People who know me, have a brief idea of how opinionated I am as a person and how I'd normally stand for something that I think is illogical on the broader picture no matter how emotional the other person might be with the decision and this leads to a lot of arguments or discussions with certain people.
Now, why do you need to know that about me and how does it relate to this post?
Because that is one of the reasons why I avoid social media and talking to people in general, having a blog with no comments section gives me the power to not have to worry about what the response is going to be and that freedom let's me talk out cleary. While I can do that in person too, because the whole internet won't jump on me for something I think is right.
Off-grid it self means living without dependence on the public utilities, so self farming/hunting for food, building everything by yourself, basically being able to get anything and everything done the tribal way and living off of your own skills.
While I might end up that way sometime in the future, I can't do it right now so instead I'm onto something I can do, get rid of stuff that's unnecessary and taking up my time from things I like to do and that's use of social media.
I've been moving away from social media for a while now, destroyed my facebook account during college 2017, stopped double tapping on instagram around early 2019 and tested micro blogging on twitter for the past few weeks.
The only "social" profile I have had active for the longest time is LinkedIn and that's because it's easy to forget about and just have the profile exist as an online resume.
Not that I need one anymore because If I do ever resign from the current job it'll be for working on solo projects , much like Drew Devault.
Yeah, I might delete my linkedin soon too. Not sure how soon but soon and this doesn't just include social media it also includes instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp which I've been on and off, multiple times now because people force me back onto it for that 5 min conversation that we could've had on a call but anyway that's gone this time and permanently.
The people who work with me, already have slack for that and for everyone else. This website isn't going anywhere and gives you the mode of contacting me , right on the homepage
The real reason I'm going to be able to sustain this is by having tools available to me on my local servers. I've had multiple local servers just sitting there working as side runners to multiple personal apps I've built over the years.
Since the plan is to get away from dependencies on online SaaS services. I have decided to move to self hosted options of most of what I use and while I will be using these self hosted apps to start with, I'll be moving to versions I build for each of these.
dokku setup
in most deployments so it's okay.I wish. I've got a god complex, I know, you know, everyone knows.
Let's get back to the first paragraph now, In my opinion it's easier for me to be productive when things are under my control and not under some guy with a lifetime of data on me and hence, without giving 2 cents about what people will think, I planned all of this.
Why this whole post then?
Oh this is so I don't have to explain it again to each person that has a question, Why no whatsapp? or Why can't I find you anywhere online? and also for the never ending list of "friends" who go "No I don't need anything, just casually texted" quite often (remember, the homepage has you covered)
Won't you be giving away you IP address when you setup everything locally? Most of what I build is already open source and doesn't really take in any user data other than an email to have verified logins.
Also, my IP/VPN is tracked by my ISP, google... everything that's there online so it makes no sense to try to hide it anyway. Can't go to 0 digital signature when I'm a coder anyway.
Plus, after this movement I plan on making everything I ever built to be easily self hosted on various online providers like heroku and vercel for people who'd like to use them, so then the security of using them becomes your concern and not mine anymore.
Adios.