Side panel default behavior

[pnwheeler]

Hey all,
I was wondering if there's any way to set a default option for the side panel menu (which doesn't seem to persist across sessions). I disabled the "journeys" feed, but every time I start up the browser the active selection is on "reading list"(and I only want to use it for bookmarks!). I see a #customize-side-panel flag, but I'm still not sure what it does after toggling it. Maybe I'm missing something?