I’ve really been trying to get back in a habit of writing here more often and I guess, yeah, I have, but I managed to skip the entirety of June without so much as a sketch dump and that’s bugging me more than I ought to.
I really like having a website I can do whatever with, especially with the obnoxious conservative/puritanical swings most major social media seem to go on and my uptick in activity here was mostly in response to Twitter going down the shitter and a lot of my friends skittering around like ants trying to migrate to ‘safer’ ground while not losing their acquaintances’ scent trails. But I’ve not been the happiest with my hosting situation lately and I haven’t really kept up with web design trends and standards since graduation and some post college certifications. I liked drag and drop programs like Dreamweaver, I’m a visual guy; as objectively flexible and powerful a tool as CSS is, I just glaze over when I look at code. It’s also the thing keeping me from spending more than an afternoon poking at game development!
Sometimes I’m sorely tempted to just nuke all the databases and build a dumb html site from scratch, since I really don’t get comments here. I periodically get bots registering then requesting immediate password changes, then I go through and purge all the instances of NormalName@burnermail from the records every other month or so. For interaction and validation, it’s quicker and easier for me to post doodles on social media than here, so it really just turns into A Thing I Do Because It’s Fun and I gotta be honest- my renewal bill this year is over 200 USD and while I plan to re-up, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep it up. I may end up redoing everything in a more contained, sustainable format. I might just let it vanish. More realistically, since I’ve been at this for *decades* I’ll probably just stay the course anyway out of habit until I literally can’t afford to.
Sorry to be a downer, but I’ve been putting off saying so for a while. At least “officially.” But in the past few years, they’ve told me my unlimited plan is no longer actually unlimited (though I’m nowhere near the cap anyway) while charging the same amount, and they aggressively email about about webinars and building a better website with AI tools (believe it or not a self contained install of a wordpress blog isn’t actually that hard to set up! I’m good!) Given my actual aptitude toward designing and running a modern website, it’s just starting to feel like a lot of hassle.
I do really appreciate anybody out there who’s been with me along the way. Sometimes I’ve been discouraged by Not Doing Numbers and other times I’ve been pleasantly surprised by someone recognizing me out of the blue. All of this came about when I was a high schooler who was really into Seanbaby but also wanted to show off drawings and otaku shit. I’ve gone from edgy and stupid to a lot softer spoken and at least self aware of the stupid. It’s a lot easier for everyone to get their voice out there, and harder to stand out in the crowd. Sometimes I miss when the web had more of a bar to entry; I think about the point when I started having family and coworkers show up on Facebook it was kind of the death knell of Online being unbridled fun.
For the time being, I intend to stay the course. Whether I end up changing my focus away from here or doubling down on it as My Place, rest assured I will still be out there creating whether it’s just for myself or not. Take care, and take it easy. And if you’re one of those people who says they miss Websites and wish you could break away from centralized social media sites, go ahead and let creators know what you think! It really would be great to see decentralization of content since you never know what bug will find itself up what exec’s ass in a given week. We’re in the age where a bored suit can decide “from now on, the word ‘chipotle’ will be unsearchable because I had a bad wrap last night.”