Bespoke social media
Last year, I launched One Photo Club, a free social community for people who love travel (come join us!). The site centers around sharing photos from your previous trips to various prompts, so it serves as a remembering practice for participants as part of a concept I call Return On Adventure (think ROI but for your adventures).
It’s a free, ad-free, algo-free, bot-free, influencer-free, no-bad-vibes community focused solely on travel and outdoor adventures, which is (whew boy!) a welcome respite. And it’s way more fun to scroll through your own fun memories than the shitposts of others.
Last month, I launched a “re-imagined” version of One Photo Club, which is fediverse-friendly and overall more social than the original version. That means that we’ll continue to have a travel-photos-only feed, plus be able to interact with the wider social web community.
I’m also relaunching #OnePostcard, a monthly postcard exchange for travelers who are traveling in the same month. (The April cohort starts in just a couple days if you see this in time)
As I’ve come to really enjoy One Photo Club, it’s scratched my social media itch enough that I’ve mostly abandoned Twitter and Instagram. I currently have 5-minute-per-day app limits for each and no longer find myself defaulting to either when I’m bored.
The more distance I have, the more obvious it is that these don’t serve our lives the way they should. I haven’t written much about this yet, but boy…I think we’ve made a mistake in how/what we consume on social media.
The social web
So I’m also trying to get back to what made the social web so magical before the big social media advertising platforms emerged. That means thinking about how to (1) write here more, (2) build and maintain connections with interesting people online, and (3) keep track of friends that primary post on the social media platforms I’ve mostly abandoned.
I’m currently working on a major revision of this site. I recently made a “digital garden” of public notes available at rscottjon.es, and also starting sharing a few interesting links at rsjon.es.
I’m continuing to slowly build out #GoQuesting, a directory of travel quests that people can adopt. I have a lot more planned for Go Questing, but my first task is putting together some mini-guides for the 1500+ quest ideas I already have listed. This week I’m dealing with some errors that popped up unexpectedly when I moved hosting accounts, so if something seems off, please let me know as I get it all fixed back up.
Travel
After spending nearly a month in Portugal in December, we’re now planning trips for the remainder of the year. Our two big international trips for the year will be campervanning around Norway and finally getting to the Galapagos, after several canceled attempts during covid.
But most of our trips this year will be road trips from Phoenix. Our next trip is a road trip centered around several days the French Quarter Fest in New Orleans, with additional stops at various national park units and questing objectives in LA, MS, MO, IL. We’re looking at scheduling other roadtrips to Yellowstone and Seattle/Olympic. If you “know me online” you can add yourself to my let’s meet up list that I consult when making a new itinerary.
Caregiving
Last but not least, I’m spending a lot of time at happy hour with my aging dad—who is now battling bladder and three other cancers—and in managing…well, his entire life, basically. Even with having him in an assisted living facility, I still find myself spending 15-20 hours a week on this.