal.

One platform at a time.

I finally got around to cleaning up the blog. Turns out it was pretty straight forward.

I started this many years ago during the early Web 2.0 days, so most of the posts were uncritical regurgitation of already known stuff. So, in one fell swoop I deleted all that stuff leaving the blog woefully small, which is the point.

Going forward I won’t be writing a lot, I will use it more as a place to store the ideas I get when I mess around with the various AI solutions.

I have been thinking about making a desktop blog editor like Windows Live Writer, and now that AI can do it for me, I think, I have been tinkering with some mock ups.

The idea is that it should be a Windows 11 native app, that looks like something belonging on that OS. There’s no doubt that Microsoft has been ignoring Windows for years, and that is the reason I wil end up switching to mac eventually, but until that day, I can play around with the idea of making cool Windows apps.

My design is a bit over the top at the moment, but I am going to publish it anyway. Chances are I will never get around to acutally doing anything.

If I go forward, I will probably tone down the effects to make the UI a little more subdued.

I have been using AI to code for about two weeks now, and I cannot seem to stop. Perhaps it’s more it’s like I could keep going forever, or as long as I have tokens.

So far I have been adding to my Citadel project. I can now get VIX data and I have made upgrades to the UI. The more I use Material You, the more I like it.

The next module I will be puting into dashboard will be a simple RSS reader that shows articles from various financial news sources. I am reviewing the OPML file at the moment, but I may allow the user to add feeds instead of me providing them.

For the time being my old laptop can handle the workloads, but pretty soon I will have to upgrade. As usual I cannot decide in which direction to Mac or Windows, but I guess time will tell. I do want a 4K monitor though. Maybe even a curved one. I use one at work and the curved design is surprisingly good

I've spoken to +1000 knowledge workers over the last few months.

Here is what everyone is predicting for the new world of work in 2022

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— Charles Kergaravat (@CKergaravat) November 30, 2021

Thank you Steph.

FYI: chrome://settings/content/notifications

"Sites can ask to send notifications" -> off

— Steph Hippo (@stephhippo) April 26, 2021

So, who knew? I got a new job, which means I will be leaving my employer through the last five years. Actually, it’s five years to the date.

For the most part, the last five years have been pretty good. I have had my share of big exciting projects, and I have been part of transforming a financial institution into a lean agile software machine. Well, we tried anyway.

Now that my last day looms ever closer, I find myself being oddly at ease yet reflective. I suppose that is a good thing though. It suggests that the previous five years meant something on some level.

Leaving the familiar and venturing out into something new can be a bit unnerving, but this time around I feel much better prepared compared to earlier. I guess with age comes experience. Be that as it may, switching jobs will provide me with the space to do some of the things I want to do outside of work, but it also keeps me receptible to change. As a Scrum master I think it is important seek out new input and inspiration. In other words: staying lean and hungry. Over the course of the last 12 months or so, I have felt more fat and lazy than I’d like, and that is all the reason I need to make a move.

I will continue to be a Scrum master, however, in a more scaled environment. I will also stay in finance, which I still find interesting.

Anyway, enough rambling, I have some packing to do.

I got Garmin Forerunner 630 for Christmas and this little bad boy actually supports Android notifications. Who knew how much fun you could have with a phone OS that is actually being actively developed. So anyway, when my Fitbit started coming apart I started using the Garmin full time just to try out the whole wearable thing for a little while.

So far it works pretty smoothly. The Bluetooth connection seems to be rock solid, and I get most of my notifications on the watch now.

However, I am not sure what to use these notifications for at the moment. Now it’s my watch that vibrates instead of my phone (not really, they both vibrate). I guess the benefit is that I can quickly see if it’s a notification I have to react to or not.

For now I don’t really see the point, but at the same time I am oddly interested in this, so I will keep the experiment going a little while longer.

I have pretty much stopped blogging, so there’s a bit of irony in this post. Be that as it may, the best blogging tool out there, Windows Live Write has now been open sourced. At the same time it has been renamed to Open Live Writer. Scott Hanselman has been one of the driving forces behind this initiative, so a big thanks to him.

Update: Here’s the link to the community and download page.