BrightFadedDog

I've started making a few non-financial changes to put me in a better position. I'm organising to move my work to a lower cost of living area, which will put me in a position that buying a property should be within reach. I've also upgraded my vehicle to a newer model (old car was 2006, just purchased a 2019 model). It's a small van instead of a car, with the potential to be made into a micro-camper which will give me some cheaper holiday options in the future.

I had good timing selling some ETFs to get cash for the car (and because the move means my timeframe for wanting a house deposit have been moved forward). It wasn't at the peak of prices, but was before most of the drop.

I absolutely agree with everyone who recommends an older machine and a good service centre. But I've gone against that advice for myself and have a newer computerised machine for myself, simply because it has a needle threader and my eyesight is not great these days - I was starting to struggle to thread the needle on the older machine.

Anything that's not the cheapest machine will generally be ok. Most of the fancy options that make machines expensive are not really necessary, as long as the machine can sew straight and zig-zag you have nearly everything covered.

I think just being more intentional about what you are engaging with is a really big thing, especially focusing on deeper engagement rather than the shallow skimming of repetitive content that most platforms encourage.

I've been disentangling myself from Google as much as I can recently and one of the things I've noticed is that their AI suggestions for everything were taking up more of my attention than I realised - every text message or email I replied to used to pop up with "suggestions" about what I should reply and I really like not having that any more.

The bit I find myself very conflicted about is Facebook. I hate their algorithms, I hate the constant stream of AI generated and adverstising rubbish, I hate their AI "questions" on every post. But there are a few niche groups on there that don't exist anywhere else, and that do allow me to have deeper discussions on specific topics and connect with local people. I'd love to get rid of Facebook entirely, but doing so would also mean I have to lose that deeper content that is valuable to me.

I'd mostly like to keep them to a few posts so the actual discussion posts won't get lost. At the moment the idea is people can post that sort of thing in the pinned introduction post, but I am thinking of something along the lines of themed picture posts in the future.

There are plenty of groups which have primarily photos, you are free to join those if that is what you are after. This group is for discussions, if that is not what you are after feel free not to join.

I did that when I moved to Lemmy last year. The more recent account I just deleted was mostly comments "inciting violence" and encouraging people to move to Lemmy, so they are welcome to keep those.

I'm working on getting rid of Google, but it is linked into so many things it's going to take a lot of time to do it completely.

I've moved away from Chrome as a browser and Google as a search engine. I'm starting to disconnect other accounts I've logged into using Google as well.

I'm setting up new email accounts - I'm using my own domain name so I can move in future instead of feeling so tied to one provider.

At some point I need to look at Google drive/photos - I think there are a couple of things that synchronize through there still. The find my phone service is tied into Google. All my apps are downloaded from the Play store, and there are a few things tied into Google Wallet.

I can get rid of the main bits, but I think it's going to take years to get rid of it all.

Someone else posted that they wanted to fire Bezos off in a rocket never to return. I replied that it would be more appropriate to float him down the Amazon. My comment (and only mine) was banned for "inciting violence".