Well, it seems life has shifted again. Would I be any less of a Scorpio Moon if I didn’t need to change my scenery every few years? Viva la revolution?
In truth, I ran out of funds before I could pay for my previous domain’s hosting (which was connected to the domain name itself, so a double-whammy). I considered still paying for the domain and returning to hosting when I could, but after about a decade of awfulness, the name was tied to too many terrible, life-deflating emotions and I was done. I don’t want to be that name anymore.
Unless something straight up ridiculous happens, I should be good here for a while. Who’s to say how fresh any of this is when I’m using a similar template for my own peace of mind, and my plan is to write about a lot of the same kinds of things, but I can hope that I’ve scrubbed enough of the dead skin off in the interim.
It began years ago in noticing how poorly received my attempts to share words was going, at least in part because of social media algorithms purposely hiding my content because I refused to share it the “right” way. That bled into realizing that even when I theoretically had an audience they didn’t much give a shit what I had to say unless it fit certain topics or brands of emotions or click bait-level attention-grabbing thoughts and/or photos from the get-go. That then gradually became wondering who my friends really were, especially as I hit a domino of rock bottoms yet repeatedly found myself facing emotional shrugs from others when I talked about it online. Aside from one or two conversations over a period of years, best I could get was a “like” or a sad face emoji. Actually talk to me? Read anything I had to say about what was going on without me hand-delivering it (even then)? No fucking way. Make assumptions and move on and keep my likeness stuffed in a box. It was coming on quite a while and I had a period of back and forth about it, but I finally had an “I fucking quit” moment. After a persistent onslaught of information about politics and social media, the people I thought were neutral-good chose their addictive social media “needs” over human beings and ignored the terrible people at the helm. It really sunk in with clarity during the anti-DEI, removal of letters from LGBTQIA+ situations. Why would I continue to use a website like this? Why would anyone who claims human rights, leftist interests? Have my friends and associates been fucking lying this whole time? Hmm. Well, when I pick the individuals apart, I could see it in a few cases. On whole it’s more likely envisioning oneself as a helpless pawn and bystander of the world and not believing they can be the change. Logging in a few times towards the end I noticed the algorithm wanted me to see intellectual pollution type content, whatever to keep me happily addicted with bullshit and/or angry at how stupid and vile some people are. No thanks. I didn’t need to do this anymore. Wish I’d quit earlier.
The last 15 to 18 months have created a space where I’ve been able to cleanse myself of those habits and much easier notice when places or people on the internet are getting under my skin for no good reason beyond the words were there when I logged in. It’s not a perfect system but I’m doing much better about intentionally using the internet now. But with that, of course, means a certain amount of isolation, and I’ve abandoned anyone who didn’t follow me off the hellsites so any assumed ties aren’t there like they were. My words get seen less by less people. While disheartening as fuck, I’ve been able to breathe a bit easier without the noise of occasional participation points and ego parades constantly lurking in my head.
While it’s in a sense peaceful to accept that I’m probably just talking to myself if I type anything to the internet lately, it’s also got me wondering what the point of having a website was. Did the tree that fell in the woods with no one around to hear it fall actually make any noise? (Yes it did.) Then I remembered how god damn fucking awful certain groups of people and people at the helm are, and I’d rather continue helping anyone who needs it for the other domain I have that also lost its hosting when I ran out of money for these things. So I decided I’d come back when I had money. And what do you know, once I had money again, I suddenly had esteem for words again. So might as well register a new domain name.
I can’t make predictions about what I’m going to do here just yet. I’ve been very distracted the last few months with life lifin’ and things don’t entirely calm down for a while. For now the plan is to put words together about music soon. I haven’t been watching many shows or movies the last couple of months but summer tends to call for those. I’m also considering writing semi-personal content to avoid the horrors of condensing full thoughts down to 300 characters and the multiple edits before posting landing at unreadable, grammatically incorrect trash. I also had an improvement in my creative arts education, so to speak, so perhaps I’ll share some photos as time goes on.
Now the question of whether I can be bothered to share that this place even exists needs an answer. Guess we’ll see.