Between Terminally Online and Completely Dark

Somewhere around 2020, my relationship with social media shifted. I noticed the hidden mental cost of safeguarding and maintaining spaces, keeping toxicity and anxiety at bay. I quietly began to drift from the programming and adjacent communities and didn't really notice until years later.

There wasn't a decision – it was more of a slow drift. The places I used to gather just… stopped being places, for me.

The Fragmentation

What replaced them was fragmentation. Lots of folks left Twitter for somewhere different — Mastodon, Bluesky, a hundred private Discords, newsletters, Slack groups you have to know someone to get into. None of it wrong, all of it scattered. At this point I was essentially unplugged and re-entering seemed like even more work.

So I mostly stopped trying.

I Kept Learning — Just Quietly

I've been shipping, still picking up new tools, still going deep on whatever the work demanded. The skills didn't stall.

What changed was how I learned. It went almost entirely solo. Docs and long-form articles instead of a friend saying "you have to try this." A model walking me through an unfamiliar API instead of a community thread debating the right approach. Efficient, self-directed, yet completely quiet.

Isolating.

What I Actually Lost

I didn't lose information. Information has never been more available. What I lost was the part of the community that I didn't realize was doing real work for me: the serendipity.

The offhand "have you seen this" that became a side project. The low-grade competitive spark of watching people build in the open. Docs answer the questions you already know to ask. A community hands you the questions you didn't.

That ambient exposure is what fed creativity, and I can feel its absence. I'm more productive and less inspired than I was when I was "plugged in." Those aren't the same thing, and I spent a few years confusing one for the other.

Somewhere Between Dark and Online

So I'm finding my way back, slowly and selectively.

Somewhere between "terminally online" and "completely dark" there's a version of engagement that's mostly upside: a few communities worth showing up for, learning with people instead of only next to them, and putting a bit more out into the open instead of consuming in silence.

This post is part of that, honestly. Writing in public again is step one.

If you drifted too — this is me waving from the other side of the quiet.