One year of gremlin

TW: This blog post contains suicidal thoughts and general negativity.

On December 11 2023, I started this site. It was not my first site but it's definitly the one that I have put the most love, thought, and care into! Up until making this site I had only been taught to use my abilities as a novice webdev to store useful information for others and hosting modded game servers. I originally started this site at one of the lowest points in my life to act as a distraction from my not so great living situation and to try to improve my sense of self-worth. Given how poorly I thought of myself at the time, it's a miracle that any of this got off the ground. Thankfully I am no longer in that headspace!

Life is hard

In all my years of existence, never did I think I'd get as bad off as I was around the time my ex broke up with me. I had just started webdeving a few months before the breakup and was using it as a form of mental stimulation at first. Before all of that, I had left my only remaining friend group due to how they had been treating me. My ex was apart of that friend group and never really left them which was a pretty big red flag looking back on it. On top of this, my ex sexually harassed me on call multiple times despite me very clearly not wanting anything to do with it. If we had ever met up in person, that very likely would have turned into sexual assult. Webdeving went from a mentally stimulating task to something I did to try to make my ex happier. See I like the concept of entertaining and making people happy but the response I got instead of happiness was distain at my amature webpages and less time to talk with my ex until eventually they stopped calling me. With all my efforts put into that I felt dejected to say the least. On top of that, despite my ex basically saying they wanted to marry me, they tossed me aside once they felt like it. That breakup was nasty and all sorts of things ended up being said. It also ended up cuting off ties with almost everyone else I was still in contact with from that friend group. I felt like I had nobody to talk to and so many pent up emotions with no release in sight aside from the constant threats of a mental ward trip.

Luckily this story has a light at the end of the tunnel! While in that state of dispare I met someone that would end up becoming my boyfriend. He made me start to feel ok with myself as a person and helped me start the long journey to recovery. I ended up losing 40 pounds between the time I started feeling dejected and when he started making sure I ate througout the day. I'm not overstating it when I say that this man saved my life. He would call me every day so I had someone to talk to and didn't just have to be alone with my thoughts. I'm crying pretty heavily while typing this out. If my boyfriend is reading this right now, please know you mean the world to me. I love you with all my heart and would follow you through hell and back.

Recovering Self-worth

Sometimes I forget that I am an adult, and the adult thing to do here is to state some opinions and thoughts of my own that might aid younger folks reading this. The world will try to make you feel worthless, it is unfair and often times cruel about it. That being said, you still have worth, you still have potential yet to be realized. If you find yourself around people constantly putting you down for minor infractions, they are not your people. They are a toxic drain on your life and you are devaluing yourself by continuing to be around them. It might seem hard and scary to reach out and meet new people but would you honestly rather continue to put up with your so called "friends" messing with your head or would you rather fix a issue that you know you have control over?

LGBTQIA folk and CIS women this ones specifically for you. If someone devalues you over something you have absolutely zero control over, they were never really your friend. If they refuse to respect your pronouns, don't engage with them anymore. If their political views put you at risk, being next to them is statically bad for your mental health and physical health. Also please understand that not every person claiming to be an ally is really an ally. Talk/listen to people and get a understanding of their views before being 100% sure otherwise you might find yourself in hot water.

Last but not least, I got lucky to meet my boyfriend and that he is such a loving and caring person. He's like the polar opposite of my ex. You might not be so lucky in a similar situation and in that case YOU have to find and make reason to keep going. I likely would have died because I was mentally and physically in shambles. If you feel like you are in a similar situation, please don't hold back from reaching out to a professional. Yes it will likely cost money but it's better to be alive and in debt then it is to die debtless. If you have no way to do that, seeking out community where possible will help with the loneliness.

Break the negativity cycle

Let's be real, the internet has it's ups and downs. While you are able to easily access information, it has also caused us to walk around with little glass bricks that seem to cause an awful lot of misery. Phones as a concept are not the problem here, it's the over corporatization of the internet and the algorithms used by social media to "keep us engaged" and a society that is seemingly ok with the status quo. You know what keeps people engaged and more likely to interact on your platform? Promoting posts that are designed to make people angry and reactionary of course!

Outside of algorithms and how our phones keep us glued to them, there is also the people problem. Not everyone has each other's best interests and wants in mind, in fact there are malicious people out there that gain pleasure from beating down those they view as lesser then themselves. Social media is in a funny spot when it comes to these people as they make up a surprising percentage of the population so not allowing them to act like that would be actively cutting off a good portion of their userbase... which enlies the big problem with large social media. They are trying to make a profit, not help people form genuine connections. Then you have sites like twitter, if you have not been living under a rock over the past three years then you already know whats wrong with platforms like it.

Despite the platforms stated above, not all social media is bad. Did you know that neocities is a form of social media? I highly recommend getting into it even if you just make a basic html site with little to no CSS. I know some cool people on neocities that have sites that are mostly just text. Don't ever tell yourself "Nah I don't know how to make a site" or any similar logic because making a basic html page is super easy and there are plenty of guides about it online! The crowd on neocities is one of the best I encountered on social media, all forms of social media have their problematic individuals but luckily neocities has a block feature.

Bluesky is another form of social media that I recommend! Not only is curation of your own content a easy to find setting, a lot of it is just toggles. Don't want a certain kind of content to show up on your feeds? Toggle it, it's that simple. Want to go a step further and use a community made block list? You are encouraged to do so! Basically Bluesky is twitter if twitter was actually good. It's not everyones cup of tea but if you liked old twitter at all, you will probably love it.

My 2024 Overview

• Started to recover after years of problematic relationships and getting used
• Learned to be a better judge of character
• Got serious about making this site
• Made Tokyo-to.neocities
• Got to be with my boyfriend all summer.
• Started a petition against AI/ML being added to neocities

Looking Onwards

Politics in the USA have lead to trans web content hosted within the USA being at risk of legal action due to a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo that basically boils down to our existence being deemed pornographic by lawmakers. Can you tell me where the porn on my site is? According to these people, it would be the CSS, the fact that I openly call myself trans, and the trans flag I use on my about me page. If you find any of those sexually attractive, why should that be me or my viewer's problem? Goddamn, stop caring so much about what is in everyone's pants. Anyways these laws put this and all other sites with any trans content at risk because if the laws come to fruition, you will need ID verification to get into any site deemed pornographic. I'm currently looking into hosting my site on a VPS hosted in another country just in case of all of this.