Projects Aplenty, Time Insufficient

I’ve reached a point where I am, frankly, fed up with all of these systems and companies monopolizing my time, energy, data, and money, and I’d like to regain a tiny piece of that control. This is my way of starting down that path.

Okay… But why now?

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My Google Calendar app updated unexpectedly last week, and I legitimately had a mini crashout. I don’t auto-update my apps, but somehow the setting was changed and several of my apps updated before I realized and turned it off. I’m the first to admit I don’t do great with unforeseen changes, and the reaction severity had more to do with things going on in my personal life, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Because you see, I have perfected my Google Calendar usage. I’ve got about 15 different calendars, each with custom colours (yes, I’m Canadian and will be using this spelling, sue me) and even custom emojis at the start of each name. And up until the app update, my system worked great. You know the drill, when you make a new event, you can select which calendar it belongs to from a dropdown list, and change the time and title and other details. Easy-peasy.

(This screenshot was taken from the web version)

So I must ask, who on god’s green Earth thought it was a good idea to change the dropdown list of calendars to a HORIZONTAL SCROLLING LIST??? Truly atrocious, I’m telling you. As was pointed out by a fellow commiserating internet citizen on reddit, there is no world in which a list which contains variably-sized entries should be in a horizontal scrolling list. The length of your calendar names now impacts how far you have to scroll to reach a certain calendar. I could have one called supercalafragilisticexpialadocious and I shouldn’t be penalized for that.

OH - and to top it all off, since GCal will “helpfully” remember the last calendar you added your events to (which yes is useful in case you’re adding in bulk or always use the same one), this means you will be started in the MIDDLE OF THE LIST, so you don’t even know whether you need to scroll left or right to reach the correct calendar.

I will admit that yes, the list is typically alphabetical, so for most this is less of an issue. However with my system, the emojis now become the first letter of the calendar name, which messes with the order. It’s all just fixing things that weren’t broken, which I resent. I truly don’t see the benefit this provides users (maybe one less click if the calendar they want is right beside it?) or maybe they just haven’t considered users like me. But they must have analytics about how many active calendars are associated with each email, and I’ve seen enough productivity youtubers to know I am not alone in my setup.

So What’s the Actual Plan?

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Well, in classic ADHD fashion, I’ve got too many ideas coming all at once, and I have yet to make tangible progress on more than one. Some of these are longstanding projects I’ve wanted to work on, others are new as I learn more about privacy and security through my work. But all of them feel simultaneously overwhelming, impossible, and paradoxically simple. So as a Starting Point, here is a brain dump (non-exhaustive) list of all the things I’d like to do… someday as a part of this goal, in no particular order:

Ambitious Goals

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