Perusing a few sites on here, I felt a kind of mental discomfort at seeing the term "blog" on geocities roleplay sites. I just figured out why.
Blog as a term was not created until the middle of 1999 (yes, I just read wikipedia), and it was presumably some time before it really gained usage among ordinary users. I definitely don't remember the idea of a blog before the early 2000s, though I was still a child then. The blog really only entered my view probably in the mid 2000s as Blogger and "blogging" really got to be common. Sure, it was taking off in the meantime, but it wasn't something you saw a lot before web 2.0 got widely adopted and the format of a blog with comment functionality gained popularity.
Of course blogging existed before then... but it was labeled and talked about differently. On websites run by individuals or small groups, what might be called a blog now was then called a "journal"/"diary" or a more professional and less personal "updates"/"news". These were often highlighted or widgeted on the homepage.
Anyways, that's a enough text ruminating on how, without direct experience, nuance is easily lost, and also I'm relatively old.
Wow, almost a year since that last post, and a post with urgency no less. Well a lot of things happened since then.
Soon after that post I started working full time again after a stretch of relative unemployment. I also prepared for and undertook a massive move (life change) with my partner, going 2,500 miles across the continent. I think and hope it's for the best but it will take a lot of time to adjust and it doesn't make it hurt any less to uproot yourselves from the life you've built for a decade. It feels like cutting out your heart and stomping on it. I miss my friends, my old space, and the comfort of the familiar. It was a really hard experience on both of us.
But with this mess of stress I had to quit my job and am allowing myself time for a personal sabbatical of sorts while I get reajusted to life in a new country and wait for my industry to get out of the trash bin. I was looking forward to using this massive change as an excuse to focus on those things I put off for so many years. It's a stuggle, and I could do better, but I HAVE been doing it!
Mainly, I joined a very interesting gamedev group that is structured to be very flexible, open ended, supportive, and low pressure. Well, it's just enough pressure to get me to sit down and see things through, but not so much pressure that I can't step away when I'm feeling overwhelmed, or send myself on a horrible guilt trip when I slip up. While supportive, it is also very self directed - which is and will continue to be a challenge for me. I've started off with contributing art work to games in the group to get a sense of things from the perspective I already know. Next I want to start learning and working with code.
In between I desperately need to get my executive function under control. My therapist last year suggested I might have ADHD. I'm a bit doubtful as I was successful in school, albeit a procrastinator, but it could have been the external structure holding me together. I was also just a different person 20 years ago with a vastly different life and severely limited world. I think part of the issue could be a decade of depression, anxiety, and burnout frying my prefrontal cortex, but who's to say. I'm also pretty sure I'm neurodivergent in some meaningful way since I've always been a weirdo and it runs in the family. Anyways, I've got a lot of things to try this year (no thanks to my therapist who I kept asking for tools...) so we'll see how it goes. If I can keep up my determination I think I'll have a shot at regaining some of that control in my life. I know I have more determination this year, allowing myself to try something else (and giving myself the space for it instead of tacking it onto a full load of obligations) has been essential into building that optimism that something else is possible.
Oh, I've also been doing occassional plein air paintings on my phone and forcing myself to keep going with Japanese. These are both pretty huge for me. I don't remember the last time I've painted, it's been so many years, probably a decade. And Japanese, even though I'm a pretty lazy student, is the first time I've been really building up a difficult skill outside of work, since, idk, childhood probably. I'm proud of that.
Getting back to posting to this blog has been a personal priority of mine for months. It's hard to believe I never acted on it, something so trivial yet important to me... But I have a tendency to avoid taking care of my creative needs because they seem difficult and hard; I often shovel them out of the way in favor of more practical or pressing tasks like work or chores. However, this results in a great diservice to myself and reinforces stagnation and depression. By denying and deprioritising this need I kick out one of the legs supporting my sense of self, essential to my feelings of wellbeing, purpose, and optimism.
While this is an obvious harm to myself, that alone has not been a compelling enough reason to seriously seek to change it. However, when one harms themselves with chronically poor habits it innevitably harms those closest to them as well. This cause and effect has become strikingly clear in my situation. While the distress to myself may not be cause enough for me to initate change, distress to those dear to me is, and I am recognizing it is imperative to change my habits and thinking not just for my sake but for my partner's as well.
As such, I will be prioritizing time every day to focus on my creative pursuits and activities that I feel are good for my soul. Creating web works outside of social media and templated sites is one such pursuit I feel is important for me at this point in my life. I used to blog in college and engage with forums and posting my creative works before that - it only helped me grow. In this past decade of my life I have lost that practice and feel a sense of fear around the idea of creating works and sharing them on today's internet. The fear of the harm that this holding back is causing is now bigger than my fear of not being seen or receiving criticism online. I need to remember that it is better to press forward, try, and fail, than to be too afraid to take steps any steps at all. I will never be perfect, but maybe among the mess I can make something a little bit interesting or useful to share here on the web or in print.
You can animate shit in CSS????? Lord help me.
One of the sections I'd like to make on my site is a graveyard of influential (for me) sites that are no longer around (including possibly ones that are but no longer resemble what they once where. Stuff like Ferry Halim's Orisinal Flash games. Some of the most important sites for me growing up were anchored on art tutorials. Bakaneko.com was my main hub, and later ConceptArt.org.
There was another tutorial site that was very influential when I first started drawing anime, I remember the art being more realistic and edgy, like from a super cool sci-fi action manga or something - but the name escaped me. However, trawling through anime drawing tutorials on the Wayback Machine turned it up... Polykarbon! I thought surely the site would be no more, but get this - IT'S STILL UP! Unchanged! And it's as glorious as ever. It doesn't quite live up to the impressive memories I had, but the drawings and advice are solid (not surprising, given that Patrick Shettlesworth already had a few proffessional years under his belt and got into steady concept art work around that same time according to his Linkedin).
What a trip... It's incredible to compare the style of past internet tutorials with the present, they're so much simpler in their approach. Anyways, I hope Patrick never takes it down! It's goofy to look back on something from 20 years ago, how can it not be. Even beyond the veneer of that time, we were all just at different places in our lives. Anyways, to everyone who EVER made a tutorial and put it up on the internet, whether good or bad, thank you. Thank you for your generosity.
Wow, I'm really on here making a site! Can't believe it? Neither can I!
I've got some ideas in the works, mostly scribbled down on paper. I'll slowly be implementing them in my free time (of which there is too little...) I'm also starting to work through the Mozilla Learn (how is everyone not typing mozzilla all the time and putting basil on it?) page linked to by neocities. It's pretty beginner friendly and easy to read. I love that it's not pedantic. As I go and learn stuff I'll probably test stuff out, revise some of the rudimentary content I've already posted, build more adventurous pages, etc. Looking forward to it!
Oh by the way, 日本語が べんきょうちゅう です。 Just wanted to see if/how that displays.