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by yowlingcat 2224 days ago
> It seems all these sites are updating very slowly; or am I checking too frequently?

Congratulations, friend. You have arrived at a kind of limbo that in all likelihood you will end up at again in the future. I congratulate you, because you have arrived at the point where you have "synced" -- that is to say, you have processed material from your desired channels from the post to the present moment such that this feeling you are experiencing, an almost emptiness or that of negative space, encapsulates and closes in upon the definition of "present moment".

Give it a day, and new content will arrive in your familiar channels. You'll consume it, and return to this familiar, interstitial area.

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to consider directionality. Is it a good time to go back on material you've previously processed and re-process it for refinement? It will only deepen your intuition and the firmness of your intellectual grip. Is it time for you to seek out a new channel, as you're doing here? That too, is a new adventure. Is it maybe time to begin forming your own channel? So too could that be a new adventure.

And if none of those sound appealing? Well, perhaps that is even more appealing. Perhaps you, like many other folks, have finally come to that point where you ask "what's next?" to a deafeningly loud internal silence. This is good. This is where the interesting stuff happens.

If I can give you a word of advice -- don't feel so inclined to have to come up with an answer immediately. It's possible that you may need to keep your internal eyes and ears open for when the answer finds /you/.

And to answer your question in a more literal manner -- take a look at what you've liked, commented on, and favorited on Hacker News. You can probably identify some areas that you tend to enjoy exploring. Try and find folks/communal spaces on Twitter and Reddit (maybe YouTube too, if possible) that also explore those areas. From there, you can branch out, whether it's talking directly with those folks to get a sense of what they think is interesting that you might not know about (this is the best way, IMO) or following new paths out further.

But, I will stress: try and soak in the feeling and fully absorb it. To run away from it could be to waste it, and it's something that you may one day look back upon as more rare and valuable than it originally felt.

4 comments

> an almost emptiness or that of negative space, encapsulates and closes in upon the definition of "present moment".

It definitely feels like that more and more for me recently. Sometimes it feels like "I've watched these videos before" on YouTube or I find the memes on Reddit repetitive or unfunny. It gets to the point where I don't mind rewatching videos..

I've taken these feelings as cues to get off the internet and focus my energy toward the "real world", as cheesy as it may sound.

I feel more joy and direct benefit through improving interacting with the physical environment like cleaning the house, learning the science of baking and cooking and giving the results to friends and family.

It feels more like I'm living real life than having my life disappear into the ether of the web.

I can't help but reading this marvellous comment with the voice of Octavio Coleman from dispatches from elsewhere AMC series...
This is beautiful in a weird way.

To go further, when you've browsed so much the website you're reading is giving you a recaptcha prompt....you've hit a Buddhist like Nirvana.

The famous realization of reaching the 400th post on reddit for the day...
Most professional sites I see are cranking at maximum pace while smaller sites and blogs are very slow. Need to keep up with lowered at spend.