I used Instapaper back in the day, quite heavily. I built up a massive backlog of items that I'd read occasionally on my OG iPod Touch. At some point, I fell off the wagon, and Instapaper fell by the wayside.

Following that, I used various software, from Readwise to Pocket. Today, I run a Wallabag instance on PikaPods and at some point I'll link it to my Linkding instance to sync the "read later" items.

I noticed recently, though, that my backlog just keeps building. With my original Instapaper account, I eventually just abandoned my account entirely and decided that if I hadn't read the backlog items in years, they weren't worth burdening myself with. Today, my Wallabag backlog is smaller but still growing—the amount of articles I feel an obligation to eventually read outpaces the amount of time I want to spend reading them by quite a bit.

The same thing has happened with todo apps over the years, and feed readers. They become graveyards of good intentions and self-imposed obligations. Each item is a snapshot in time of my aspirations for myself, but they don't comport to the reality of who I am.

In truth, I don't actually like reading later. 99% of the time, if I save something to read later, the fact that I'm not reading it now is a good sign that I don't actually want to read it and should free myself of the obligation. Saving the article is an act of self-soothing, telling myself "I'm still a good person who wants to read this later."

Wallabag is cheap to run. It costs me pennies to keep the instance up. But maybe I can free myself of the mental obligation soon, and reclaim the brain space. I'd rather spend the time with my physical tsundoku stack.