With the release of iOS 8—well, 8.0.2—I’m dipping a toe back into self-tracking. Now that there’s a way to view information about myself, and do stuff with it that doesn’t require pulling it from twelve different apps, I feel like I can get a better picture of my activity and sleep than I was able to get before. That is, when the app works right without losing data. I was bitten by this bug on Saturday, and lost the data on a 15,000+ step walk. My body remembers, at least.

I’m tracking all of this data with my iPhone, rather than a separate fitness tracker. The apps in my toolkit are Pedometer++ for step tracking, MyFitnessPal for food, MotionX 24/7 for sleep tracking, Centered for meditation, FitStar for workouts, UP Coffee to track caffeine consumption, and the Jawbone UP app as a dashboard and to get insights. I don’t actually need Pedometer++, but I use it because it has a good, if a bit oversized, Notification Center widget. Also, UP Coffee doesn’t use HealthKit (yet), but works with the main UP app.

Right now, I’m still in “collection” mode. I want a sense of my daily routines, and standard habits before I try to shake things up. Anything I was already doing to reach my health goals, such as trying to walk 10,000 steps, or keep under 1800 calories is still ongoing as I collect this data, of course. What will be important is determining what I do with all of this information. If, after a week or two, I don’t feel like something needs to be changed, I can drop tracking that particular metric. What I would love out of all this collection is something Matt Birchler hit on a while back. I want to know when I’m trending the wrong way.

There’s nothing in HealthKit that will have it keep me informed out of the box. A standardized platform for health tracking is good to have, if only to build out services that can provide the Skinner Box style reinforcement that actually changes habits—at least for some people. As I’ve said in other essays on self-tracking/Quantified Self, having a goal in mind is more important than just collecting data. You don’t need a fitness tracker, in hardware or software, to lose weight, get in shape, or whatever your goal is. You just need to do the work. Knowing can keep you going, but you still have to do the work.

So, a new social network has been getting a lot of buzz. It’s called Ello, and with Facebook’s real name policy raising hackles—and rightfully so—it’s been getting a fair amount of buzz. So many people are unhappy with the existing social network offerings, that Ello seems like a breath of fresh air. Especially since, it has no ads and collects no data.

One thing we all need to learn: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Ello seems to be no exception.

The first thing I read about Ello was enough to make me suspicious. It turns out that Ello profiles and all user data, as stated in their privacy policy are 100% public.

Ello is a platform built for posting and sharing public content. You should assume that anything you post on Ello other than private messages will be accessed by others.

Search engines will be able to see the content you post. Content you post may be copied, shared, or re-posted on Ello and on other parts of the internet in ways that you and we cannot control.

If you’re looking for a private place to talk and share with people you can trust, Ello is not your place. For anyone leaving Facebook because they’re worried they’ll be outed to friends, family, or employers, Ello is the last place you’ll want to go. They don’t go out of their way to say it, though I will give them points for writing their privacy policy in plain English. (N.B. this may be out of date, as I have heard from that you can set a “private” profile on Ello. As I lack an account, I cannot verify if this is true, or to what extent Ello considers a “private” account to be private.) As a number of Facebook exiles in this controversy are leaving for privacy, I imagine Ello will have a bit of trouble on their hands once this becomes public knowledge. In the meantime, caveat emptor.

Andy Baio is skeptical of Ello for other reasons, and they all have to do with money.

Unless they have a very unique relationship with their investors, Ello will inevitably be pushed towards profitability and an exit, even if it compromises their current values. Sometimes, this push comes subtly in the form of advice and questions in emails, phone calls, and chats over coffee. Sometimes, as more direct pressure from the board. (FreshTracks’ Managing Director sits on their board.) Or, if things go bad, by replacing the founders.

Paul Budnitz, Ello’s founder seems to have a more cavalier take on the matter. He claims that it’s “silly” to think its investors, currently FreshTracks Capital, will ever pressure them to renege on their promises to their users. I don’t think he knows how VC works. Once that $435,000 in seed capital runs out, he and his co-founders, will have to give up a little more of their stake in the company. The pressure will be ramped up to make a return, or to sell out. Right now, there’s no monetization strategy, just the promise of “premium features.” In the meantime, they have runway, and they have user growth. It’s a regular pattern among companies in the social space.

I know we’re all desperate for another place to call home on the Internet that treats users like real human beings instead of eyeballs and data. I’m no fan of Twitter or Facebook. Hell, I even signed up for App.Net, which still could have potential. However, I’m not desperate enough to jump onto the first ship that passes by, especially one that’s not only untested, but raises a ton of red flags. In short, no monetization strategy, questionable privacy policies, and no clear plans for the future. The more I learn, the more Ello looks like a shit sandwich, served on an artisanal brioche bun.

Mornings, to me, should not exist. When left to my own devices, as I’ve discovered multiple times, I will easily slip into a nocturnal mode. During my “lost year” I would find myself waking up at four PM, eating breakfast, going to my part-time job for three hours, and staying up until the crack of dawn. Even once I was working full-time, normal human hours, I’ve often delayed getting out of bed until the last possible moment, cramming a morning routine into as little as ten minutes. It helped when I lived above a coffee shop, though I would still get in a few minutes late most days.

For the past few days, I’ve started getting up on time and discovering the pleasures of leisurely, early mornings. I don’t know, specifically, what changed. I go to bed by 11, but I’ve done that most weeknights for the last two years. I track my sleep with Sleep Cycle, which I’ve had an on again, off again relationship with. I don’t sleep in a pitch dark room—we still need to buy curtains for the new apartment—and I don’t use magnesium citrate, though I’m considering it. My working theory, however, is that what gets me up in the morning is coffee.

I know coffee is what keeps me up in the morning. Without coffee, I can’t function for a few hours in the morning, no matter how well I slept. Since moving to New York, I’ve been self-medicating the expensive way, with a morning cup picked up before going into the office. I’m not a finicky coffee snob, though I have standards. Dunkin’ Donuts will do when it’s the only thing available (which it is, in my neighborhood). For a time, I was a regular at a fancy little shop on 37th Street in the Fashion District that made the third best cup of coffee I’d had in the city, [1] though now it’s closed. However, my usual choice is a Starbucks Blonde Roast—readily available, and tastes better than the standard cup. And I take it black.

In the back of my mind, I always knew that I could make coffee at home. I have a french press. I have a kettle. I have a stove, and I even have a bag of decent, medium-roast ground coffee in a bag in my freezer. I also can hear every coffee snob reading this scream out loud, but bear with me. I made a cup in the press one Sunday morning, after mulling whether to put on pants and walk to the local Dunkin’ Donuts. I put a kettle on the stove, scooped four tablespoons of coffee into the press, steeped, pressed, and drank. It felt good. The next morning, Monday, I got out of bed with one thing on my mind: making my morning cup. It’s kept me going this far.

I’m not fancy with my coffee. I don’t even grind my own beans, though I do have a hand-me-down blade grinder. I put water in the kettle, put the kettle on the heat, take the bag out of the freezer, scoop the grounds into the press, add the boiling water, steep for five minutes. It’s enough. During the week, the contents go straight into a thermal mug, and I nurse it through breakfast, the subway, and at my desk if anything is left. Maybe, perhaps, one day I’ll get fancy like Marco Arment, and turn coffee into a proper ritual. Maybe when I have a shorter commute, and more money to blow on coffee-making gear. For now, coffee is my MacGuffin—the little reward I give my brain for overcoming the soft, warm resistance of the bed, and facing the day.

The change in seasons in New York City has begun, and with it a change in my wardrobe. I can now, comfortably, dress myself each morning in a sportcoat or blazer, and with it, tie a tie around my neck. It’s how I would prefer to dress all year round, but the humidity of New York summers, and the brutality of non air conditioned subway platforms make it likely that I will only end up a sweaty mess by the time I arrive at work. So, I wait for autumn, and its cool breezes to bust out the finery, where it stays until summer rears its fiery head again.

I’m an odd one out in my office, at least among the non-executives, with my wardrobe. Many are content to wear polo shirts and khakis, or t-shirts and jeans. A hoodie or casual jacket is added as the weather turns. I’m sure they’re happy and comfortable in their dress, as I am in mine. I don’t dress to impress, for the most part. I dress for defense. I dress to defend against myself, and keep myself from slipping into laziness, into complacency. I sometimes call my favorite outfit: a white Oxford Cloth button down shirt, knit tie, dark gray wool sportcoat, black pants, and black captoe oxford shoes, my “responsible adult costume.” It’s more a superhero costume. Putting it on makes me feel like a responsible adult.

My outfit gives me super powers. Dressed up, I have the powers of confidence, of dependability and trust, of good first impressions. Plus, I look great. As long as I wear my jacket and tie, I feel like I can accomplish any task, surmount any hurdle, and deal with any unforeseen circumstance. Put a cup of hot coffee in my hand, and I become invincible. A set of clothes that look good and feel good have the power to change how you feel about yourself. Whatever misfortune, whatever woe has befallen you, you can look in any mirror and say, “at least I still look like I have it together.” For a lot of people out there, looking like you have it together is enough to make them think you really do.

When I look in the mirror and see myself in my jacket and tie, or when I look down to see my shined shoes, it’s enough to change how I feel. I don’t dress for anyone, except myself. Because I’m the person for whom dressing well and looking good will have the most impact. I feel like I have it all together, and if I don’t, I just need to adjust my tie, re-tuck my shirt, and run a comb through my hair for my powers to come back. And, perhaps one day, I’ll overcome my Kryptonite of the summer sun.

I’ve been making stuff on the Internet for more than half my life, in one way or another. As soon as I got online in seventh grade, I picked up a copy of HTML for Dummies: Quick Reference, and taught myself how to make a web page. My first web site was a fan page for Mystery Science Theater 3000, an early example of what Merlin Mann and John Gruber later defined as Obsession Times Voice. This was 1997, and I had no pretensions that my goofy fan site, with its Animated GIFs, embedded MIDI files, and hosted for free, would accomplish much of anything.

Over my teenage years, I dropped the MST3k site, and established a series of more general personal sites on a friend’s private server. Somewhere in there, I also started a web comic that was terrible enough to warrant notice by Something Awful. By the time I graduated high school, blogging was in vogue, and for my graduation present—and with my friend’s server offline—I asked my parents to pay for a domain and a year of web hosting. I set up GreyMatter, and Sanspoint.com was born. This was 2002. Twelve years ago. For the absolutely curious, you can find a lot of the old content from pre–2010 through archive.org. I don’t recommend it. For the most part, the first six years of Sanspoint are little more than an anti-social LiveJournal.

I decided to take my writing seriously in 2010, which is when the current incarnation of Sanspoint.com begins. Though I didn’t pick up steam for another three years, those years were spent both trying to find my obsession and voice as a writer. I feel as though I’ve found my voice, and have a good lead on an obsession, or at least a group of obsessions that I can put in one place without it seeming too disparate. Between 2010 and now, I also started other projects, some of which limped along like Crush On Radio, others that never took off, like Above The Runway. That’s not even counting the ones that never left the “scrawled on a note card” stage.

At age 30—almost 31—I’ve now spent more than half my life making and putting stuff on the Internet, largely out of love. It can’t be for money, because I’ve made a net profit from all my online endeavors of an estimated negative $2,000. That’s factoring in twelve-plus years of hosting, domain registration, and buying a nice microphone for Crush On Radio. Pocket change, when you think about it. What I’ve gained from my years of putting stuff, more so in recent years, are connections to smart, funny, and supportive Internet friends. And a job. If I couldn’t point to my years of writing, web design, social media, podcasting, and the like, I would never have landed the startup job that gave me at least a sense of direction.

So, it’s not been a waste. I’d keep churning out multiple paragraphs of too-turgid prose about technology, creative work, culture, and all those other crazy things I think way too much about, even if I didn’t get the occasional backpat from people I admire. I wish things had moved faster—it was hard enough making time to make the clackity noise when I worked a 52-hour week, and it’s still pretty hard with a 40-hour one. It’s certainly doable. If Myke Hurley can run a podcast network while working 9–5, I can manage a blog. It would be amazing if I could turn making the clackity noise into my job. At this point, I’d settle for breaking even and a little bit of beer money. As great as the last couple years have been in terms of the stuff I put out, and the reception, I have a ways to go. Patrick Rhone has been doing it longer, (though my site is older), and he didn’t make any money until 2011. [1]

If I’m going to make a go at breaking even—writing off that two grand from the last twelve years—I’ll need to focus on the main thing as much as I can. Part of why Sanspoint as an endeavor has been so long, and so spotty, has been the difficulty of making the time commitment. Various side projects, like Crush On Radio, aren’t helping. (The situation around Crush On Radio deserves its own post, but I’ll fall on my own sword for the bulk of it.) Instead of splitting my ideas and obsessions into different silos, better I bring them under one banner, and focus on making the best entity called Sanspoint there is. One that reflects my obsession and my voice, while giving my small audience reason to keep being involved and supporting me. In time, maybe that audience will grow, and I can make Sanspoint my career. If not, that’s the breaks. I’ve already earned plenty in less tangible currency.