As most people who are involved in the creation, design, development and consumption of digital content, I find myself overwhelmed by the amount of digital clutter that fills up my life. The most absurd thing about this digital clutter is that most if it is of my own making, as I’m sure it is with many of my colleagues. If I stop a take a quick inventory of digital ecosystem, it breaks down like this: 4 active email address, 1 personal website (you’re reading it now), my business website AgentesConsulting.com, My record label/art collective website Architects and Heroes, my tech blog tech:design (which as of today can be found here), my food blog Friend or Pho?, my facebooks pages: (for my business, my my record label/art collective and my personal), my twitter accounts: (again for my business, my my art/music, my dj/production and my personal) and honestly I know of a few more that I won’t even list here because of the sheer absurdity of listing anything else. I guess this is all to say that I have digital clutter which needs to be addressed. It’s honestly kept me from really focusing on things that are important to me and to neglect so many of my digital properties (including the one you’re reading now) that could really be of some use to others and myself. So, I’ve decide to take-on the task of consolidating, pairing-down and reducing my digital clutter.
At the end of the day, there’s no way for me to simply delete everything and start from scratch, however I am going to begin to document the process here and see where it goes. I’ve recently been inspired by LifeEdited, a site dedicated to living “…with less stuff, space and energy,” to start really looking at where I can reduce. I guess in a strange way the analog has impacted the digital here, since I really began this project by redesigning the physical space of home studio. I will be documenting my progress here, as best as I can, and hopefully as I result I will have much more to maintain what’s really important to me.
Stephen Ruiz 