Speaking of anniversaries, last week marks one year since I started posting here on Micro.blog. Looking back to last January I find that I was then living in a different world: coronavirus was just a worrying story out of China; the results of the upcoming presidential election were up in the air; I was still trying to deal with The Rise of Skywalker and had not yet seen The Mandalorian; and I still had a Facebook account.

Since then we have all had to cope with a global pandemic (and it’s far from over); my country has (so far) survived a coup attempt and is days away from the much anticipated restoration of rational government; we have seen not one but two seasons of The Mandalorian; and I have deleted my Facebook account and gone all in on Micro.blog. Abandoning the old social graph was difficult, but I am slowly building a new one outside the evil empire, and I am posting much more often than I did on Zuck’s platform (even if you don’t count my numerous pizza snapshots).

Micro.blog provides multiple tools which make it easy to read and post to the stream; there is no algorithm determining what I see in my timeline; and so far nobody has complained about my obsession with pizza. I’m still reading my highly curated Twitter feed to keep up with current events (aka “doomscrolling”) but Micro.blog has given me a much needed social outlet and contact with a global community of interesting and genuine humans.

So I have two resolutions for the next year: first, to increase my engagement with Micro.blog; and second, to look back next January and reflect on how much better things are then than they are now.