I started building websites on geocities circa 1999. At the height of my craze, I was juggling about 9-10 websites. I was somewhat of an addict. Over time, life got in the way. geocities shut down, I spent many years in univeristy. While in university, I started blogging. First through blogger, than using WordPress. I blogged on and off for the better part of a decade. But then I stopped writing. I went through a bleak, depressive period where I could not be arsed.

Then I went back to university and got my PhD. This began my life of doing nothing but working in front of a computer (previously, I had spent a lot of time in the field or out in nature). Some aspects of that are good. I learned to code (something besides HTML) and I enjoy a lot of the work that I do. Still, it felt like something was missing.

I used to also be very active on social media. I am not anymore. I hate the big tech oligarchs and don't want to support their platforms. Yet, I have a lot of thoughts. Thoughts I once shared on social media but no longer have an outlet for. They just bounce around in my head and end up being lost. Sometimes I write these down in a notes app or send an email to myself Mostly, I just let them evaporate. What a shame.

My hope and my goal is to create some sort of template here that I can just populate this site with these thoughts that have no home. My current problem is that I am sitting in front of a computer all day and it is hard for me to force mysef to dig out my janky old laptop to work on this endeavor.

I have been reading a lot about digital gardens and how it reminds me of how websites used to be before blogging and social media ruined all that beauty. I am not sure this will ever be anything like the digital gardens the Obsidian/Notion/Roam enthusiasts wax poetic about. I do use Notion and is the FULL of random crap. I never have the bandwidth to do anything meaningful with that overwhelming pile of crap I have amassed on it.

But this? This is mine. I can be more intentional. Make a page, tweak a page, make another page, etc. Just like it my halcyon days of geocities. Fun fact for now- I have owned this domain since 2003-2004. Clearly I care enough about it to hold onto it. It has been through many different hosting providers. I am hoping that neocities will be its forever home. (Unless my pipe dream of home server comes true...)

In the meantime, I have created exactly ONE page besides y olde index. It shows the first compact discs I purchased/owned.

I am optimistic that when I find an easy enough way to write -> push to this site, the pages will come. :)