Hey! I've finally gotten around to adding blog functionality (thanks to Zonelets), and I'm pretty happy with how it came out! It blends in with the rest of the site pretty discretely, and it was easy to do with only a teeny bit of headscratching. I say it was "easy," but if I'm being honest, I have a habit of taking for granted all the work, study, and experience I've gathered over the years-- it's just finally being fed a bit of motivation & focus. Coding has never been my strong suit, even if I liked to think of myself as a programmer just because I could read snippets and understand programming logic. Anything bigger than a small application (with extensive YouTube tutorial guides), and I'd quickly lose the thread, get overwhelmed by all the options, and end up quitting when shit started breaking. I had all these ideas, clear visions of what I wanted to make, but every time I took the opportunity to sit down and actually execute them, I'd be too busy wrestling with and struggling to learn the tools in my hand. Eventually, I just had to accept that coding wasn't fun for me.

But what was fun for me?

There was a bit of disappointment when I finally gave up on the idea of coding (for reals), but if I'm being totally honest, something deep inside me breathed a great sigh of relief when it happened. I'd felt a similar sort of relief before, when I quit my two-year foray into Twitch streaming; it was a feeling of Wow, I have so much time on my hands now. I probably couldn't have done it without the journaling practice I'd taken up six months prior, and therapy both aiding me in having a better day-to-day awareness of my thoughts, worries, frustrations, emotions, and more.

Around that time, the big theme in both affairs was slowly realizing just how unreasonable & unrealistic the expectations I'd set for myself were, both in life and art. I wanted to play drums, learn guitar, develop a game, write a novel, learn music production, create video essays, find a better job, get into freelance writing... the list went on, and on, and on, and all of my free time felt more like nonstop college classes than relaxing or fun. I never made progress fast enough. I was too anxious and set in my ways to collaborate with others, which resulted in overly-rigid and joyless methods of learning where I'd relentlessly doubt myself.

So, I had to dig deep to figure out what truly came natural to me. The things I've always loved to do, ever since I was a kid-- the stuff that makes my inner kid want to stay up all night, enthralled. You know where that brought me?

Lucario x Mew fanfiction. I named them Sol & Luna. They.... boinked. Luna had a miscarriag-- anyway, I loved to write. I didn't have regular access to a computer back in those days, and I spent much of my time grounded to my room with naught but books & school supplies, so I wrote stories. Most of them were retellings of my hyperfixations, like Zelda or... Pokemon.... but they were gigantic projects for a kid my age to be taking on. Many got to be dozens and dozens of pages long, and I frequently re-wrote them either because I wanted to correct a mistake or I thought my handwriting was bad. I was obsessed with making it look neat, because I'd been scolded in school on numerous occasions for my handwriting looking messy.

In addition to writing stories & poetry, and having a deep love for grand fantasy novels with deep worldbuilding, I also had a strong connection with music from both video games and my parents' tastes. Linkin Park, The Offspring, Evanescence, Eve 6, Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, Matchbox 20, and a healthy dose of late 2000's Top 40 tracks were huge staples of my early music tastes, and I showed a natural ability to recreate melodies on instruments and sing. Even though I'd spent much of my young adulthood slowly taking my musical ability less and less seriously, I've always secretly envisioned myself putting on performances for crowds, family, and friends when I sang my favorite songs.

And there it is. That's what I want to do. I'd already proven that I could write three handwritten journal pages a day, and I had more than a couple of them, finished, on my shelf. Looking just like real books. I suppose all this time I'd just dismissed the notion of being an author because the chances of making money were so slim. Now I don't really care so much about money. And as for music, all it took was stepping out of my comfort zone and humbling myself to the point of trying out to play drums in a local hardcore band. I failed miserably (I'd only been playing drums by myself for a year and a half), but during the audition I had showcased a bit of my metal vocals. They liked me so much personally that they introduced me to my current bandmates in No Means, as a vocalist.

Which brings us back to now. Coding? Again? Well, you see, I came into this project as a writer, first and foremost. Everything else is strictly out of necessity, to have a place that's entirely for me, free from the endless thought-gobbling that is social media. Now that my standards for myself are lower, and I've been adopting a mindset of simplicity instead of complexity, I've allowed myself to take lots of shortcuts. Most of the coding here has been taken from templates spliced together!

Anyway, it's getting late, and this ended up being longer than I expected haha! The posts that follow this will probably be a bit prettier, but you can also expect all sorts of stuff on here. I'm not limiting myself, and I'm just gonna post what feels good to post. Fuck it, we ball. Let's plant us a garden.