I'm about to head out for a week or so to a place where it would be difficult, though not impossible, to access SN. More important than the technical difficulty, I find myself in need of a mental reset from my usual ways of being and allocating attention.
No big deal, right? Pretty natural.
And yet I've noticed that I actually care about my cowboy streak. It is a non-zero factor in my mind. The idea that I have given some smallish number of clock cycles to thinking of what to do about this -- whether to trivially maintain the hat with a few minutes of daily activity, or to let it lapse, and what it would mean if it lapsed -- is remarkable. I've never made such a consideration about my participation in an online thing before.
This seems really good and really bad. The really good part is that my existence in SN means this much to me. The really bad part is that this manifestation of what it means is not joyous or liberating. It's tapping into a different vibe.
To be clear, I don't think SN is doing anything wrong. It's just interesting to notice how these incentives and cultural elements are coming together here, now. Figured I'd share in case it promotes anything in anyone.