Writings

The past

In the past I got trapped in various eco-systems that held my data.
Services like Evernote, Google drive, Dropbox, Gmail, Google Keep, Adobe Cloud or some other proprietary system, most of them offering free data storage! Accessing my data from no matter where I found myself, seemed fantastic and magical to me!

Growing doubts

But, later on, my doubts about these systems grew. Take for example Evernote and my notes.
It soon proved difficult to move, or even export my notes.
At that time, the export option was kind of lackluster, the end result was simply a bunch of weird formatted files and metadata that left me clueless. Evernote became painfully slow sometimes, and the free storage it offered, soon was filled up.

Nagging feeling

Granted, services like Evernote, offered – and still offer – nice perks, but what it ultimately left me with, was an unsettling and nagging feeling. I worried that something would happen to my data, or that I would not even be able to access the service anymore.
And what about a backup?
It made me nervous that ‘the cloud’ was the only place that held my notes. Combining that with my then tight budget, I came to the simple conclusion that I neither wanted to, nor had the means to, spend money on services like Evernote.

To be fair

Granted, I have never had any serious issues resulting from hosting my data somewhere in the cloud, other than maybe occasionaly some sync conflict.

Desire for change

It was the always present nagging feeling that planted the desire to look out for other options concerning my trapped data.