Heyo, at this point it's been a year since my last post. I'm officially declaring this site dead, or abandoned, however you wanna look at it. I'm gonna leave it up cause I don't really care what happens to it at this point. I want to leave one last post that's a retrospective on previous posts and how I think of my ambitions wrt to the site in the present day. For starters, I think this whole project was a failure - and by that I mean that I made the site sure, but I already knew I could work with HTML and CSS. That isn't surprising to me, that wasn't really where I wanted to grow. I was looking to try and meet others who were fed up with how mainstream social media platforms have become, and to try and make my own space on the internet. This blog was the first step in the latter, but I never really got anywhere with the former. I don't think Neocities really makes it too easy to socialize with others outside of manually scrolling through a webring. Which DOES make sense but I think taking the initial step is the hard part. I felt overwhelmed with how many options I had for webrings and trying to search for other sites that might be similar to my own was not that easy either. But then again maybe I was just looking in the wrong places. I don't really have as much fun just digging around through sites as I do meeting others in games or in a Discord server. I also haven't ever been one to log my experiences playing games or listening to music, let alone making something like a shrine, so I kinda just fell flat there.

Starting with actually looking back on my blog posts, in order, I honestly don't even know where this optimism came from, even just seeing the way I type makes me feel like I was putting on an act. Maybe I really was just having a lot of fun back then, I don't know, I was also trying to navigate moving out of my first apartment around that time, so maybe I was still just riding the high of living in the city and working nearby. Reading the first actual post is also similar, it just doesn't really feel like how I'd actually type (not that how im typing right now is either tbf) when talking online. Some of this just makes me cringe, which I wouldn't really be surprised about if this was something I posted over 5 years ago, but this was a year ago, what the fuck was I thinking lmao?

Journal 2 is when I think I really started to fall off ever checking this site or adding anything to it - I moved, my office moved, I started going back to the gym regularly, and then I pulled a 2 week minecraft phase in website form by trying to set a crazy goal of writing up a blog post once a month, as if anything really happens in my life on a monthly basis. I did end up getting a Switch 2 so there's something I said I would do and actually did. I don't really have much of an issue with this blog post tbh, it really was just me writing about a bunch of shit that was on my mind, maybe 3 months would've been better for me to really note down my thoughts more. Finally my post-TF2 LAN post LOL this post instantly fucking aged like milk I think I got home from Philly and a week or two passed and my opinion on half the names in that list went straight to the shitter. I regret spending as much time as I did with a good chunk of those people, and I didn't even go this year, though I just wasn't available to tbh. All that's left now is to move forward from those people and try to unfuck my personality from being in certain circles.

My relationship with online communities has become strained recently, partially due to my own shifting views on who I spend my time with and what I want out of my online friends, but also partially due to just being more busy than I used to be. My new job is stricter with phone usage, is fully in person, and I've just not been playing multiplayer games as much anymore. I've only played 10 hours of TF2 in the past 2 months and I would say I'm generally happier with my time spent online or gaming, but it is a little lonelier now. I live closer to my partner than I ever have, so spending time with them is easier than ever, and when I'm with them I don't really care to play video games as much. I even took a month break at the beginning of this year where I did not look at my discord, and it got me to just enjoy simpler things. I slowly started to read more, watch more, listen to music more, the games I did play I had more fun playing. It got lonely, sure, but I was able to ignore it for the most part since I wanted to stick to the whole month. Part of me is tempted to try again but for longer this time, I wonder how much more I'll just be able to relax and focus.

Anyways, thanks for reading this and checking the site. It was a fun idea, but I just don't really think the indie web is for me. I don't really see the need to maintain any form of online presence outside of something to contact my family and irl friends, especially if I don't stream anymore. Enjoy some of the photos I took since my time away.