23:48
🎵 listening to - Mushishi & Mushishi Zoku Shou OST - All Ending Themes by Toshio Masuda 蟲師
The same way you "spark joy" when you throw away things and clear the physical space, the same can be said about your virtual spaces.
I return often to one of visakan's tweets:
I have to periodically cleanse my digital spaces, change up the interfaces, the wallpaper that greets me, the placement of my social media apps, else - I may not always notice it - but then I will open and close my devices with an underpinning dreariness that may dampen my mood (this isn't very healthy).
Similarly in this newsletter ritual for our times, the author cites a ritual for cleansing the negativity in your body after using your device, weaving spirituality with technology:
Turn off the phone (or at the very least, put it in sleep mode.) Put the appliance on a table, perhaps near a candle. Locate your fire, and source of smoke (incense, cedar, rosemary, or another kind of dried bundle.) Set your intention to clear the environment. Light your herbs and begin tracing a circle around your device. Image you are drawing a circle of protection. Do this three times, first moving in a counterclockwise direction, to pull old energy out, and then another three times, to pull fresh energy in. The whole time, keep your intention to refresh and renew in mind.
Something I do is change my obsidian theme frequently because as much as I am in love with a certain theme at one point of time, in a week I could be falling in love with another. It happens when I get "tired" with a certain theme.
Currently I'm really into Spectrum - the colors! 💖
I have also set a weekly reminder to "spring-clean" my Gallery (god knows the amount of screenshots I have) and a biweekly reminder to change my wallpapers.
I go back to this apt quote again, which sums up my feelings on being too stagnant. You can read the adjacent post here: Collection of (digital) somatic memoryCollection of (digital) somatic memory
somatic (adj) - of, relating to, or affecting the body
During this year of the pandemic, our bodies grow heavy with inertia and limited movement while our minds, nonetheless, traverse multiple cyber-geographies in the nooks and crannies of web interfaces or infinite streams of information.
In this parallel place, how are we embodied?
Here's a list of ways i get entangled with my devices and its digital spaces:
when i ctrl-c, i feel like i'm holding onto something, and i need to release...).
"… Been working hard on many exciting things but virtually all of them require staring into glowing rectangles for hours on end, sitting in one spot, brain churning but physically, stagnant—when the screen goes dark, the work is locked within, invisible. It feels like an ominous message for our time: ideas everywhere, endless networks—the feeling of progress, but where is it? Does energy expended in digital channels amount to as much as energy expended within physical manifestations—encounters, objects, printed books, gatherings? The invisibility of digital work—unless conjured by a power button, a search, a click, all made for personal, private consumption—feels like a vast void. It’s an interesting void that I love to prod at. But a void nonetheless." — Willa