near the end of the Bush Administration i got food poisioning.

for 5 or 6 days i laid horizontal on a bed, couch, or kitchen table, feeling sorry for myself and either barfing or diarrhea-ing every 20 minutes. for 18 hours a day.

throughout this experience i had a lot of time to think. and stare, at all my belongings in the East Atlanta house i shared with 2 friends from college.

i saw empty boxes, unused power cables, plastic cutlery from 10 fast food joints, and random articles of clothing thrown over chairs. this clutter, i think, made me even more sick.

so i made a resolution: once i feel better, i'm getting rid of all this s**t.

a week after my pooping strategy returned to normal i had given away dozens of DVDs, sold a huge guitar amp on Craigslist, and shipped many guitar effects pedals and other used electronics through eBay. a few weeks after that i moved from the house to a studio, loft apartment in Cabbage Town, Atlanta.

i spent the following months binging ebooks and documentaries about this thing called "minimalism." what struck me as i began exploring was the idea that "the more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you."

say you have 5 coffee tables at your home. each one gets dusty, once per week. so you clean them all, once per week. which means every coffee table you own, takes 2 minutes of your life per week into perpetuity.

now project this into reality -- you own 100s of things! each one requires 1 minute maintenace per week, or 10 minutes maintenance per month. if you own a car, say hello to even more pain.

minimalism is not necessarily an "enlightment from materialism" either, by the way. i love high quality goods. but minimalism might suggest you have one (1), $5,000 watch, instead of 10 that each cost $500. player's choice of course.

anyway, i've provided this context to explain my iPhone home screen. :)

home screen

for quick open/shut operations, like checking the time or date, i don't want to be distracted by a bunch of apps. so i stuck the ones i actually use, in the pinned favorites.

for years i had iMessage in this area, i guess because Apple sets it up that way by default. they assume you want to keep in touch with people.

well i don't. i canceled my phone number in October 2018 and will never have one again. i also changed my linked Apple ID email address to somethign obscure, so nobody can iMessage me that way either.

if you have something to say, tweet at me. i will probably see it.

first page (bonus)

the Apple folder contains all the virus programs you can't delete, e.g. iMessage and Maps.

occasionally i poke my head in here for the alarm, but one of the core tenets of my retirement is not waking up early for anything, or anyone, ever.

the Other folder has apps i need monthly, but not daily, like Delta or Nike Running or Uber. it also has my online banking, password manager, and Airbnb, aka my landlord.

the remaining apps:

• Naver Map - superior alternative to Google Maps in the Korean market


• ATracker Pro - detailed time logs of my Korean language studies


• DiscourseHub - easiest way to moderate our Rainmakers community


• Readwise - like Anki flash cards, for book quotes (Kindle highlights)


• Translate - when i'm speaking to a Korean person and they have no idea what i'm talking about

to be honest i don't like apps. i don't have any mobile games. i hate watching people at restaurants, sitting with their friends, staring at their phones instead of each other.

it's sad. makes me want to die. or at least live in the 50's. but then i wouldn't experience high quality air conditioning. always tradeoffs.