Making Things from Scratch

To start off, I sincerely want to say THANK YOU to all my subscribers. You chose to make the effort to enter your email here and committed to receiving notifications when I deliver my half-baked ideas to the world. This is NOT something most people would want to do in the social media era, where platforms promise quick, effortless adrenaline boosts. When I name my blog “Reading Me Softly,” I imagine my readers are all patient, gentle souls willing to slow down for something deeper and nicer. 🙂 <3

Building this blog is part of my larger personal project of “Making Things from Scratch.” I have already reached the point where I become hyper-sensitive to pre-packaged things—I am talking not only about the array of processed food at grocery stores here in the United States, but also about the many ready-made emotions and feelings that social media offer. Social media platforms give users access to their friends. True, very true, like, Facebook helps me connect with my 1,000 friends, acquaintances I knew from kindergarten to grad school.

Nonetheless, platforms also aggressively prioritize content they want users to see, serving the companies’ commercial and social agendas (e.g., ads, clickbait, ready-made snackable content; a body of academic literature has examined this phenomenon). The situation is getting worse and worse, so that isolation, not community, becomes my primary feeling of being on social media. I tell myself that, even with just ONE subscriber here, I will put my original thoughts into my blog rather than on social media ever again. (That said, there are “pockets” of social media that still feel genuine and fun, see my pet Instagram research.)

Making things from scratch seems scary and intimidating. Just this morning, I finally made up my mind to clear the 80GB of “system data” on my iPhone SE (128 GB). I followed through a few YouTube videos about clearing caches, deleting photos and messages, and even uninstalling a few apps. These attempts were all futile. I felt so frustrated that I wanted to buy a new phone immediately.

On second thought, I tell myself, this must be another blood-sucking capitalistic crap. The phone companies did not design an easy option for users to clear the “system data.” It is not my fault that system data has eaten up most of the phone’s storage. So, even without an iCloud backup (again, I did not want to fall into another blood-sucking capitalistic crap), I decided to do a factory-reset, wipe out all data, and manually download all the apps back. It was actually easier than I thought. It’s just entering a few passwords.

Opting in for “making things from scratch” didn’t just save money. I fixed the issue with my own hands and earned a rare chance to radically revise my media routine. I realized I don’t actually need that many apps. Just a few social media apps, banking & finance apps, Spot Angel (I live in Los Angeles), and Google Maps would be enough. Doing a factory reset gave me a way to start afresh that iCloud back-up wouldn’t do.

“Troublesome” is only a constructed feeling that sellers want us to feel most of the time. In fact, like building this blog and doing a factory reset on my iPhone, making things from scratch can be a rewarding experience in itself (of course, saving money is a very attractive side benefit). It’s often worth the “trouble.”

Happy 111 (Jan 11), everyone.
(The number 1 carries the spiritual meaning of origin, beginning, co-creation of mind, body, and spirit!)