Robin Evans 🙏

Hi, I’m Robin. New Zealander by birth, Tasmanian by choice. I retired early at 35 after a major stroke and now live quietly in Hobart with my partner Peter and our two small white fluffpups, Billy and Phryne. My days include breathwork, fasting, writing, and A Course in Miracles. AI helps me bring the Course into my daily practice. I write about ordinary life, human behaviour, AI, ageing, disability, stillness, and whatever remains after the performance ends. Peace up. Bullshit tolerance down!

BREATHWORK: Kevin Connelly's — living from the breath. https://www.reconnectbreath.com/
A COURSE IN MIRACLES (ACIM): ...practised as choosing peace whenever conflict appears. https://acim.org/
INTERMITTENT FASTING: Less a practice, more a way to live. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/expert-qa/intermittent-fasting-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work

Last Notes

2026-08-26 05:48:28 GMT

I WILL NOT BE BULLIED 💎
I received a vicious reply today because I use AI. It wasn't a disagreement. Nor a criticism. It was a full-frontal personal attack! And I’ll admit it affected me more than I expected.
I USE AI MAINLY BECAUSE I'M PARALYSED.
Typing is physically difficult for me. I have the use of only one hand. So, tapping out a post or email with one finger is exhausting. Voice and AI help me turn my own thoughts into usable writing in a normal amount of time.
THAT SHOULD NOT REQUIRE A DEFENCE.
You can dislike AI. You can distrust it. You can argue about copyright concerns, energy and water use, labour, culture, or anything else that concerns you. I will listen to you and answer you.
But attacking people simply for using AI is not principled.
IT'S BULLYING.
And disabled people should not have to produce a medical justification every time they use a technology that makes their life easier.
AI is a tool. How it is used matters. Who gets harmed matters. Context matters. What does not help is turning “AI user” into a moral accusation and deciding that cruelty is suddenly acceptable.
I’m quite happy to discuss the technology with anyone.
HOWEVER, I WILL NOT BE BULLIED FOR USING IT.
I didn't need to do anything about the attack. Before I could even decide how to respond, both the post and the person disappeared from my notifications.
@npub14y0…cq8l @npub1hge…camh @npub1g77…hmy0 [@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works ) @npub177x…u9jc
#AI #Accessibility #Disability #AssistiveTechnology #Fediverse #Bullying #PWD #Tool

2026-08-16 22:55:58 GMT

APPARENTLY, I APPEAR
TO HAVE STOPPED TRYING 💎
Isn't there something slightly absurd about discovering a little peace and immediately wanting to explain it to everybody?
The mind says: Tell them. Teach it. Turn it into something useful.
But the present moment seems completely uninterested in becoming a philosophy.
It is already here.
Coffee. Fire. Bright but cold outside. A dog moving across the room. A conversation with Pete. A body breathing.
Nothing particularly spiritual about any of it.
Perhaps that is the difficulty.
Striving is often regarded as serious, while presence can look like laziness. Planning looks responsible. Regret looks thoughtful. Simply being present can look suspiciously like doing nothing.
And yet everything that actually happens happens here and now.
The past can be remembered. The future can be imagined. Neither can be lived.
So perhaps there is nothing to teach. Nothing to defend. And nothing to broadcast.
Just this.
And then this.
And then this...
--------------------------------------------
@npub14y0…cq8l @npub1hge…camh @npub1g77…hmy0 [@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works )
#presence #now #stillness #ACIM #mindfulness #ordinarylife #peace #philosophy #future #broadcast #Regret #mind #person #man #woman

2026-08-16 06:22:22 GMT

- reply

@npub15w9…2huq
That’s a beauty. What a sunset. I wonder where you are. It’s so inspiring.
I’m glad you’re feeling so supported by the Mastodon community. I have to say, I feel it too.
I’ve never felt this way about social media before. The big platforms always made me feel strangely separated from people by their engagement algorithms.
Thank God for the open web, eh!
#community #sunset #platform #engagement #algorithm

2026-08-14 22:43:46 GMT

DEATH, GOD, &
A VERY SMALL SPIDER 💎
I am increasingly aware that I will leave this world. I don’t know when. I don’t know how. Perhaps within the next decade. Perhaps sooner. Who knows.
And strangely, there is less fear in that now. Most of the fear seems to belong to what I imagine is unknown.
If death is simply the end of Robin and the end of this consciousness, then there will be nobody there to be bothered by it. It will simply be over. And if there is something beyond this life, another realm, another dimension, another form of consciousness, then I suppose I will recognise it when I get there.
I don’t know. And I am quite happy not knowing.
Human beings have created manifold books, religions and pictures of God, spirit, heaven, continuation and eternity. Perhaps some of them point towards something true. Perhaps some are simply beautiful ways of comforting ourselves in the face of death.
But every picture I can make of what comes next is still a picture being made here.
I don’t want to manufacture comfort. I want clarity. I want to meet whatever happens without having already decided what it is supposed to look like.
Maybe there is something. Maybe there is nothing. Either way, reality does not require my opinion.
And while I am sitting here contemplating this enormous mystery, a tiny spider appears beside me. He is absurdly small. I stop, look at him, laugh, and decide he can stay.
And suddenly, there it all is. Death. Consciousness. God. Eternity. And a tiny spider wandering across my morning.
The fire is on. The coffee is good. People are interacting with things I have written. The spider is minding his own business.
Life has not stopped being ordinary just because I know it ends. I rather like that.
None of it means anything until I give it meaning. And this morning, the meaning I choose is very simple.
Gratitude.
@npub14y0…cq8l @npub1hge…camh @npub1g77…hmy0 [@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works ) @npub177x…u9jc
#death #mortality #afterlife #consciousness #spirituality #ACIM #clarity #gratitude #presence #ordinarylife #mystery #life #openweb #human #person #spider #Economics #Housing #CostOfLiving #Meditation #Breathwork #Fediverse #OpenWeb #BigTech

2026-08-14 03:22:29 GMT

YOU’RE LOOKING
AT THE WRONG PARTS 💎
I sometimes wonder what people imagine is going on inside the life of someone with a visible disability.
I walk very strangely. My left arm doesn’t work at all. My hand is contracted into a claw. I do everything one-handed, and that clearly wasn’t covered in this model’s original operating instructions.
From the outside, I suspect it can look like a life dominated by disability.
“Poor bugger.” “What a tragedy.” “Everything must be so difficult?”
Meanwhile, inside my actual life, I’m usually wondering whether the coffee is ready, what ridiculous thing I can write on Mastodon, whether the dogs have been fed, or why everyone on the internet has suddenly gone mad again.
The disability is there, obviously. I cannot drive, and there are many things I cannot do unaided. Other things just take longer, because much of the world appears to have been designed by someone who assumed every human comes with two fully operational hands.
And most people are remarkably unhelpful.
That sounds like a complaint, but it has an unexpected benefit. If you’re disabled, you become bloody good at finding another way. You have to.
Eventually, you stop wondering how something is supposed to be done and work out how you can do it.
That doesn’t make accessibility unnecessary. Quite the opposite. But disabled people often become extremely skilled at adapting because the world gives us plenty of practice.
Disability is not the central event of my consciousness.
I don’t wake up thinking, “Good morning. I am disabled.”
I wake up thinking, “Coffee.”
Most of the time, I’m not experiencing myself as a tragic medical story. I’m just living.
I’ve had decades to become extremely competent at being this particular slightly damaged model of human being. Sometimes other people seem considerably more concerned about my disability than I am.
It’s sweet.
But unnecessary.
The odd thing about a visible disability is that people often see what doesn’t work before they notice the enormous amount that does.
And from inside here?
It’s mostly just Friday.
_____________________
@npub1hge…camh
#Fediverse #OpenWeb #BigTech
[@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works )
#Economics #Housing #CostOfLiving
@npub1g77…hmy0
#Meditation #Breathwork
#Disability #DisabledLife #Accessibility #Hemiplegia #Stroke #Life #coffee #human #medical #instructions #tragedy #Mastodon

2026-08-10 05:53:40 GMT

THIS IS NOT PROGRESS.
I THOUGHT THE FUTURE WOULD BE KINDER 💎
I am old now.
I have lived through seven decades and remember when there was a fairly ordinary expectation that the next generation might have a better life than we did.
Not a perfect life. JUST A DECENT LIFE. A HOME you can afford. FOOD without anxiety at the checkout. ELECTRICITY without wondering: Should I turn on the heat?
WORK that paid enough to live. Some security if one becomes sick, disabled, unemployed, or, God forbid, old. And perhaps enough left over to actually ENJOY BEING ALIVE.
I look at the world now, and I am deeply disappointed. Not because young people are doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite. I think we have handed them an UNNECESSARILY DIFFICULT WORLD.
Housing has become an investment vehicle before it is a home. Essential services have become opportunities for vast profits. People work and still struggle to pay their rent. PEOPLE POSTPONE HAVING A CHILD BECAUSE THEY CAN'T AFFORD ONE.
People in wealthy countries worry about FOOD, POWER BILLS, and whether they WILL EVER OWN A PLACE OF THEIR OWN. And meanwhile, astonishing amounts of wealth accumulate in astonishingly few hands.
I am old enough to know that every generation thinks the world is going to hell. So I try not to indulge in that thinking. There is still enormous KINDNESS, CREATIVITY, HUMOUR, AND DECENCY EVERYWHERE I LOOK.
But economically and socially?
WE SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER THAN THIS.
A civilisation should not become richer while ORDINARY PEOPLE become more frightened about meeting their ORDINARY NEEDS.
That is not progress.
I don’t expect paradise. I do expect a society wealthy enough to make an ordinary human life possible without keeping millions of people in a permanent state of fear about money.
At seventy, that is one of my greatest disappointments.
We had the resources. We had the knowledge to build a decent life for everyone.
We still do.
What seems to be missing is the decision that ordinary human lives matter more than endlessly increasing somebody else's pile of money.
[@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works )
#CostOfLiving #Housing #Inequality #Economy #Society

2026-08-10 03:16:18 GMT

LEAVING META
WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR LIFE 💎
After my posting about Meta over the past two days, one thing became very clear.
A lot of people would LIKE to leave Facebook, Instagram, or both. But parts of their actual lives are all tangled up in them.
So don’t make leaving a purity test. Start somewhere. Remove Facebook from your phone and use it only on your laptop, or better still, only on your desktop when you genuinely need it.
STOP POSTING TO META. STOP FEEDING THE TIMELINE.
Move conversations with real friends to your email, text, Signal, phone calls, Mastodon account, or wherever works for you, away from Meta.
TELL PEOPLE WHERE ELSE THEY CAN EASILY FIND YOU.
If you run a business, start putting your email address and/or website URL everywhere you promote your business so Facebook is not your only front door.
Download anything you actually want to keep. Then, when you’re ready, deactivate or delete what you no longer need.
Maybe you keep Messenger for Aunt Doris. Maybe you keep Instagram because your local café apparently believes websites were abolished in 2014.
Fine.
The point isn’t ideological cleanliness.
THE POINT IS REDUCING YOUR DEPENDENCE.
Every conversation you move elsewhere is one conversation Meta no longer owns the doorway to.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO ESCAPE THE META CAGE IN ONE HEROIC LEAP.
Just start opening the door.
#Meta #Facebook #Instagram #SocialMedia #Fediverse #people #DEPENDENCE #Messenger

2026-07-15 23:37:58 GMT

PEOPLE OF EARTH
I may have lost contact with the people of Earth.
The Labor Party used to be cooler. People seemed less managed, less branded, less terrified of saying the wrong thing.
I miss something about the 70s and 80s.
Not everything. God no.
But there was a rawness then. We talked to each other. No social media. No permanent performance. No algorithm training everyone into public outrage, victimhood stardom, mob righteousness, or personal marketing.
Just people, in whatever configuration we happened to arrive in.
The early Pride marches in Sydney. Bodies in the street. Fear, courage, music, awkwardness, sex, politics, friendship, bad hair, good boots.
Life was not yet owned by screens. Screens were still a novelty, and modern algorithms hadn’t been invented yet.
Now everyone seems to be influencing, curating, defending, accusing, branding, reacting, or recovering from being reacted to.
I am aware this is still a lot of words for the average modern thumb.
But I’m 70. I remember paragraphs.
I don’t hate the present.
But I do miss the ordinary human mess before it all became slop.
#slop #thumb #influencing #curating #algorithms #friendship #Pride #Labor #Sydney #outrage #mob #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI