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John Gruber linked to a piece by Craig Mod on Wired, The Healing Power of JavaScript, in which he explains that when the pandemic hit "The thing I reached for: a search function ... I simply needed to code. Code soothes because it can provide control in moments when the world seems to spiral." He elaborates:

The real joy of this project wasn't just in getting the search working but the refinement, the polish, the edge bits. Getting lost for hours in a world of my own construction. Even though I couldn't control the looming pandemic, I could control this tiny cluster of bits.

The whole process was an escape, but an escape with forward momentum ... The point being that a habit of reaching for code is not only healing for the self, but a trick to transmute a sense of dread into something: A function that seems to add, however trivially, a small bit of value to the greater whole in a troubling moment.

This is such a familiar sentiment. When I wrote that working on the blog had become all-consuming it was this exact framing that comes to mind. At the time I called it avoidance but I think escape is more accurate, and not just mindless escape – that sense of being able to create something, to be productive, even while the world around you is in a mess, is remarkably cathartic.

A blog might not be the most important or vital of things but I can relate to Craig's statement "I was healed by a CMS" when discussing how he rewrote his personal website. Building my own site may not cure anything but it helps to silence the noise and keep the monsters at bay, if only for a while.

And that's enough for me., at least for now.

As 2021 continues its merciless passage I find myself getting drawn back to the iPhone when I next upgrade. Maybe it's just boredom creeping in again, just as with my switching email clients, but maybe there's more to it.

It sounds a little shallow but the design aesthetic of apps on iOS is leaps and bounds beyond Android, I also think that the default apps (Notes and Mail for example) are better than on most Android phones. Although I manage perfectly well, especially with much of my time now being purely web-based, the idea of reverting to a single ecosystem is appealing.

My main concern about reverting to iOS has always been that I have a WearOS watch which will require a degree of compromise. Fossil Gen 5 devices (of which my Skagen Falster 3 is one) received an update last year that allows them to make/receive calls on an iPhone – unlike just about all other WearOS watches – so the biggest issue is moot but there are still nagging doubts.

To get an idea of how things might be I recently went back to one of the default watch faces rather than the custom one I installed last month as the app used is not available on iOS. Yes, watch faces can be installed directly from the Play Store on the watch itself but I wanted to see how I got on with a standard one. To be honest, with the way and amount I use the watch, a custom face is really the least of my worries. I don't use a plethora of complications and have no real need for a lot of data to be available at a glance. Notifications are a swipe away no matter what face you use and the tiles available when swiping right cover most of my functionality, along with the programmable side buttons.

I mentioned before about waiting for the inevitable hardware leaks to emerge before making a decision having gotten used to a punch-hole front camera but I used the iPhone X very happily and if the images showing a smaller notch are genuine, I can't really see it being a problem. You get used to what's in front of you.