Instagram Destroys Our Planet

June 21, 2019
2 min read

I’ve been reading an article on how Santorini became an attraction for Instagram influencers. People go there just to take a photo. Because the place is so photogenic, it looks like it was artificially made for beautiful filters and Instagram.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been there, but heard from a lot of people that it’s mostly unbearable. There are just too many people. I remembered that I felt that way before. Last summer we’ve decided to make a trip to Prague, as I’ve heard only good things and never been there. We’ve drove all the way there, stopping in Krakow and Warsaw in the meantime. 

I liked the architecture and the look of the city. But I disliked the trip overall. There is just too many people. You don’t enjoy walking through the city, because everywhere you turn, there are millions of tourists with phones and cameras. Some by themselves, some in groups.

The other example was in Thailand. There are islands which are destroyed by people. They have to be closed off for tourist in order to fix everything. If you think about it – it’s miserable.

There is an idea to limit the amount of people that can visit an attraction in a day, as an example. I know this limits the freedom of travel, but I’m more and more in the agreement with the proponents of such an approach. 

I love spontaneous trips and going somewhere, my favourite thing is to rent a car and go somewhere. In the above mentioned trip to Prague, we didn’t even book the hotels, we’ve decided during lunch that we wanted to go and just drove. We’ve booked hotels along the way. But if this will give me the ability to enjoy new places more, I will be happy to plan my trips in advance.

The Year of Less

May 30, 2019
3 min read

I’ve had a moment recently when I realized that there is too much stuff going on and I can’t keep up with everything. For example, when I was studying I’ve had a lot more free time, commuting took a lot more, so I’ve started listening to a lot of podcasts, following a lot of people on Twitter and Instagram, reading a lot of news (mostly tech related) and saving a lot of articles to the Pocket, watching all the most popular TV shows. This was fine, until I’ve had full-time job and a serious relationship.

One of the biggest problems was – I’ve always been a completionist, so just cutting everything out was hard. So I’ve started bit by bit, for example, I’ve started with podcast episode curation, not unsubscribing from the podcast, but just deleting the episodes that I wasn’t interested in.

I’m much more likely to unsubscribe from someone on Twitter or Instagram. If someone posts too much or I don’t enjoy photos they take, I will unsubscribe, regardless of our relationship. I also use Mute function on both social media. I’ve muted everything related to Trump on Twitter – it’s just too much negativity, without any upside.

I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t be able to watch every episode of every TV show in a timely manner, so I’ve picked some favorites that I watch when they get out (mostly to avoid spoilers) and I try to watch TV shows that were discontinued first, so the number of shows I watch decrease.

I’m also realizing that I won’t able to read and watch everything that I save for later soon, so I just know, that when I have some free time, I can open Pocket and find something to read or watch, I can even choose something appropriate for the amount of time I have free.

All of this, ironically, was inspired by a podcast – Cortex. On this show I’ve heard about a great idea – yearly themes. So I’ve decided to make this one – The Year of Less. I’m going further now and cleaning up the physical and digital mess I’ve made over the years. I’m going through my password manager and deleting accounts on sites I’ve used ones or don’t even remember exist. I’m going through the apps on my phone and deleting those that I’ve never used and probably will never use. I’m also thinking about places where I put my files, most importantly photos – I’ve deleted them from a couple of services, including Google Photos.

What started as an attempt to leave a more healthy life, psychologically, ended up being a pretty major change in my life and my thinking. I feel like this theme will be the one I’ll focus more in future posts.