It feels pretty good.

It started with a mattress commercial—well, a string of commercials—one after another as if the only product that the whole world ever sold was a mattress.

I suppose I could say I brought it upon myself: I googled an idea for a mattress for heat dissipating, whether a heat sink or engineered for greater airflow. In my mind, I thought it could look like a web—like a aeron chair. I never found anything in my brief search and I thought that was that.

But, Google wasn't done with me yet. From that point on, anytime I'd watch a YouTube clip, there was a mattress ad(s). It didn't matter if it was Jim Gaffigan or the Robertson's Unashamed podcast, I was going to get a mattress ad. I've never had such ads before and it's like suddenly, they were catching up for all the years I've been online since that fall 1995's modem's first rattle.

I became exasperated that after watching (a very funny) Honest Trailer for Twister, I pulled up Netflix only to find recommendations for weather-related content.

That was it. That's just too much Big Brother for me. It's not that I haven't been unaware of Google's practices of reading private emails, tracking and selling data—it's rampant industry-wide, isn't it? I haven't been on Facebook in a really time long time, but I'm sure it's more of the same there.

Overall, I just would prefer subtlety, less used car salesman's plaid suit.

I knew it was time. I've made the following changes:

• Email: ProtonMail. A client-side encrypted email service. A free version is available but I opted with the first tier of service, especially with its custom domain option.
• Search engine: DuckDuckGo
• Browser: Brave. A privacy / ad-blocking browser based on the Chromium project.
• Webstore for Android: Aurora OSS. This became necessary as I reset my Android phone to factory defaults and avoided to sign in with Google, but since installing apps needs a Google account by default...well, this solution is pretty cool!

Sure, I no longer am a part of the whole Google ecosystem: Photos, Sheets ad nauseum, but, it feels pretty good. Say that I'm from a simpler time, but I just want my search engine to be a search engine; I want things to be hard. I no more want to be followed online anymore than I want to be tracked around a store by a salesman. In my day, I never liked fax / scanner / printer combos and I don't like modern amalgamations in kind.

While I get it, I'm out.

Five Milestones.

Today marks the moment of liftoff. For the remainder of 2020, there are 5 six-week intervals. I look down at my hand and see them. Five sets shaping the future that lies ahead. Five instances of action drawing together, gripping the rung to pull up into 2021.

Two or three fingers cannot bear the load. It must be a concerted effort, a unified grasp to climb into the New Year. Yes, today was a fiery and ever so muggy preview of the upcoming summer months, but I feel January's icy submission broken by a fiery spirit within reach.

Textured with crackling asphalt, the analog-turned-digital-turned-a-thousand-page-turns tapestry glides under the closing canopy of the wild woods. The Sun chased the Call away, until the Radiant could no longer bear the day's weight and sank into an amber ocean of a thousand, refracted memories. The Night beckons us. It always has—it always has been just out of reach, just beyond the flailing grasp of our incandescent headlamps.

I stand at twilight; its cool breeze wafts across the gaze of the Moon. That ol' wind whistles my steel stallion of thunder to gallop out of an embankment of shadows. I climb aboard to a low rumbling approval, the kind of purring that only a 350 or 460 cubic engine can provide, as together, we are spirits entwined; we are shooting stars across the neon sky.