I’ve just come back from a nice week away in Cyprus with my family and to ensure I had a proper break I deleted Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn off my phone with a view to putting them back on my return. I’m not gonna do that though.
LinkedIn is obviously a work thing and I’m not sure what I was thinking even having it on my phone, but Bluesky and Mastodon are very much work things for me now too. Mastodon probably always was but Bluesky — especially in 2023 during the beta period — was really fun. It’s naturally evolved and changed as it’s grown though.
I don’t dislike Bluesky, but I have been especially exhausted this year and Bluesky has not helped with that. A big part of that exhaustion is I’m never switched off. Work is always there. Sure, I’m making my own bed a bit with that, running my own business — which requires me to have a presence — but I should have guardrails for myself too. Sometimes a nice holiday reset is what’s needed to see that clearly.
The main take away is I didn’t miss Bluesky or Mastodon (I’d never miss LinkedIn lol). I deleted the apps from my phone to prevent the muscle memory of opening them, but when they weren’t there, I just didn’t really think about them. There’s only so much Discourse my simple brain can handle and I should only be dealing with that during work hours as I see it.