another thing
gonna use this to put my thoughts about this thing until i figure out what to put here. this has been fun so far! still getting my bearings on what exactly i want this to be, but yeah. its been a fun distraction from... everything...
i don't imagine somebody getting here without some affinity for this corner of the internet, so i figure this is a good place to work out why i'm doing this. the big one is simple, social media doesn't work for me. or, at least, it doesn't work in a way that is in any way productive or positive. metrics drive me crazy, i'm already deeply anxious and hyperaware of my own presence in the world, and pretty much every large online platform makes me feel like i'm in a panopticon. i'm never comfortable. i hyperfocus on conversations nobody else wants to have, spend hours agonizing over text nobody else will see, and generally drive myself crazy tracking metrics that i don't even care about. either that, or i disengage. i do the media consumption and avoid interactions at all costs.
i have an anxiety disorder, so like, this isn't surprising. i'm not actually that much better in meatspace than i am online. the spaces where i'm most active are small forums where the stakes are lower, and even then i tend towards lurking and avoidance for my own comfort.
lurking isn't a sin, of course. it might even be the healthier thing to do, if, like me, you're prone to investing yourself into arguments with people you will never know. but, considering all the other things that i avoid, the countless ways i've bent myself into a shape that minimizes social risk at the cost of everything else, i can't help but think that it's just more of that. appeasing the hornets in my skull so they stop stinging me.
and like... fuck that. human connection is cool and good, actually. the internet can and has been a powerful tool for bringing people together, and i want in on that. i'm doing it in meatspace, exposure therapy works, i have a job, i go places sometimes, i'm not just in my house all day every day, and getting to that point required positive action. i had to commit myself to causing myself discomfort.
so yeah. this is that. an incremental step towards a tolerable existence online, even if i have to will it into existence with my own hands. a managable not-space where my thoughts are in theory public, but in practice private, and where i'm insulated from rumination hell, because knowing how many people ""like"" me is a bad thing actually. regular talking is hard enough, thank you.
ive done it
a website, crafted by mine own hands. took like a day of fumbling around, the links go nowhere, and it doesn't look great, but for a first effort i think it's pretty nifty. the background photo is mine, an image of lichen growing around the hulls of a wart-stemmed ceanothus' fallen fruit. because it's spring, they are in bloom, and the flowers are beautiful.
currently yoinking the flavor of ribo.zone because i find the aesthetic neat, and it was relatively easy to do. not sure if this is a bit too eye-blasting. i have ambition to do something with some more assets drawn by myself and with some mixed media collage vibes.