journal

I thought websites were just matching colors and images and everything cohesive and put together. In the early 2000s I made fun little websites like this for myself, but over the years it became about fighting with Wordpress to look how I wanted and then getting bored with the aesthetic and design and wanting to scrap the whole thing and start over. Then someone on Bluesky was talking about neocities and I checked it out. Just the escape from all the capitalistic nonsense that I needed! Every page a different design. Blinkies. Over the top graphics. A throwback and yet it feels brand new. Hopefully it helps my creativity re-emerge. I'm using other's layouts at the moment while I refresh my html skills. WYSIWYG has dumbed us down. Back to building something for ourselves and having more control over our online environment.

I’m tired of feeling like I have to hate things.

I’m tired of living in a society I didn’t create full of asshole billionaires who are the only ones with enough money to create things.

I’m tired of living in a society I didn’t create full of capitalistic corporations who only care about making money and not saving the planet or helping the homeless and hungry.

I am tired of never enjoying anything because of who may have given money to a cause I don’t believe in, or who may be making money off of my data, or who is the biggest dick of all the white male dicks who own everything in the world.

I didn’t create this society. I’m doing my best in this society. I’m vocally anti-racist, anti-homophobic/transphobic, open to everyone just being their best selves and living their lives. I don’t eat meat because of factory farming and its impact on the climate. I don’t spray chemicals on my lawn because of its impact on the ground water and the pollinators . I try to consume mindfully. I try to avoid companies who are openly rightwing and hateful. I left Twitter because of Elon.

But I also have to live in this society I didn’t create somehow. I have to eat and consume somehow. I didn’t decide to put everything in plastic and then let that plastic pollute the water and the soil. I didn’t decide to embrace capitalism above human rights. I didn’t decide to concentrate the wealth to the top 1% while everyone else starves.

Yet I do what little one person can do to change that.

But I also get this one life. Just one. Just one time to be here and try to find a little joy. I’m tired of feeling tremendous guilt because my laundry soap is in a plastic bottle. Tremendous guilt because I purchased something frivolous. I feel like I’m supposed to live in a society I didn’t create like an ascetic. Give up all worldly joys because someone is making money from it who is probably a terrible person. I’m tired of never admitting to enjoying anything. Yet, I do what I can.

I wish I could invite you into an aesthetic. We could sit in a white room on a blush couch free of crumbs and random letters. Drink sweet tea in matching cups, served on a wooden tray without stains of other lives. A perfectly neutral space where you could rest your feet on a plush pouf, instead of regrets. There would be order & the perfect border of white space hiding closets full of autobiographies & sharp knives. I could invite you into an aesthetic lie, but really, where’s the fun in that?