In the still of morning,
I read an familiar voice.
A forgotten map, drawn in the dark.
A shape I’ve been following.
An echo of distant intention.
Rooted. Still growing.
A Rediscovered Map
One of the benefits of keeping a diary for over a decade and a half is that you can revisit your past thoughts and feelings to see what was on your mind during similar times. Every morning, before I start my day, I read my previous “on this day” entries, and after breakfast, I write in my diary. It has become a sort of ongoing dialogue across time, as sometimes I respond to things I ask myself in earlier entries.
This week, I’ve been encountering a younger version of myself through these entries, and observing how my thoughts from years ago resonate today. In Episode #11 of my podcast, way back in 2018, I read a piece titled “In a Time Like This…”, written by a friend during the winter of 2016/2017. Yesterday, on November 9th, I stumbled across something my 31-year-old self had written in 2016, in a similar vein. I had completely forgotten about it, but re-reading it the other morning I remembered writing it in one sitting, across tube and train late at night – I was in quite a dark place.
It was a cringe-worthy piece in the style of a ‘Notes Toward a Manifesto’. Yet, reading it now, in November 2024, I realise it encapsulates the approach I’ve taken toward life and how I’ve conducted myself online ever since.
The core themes of this blog, my podcast, and much of the creative work I’ve been involved in since I left social media and returned to blogging in 2018 are all present in the text. It’s striking how much of what I’ve explored since seems to trace back to this entry—which, until this week, I had totally forgotten writing. Long-time readers and followers of my blog or podcast will likely recognise these ideas too, as they’ve quietly shaped everything I’ve written, recorded, and created over the years.
Maybe these Notes were, in some sense, a personal manifesto.
Here’s what I wrote back in 2016, with only a light edit:
Edge of the Grid – Notes Toward a Manifesto
I. The First Act of Rebellion
Commitment to avoiding distraction is an outright rejection of contemporary capitalism. In a world engineered to fracture your focus, reclaiming your attention is revolutionary. A first strike in the mind war against modernity’s systems of control.
II. The Smartphone Is a Cruel Device
The smartphone is a Trojan Horse. Camouflaged as a ‘smart-phone’ it’s really a portable computer designed to interrupt your life. Unlike a traditional phone, which called for your attention only when necessary, the smartphone is aggressive. It sits quietly, waiting to hijack your focus at any moment.
Notifications turn it into a dopamine dispenser. Apps are engineered to keep you coming back, training you like a lab rat to seek constant rewards.
This is not convenience—it’s control. It’s a prison you carry with you.
III. The Distraction Economy
The “attention economy” is a lie. What we’ve created is a distraction economy, where human focus is harvested for profit. Your attention is sold to the highest bidder, leaving you fragmented.
Attention is your most valuable resource. It’s the foundation of your consciousness. Without control over it, you lose control of your life. Privacy matters, but without sovereignty over your focus, privacy won’t save you.
IV. How Are We to Act in the World?
In the physical world, we often play roles, becoming the version of ourselves that others expect in the moment. This approach can be grounding, but it also erodes our consciousness over time. Our spiritual commitments must stay rooted in the physical realm.
Sit and breathe and have big feelings.
Learn how to feel.
V. Reclaim Time and Space
Turn off notifications. Delete manipulative apps. Engage with technology on your terms, not theirs. Every ignored notification is an act of defiance.
We know time moves slower where gravity is heaviest. What if the opposite is true? What if matter and consciousness move toward places with more time?
What if focus works the same way?
Think bigger thoughts. Reclaim your time.
VI. Live Ethically
Resist overconsumption. Refuse planned obsolescence. Repair, reuse, and embrace second-hand markets. Every act of ethical living undermines the relentless churn of exploitation.
VII. Live at the Edge
Step outside the grid. At the margins, new things bloom. Be amongst the ruderal species, where new ways of living take root. The edge is where we escape the spectacle.
Make the work you want to read. Make the work you want to listen to. Make the work you want to watch. Out at the edge there is an audience of one. There is plenty of time to write, make and think.
You just have to direct your attention towards it.
VIII. The Counter-Grid
Rebellion isn’t just about saying no—it’s about creating alternatives. At the edge, we build open networks, cooperative economies, and resilient communities. These are systems for mutual aid and shared knowledge.
Roll your own culture. Own your online life.
IX. The Atemporal Identity
The digital world fractures our identity into countless dimensions. Each handle, each post, each fragmented piece of our online presence is still us. It demands as much attention and care as our physical identity. These digital selves are atemporal identities.
Your digital presence is a map of who you’ve been. But online identities are harder to shed than physical ones. In the physical world, a person grows, speaks, and their presence shifts naturally. But the digital record reifies past selves, locking them in amber for others to discover.
This creates a tension: how do we act online when every post is a permanent, searchable artefact? Only speak online in ways that recognise that the you of today will not be the you of tomorrow.
Extend this grace to others. What they’ve left online is not the totality of who they are but a snapshot in time.
X. A Focused Future
Every reclaimed moment of focus, every step away from the grid, builds a new world. Together, we can create many worlds, and many futures. Between us maybe we can find one to step into.
The above is, of course, excruciatingly cringeworthy. Yet at the same time, everything is there—a map or a landscape of ideas that I’ve spent the last eight years exploring. When I wrote those words I was probably very drunk, but as the decade has unfolded, it seems I’ve acted upon them in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
I briefly considered going through my blog and podcast archives to link every instance where these ideas have surfaced. But that felt like too much effort. Instead, I invite you to click the ‘Random Post 🎲‘ link in my nav bar. I’d wager that within three clicks, you’ll stumble upon something shaped by the thoughts above.
Looking back, this process reinforces a truth I’ve come to believe: if you want to make meaningful change, you must first be honest with yourself. Strip away the facade, the expectations of the center, and write down what you genuinely believe—what you want, what you stand for. Don’t worry about how raw or unpolished it seems. The important part is to put it out there and then act on it.
Over time, those small acts of alignment—between what you believe and how you live—will accumulate. You’ll build a body of work, a way of being, that reflects the things you care about most. And maybe, when you look back years later, you’ll see not just how far you’ve come, but how much of that journey started with the courage to start.
On The Blog:
Oct 2024 | Photo 365
Photo-a-day for the month of October 2024.
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Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
Terminal Access
Ewen dropped this debut post/podcast episode into a Discord i’m in and I can’t recommend it enough!!
Incredibly well researched and produced. Fantastic sound design. I love to hear/read anyone make work and talk enthusiastically about things they are passionate about. Give it a listen!
Dipping the Stacks
Everyone Online Sounds Like an Absolute Fucking Poseur Lately
Because sooner or later, you do have to act your age, and sooner or later, you should try actually being yourself.
You might ask why I persist, why I deliberately write about things that alienate my potential audience.
I don’t have a great reason except that I am interested in reading deeply into something, into interrogating a subject and myself, into tracing trails of memory and the way art has bled into my life and shaped who and what I am.
Pioneering Drummer Viola Smith Was ‘An Advocate For The Rights Of All Women Musicians’
She also penned a proto-feminist manifesto for DownBeat in 1942, titled “Give Girl Musicians A Break!”
“In these times of national emergency, [when] many of the star instrumentalists of the big-name bands are being drafted, why not let some of the great girl musicians of the country take their place?” Smith argued in her impassioned piece.
Once you transition from thinking about the rules of the game to thinking about the person across from you, you have begun playing the meta.
The “metagame” is “all of the decisions, resources, and information that, while not explicitly part of the game, are nonetheless important.”
“Playing the meta” refers to a strategy that transcends the immediate conflict and takes into account the situation the conflict is occurring within.
The developers themselves, for their part, remain steadfastly optimistic, even in the face of what will likely remain a continued attitude of scepticism towards the studio’s future releases.
Reading
I smashed though a re-read of Andy Weirs ‘The Martian’ in the car back from Wales … It wasn’t as good as I remember it – at all. The main character – astronaut Mark Watney – has an extremely Reddit brained personality. Quite an unpleasant character to be around for the length of a novel – 2015 was a long time ago… This might be a rare time where I say that the movie is better than the book.
Music
Mount Eerie – Night Palace
Wow.
Remember Kids:
It is the void which makes man capable of sin. All sins are attempts to fill voids.
Gravity and Grace – Simone Weil
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