Happily Missing Out (To The Point, 3.42)

I'm currently working through a book by Cal Newport on living a minimalist lifestyle digitally. He defines Digital Minimalism as, "A philosophy of technology in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else (Digital Minimalism, Newport, 28)." This concept has me waxing a bit on where Checkpoint and digital church might fall into this paradigm.

While I'm certain Newport and I likely disagree on many things digitally, I find it hard to disagree with this philosophy fundamentally. I'd be lying if I said that the Internet is not capable of time-wasting activities. While our expectations of the result of minimalism may differ, I agree it would be wise for any of us to consider why we do what we do digitally.

I've heard from many that our Discord server is the one thing that they check every day. I've found myself slowly pulling away from Instagram, Facebook, and other sites in favor of more time on Discord. I enjoy my time spent amongst the people who have gathered in our digital church building. I have 'carefully selected and optimized' a space that is 'supported' by that which I 'value.' Newport is onto exactly what Checkpoint has stumbled into.

What has me the most intrigued is the status of finding contentment in missing out. FOMO (fear of missing out) is real and prevalent in our modern, fast-moving society. Checkpoint requires a certain sense of 'missing out' in other digital spaces that are bigger, broader, and have more backing. Ironically, I have found that Checkpoint is actually allowing me to miss out on less that I actually care about. I was never a valued voice in the huge community of my favorite YouTube channel. But here I am able to talk about my favorite things that I value - anime, games, etc - with people that will actually care and weigh in on those things. I am happy to miss out on the broad strokes of the Internet at-large in order to buy-in to a space where I can get deeper in that which I value online.