caby journal

The Journal
4th of February 2024 Rambles about organisation, overthinking, and suchlike. I've been itching again recently to work on site stuff. I've been putting it off for a very long time now because without intending to and without anyone really influencing it, I've developed this fear of it, I guess. Too many times feeling frustrated at some little bit of HTML not working or not feeling satisfied with my work in general. Being surrounded by talented, creative folks also, it's both inspiring and daunting. That said, I think there are two current factors as to why I feel an urge to work on site stuff. One, Cammy's been chipping away at updating the Somnolescent gopher as well as a brand new CCSO database. Two, I've been browsing Neocities again. It's changed massively in the time since I was actively using it last, and I guess a little amusingly I've become nostalgic for old web revivalism. I see sites with buttons and GIFs grabbed from gifcities and it warms something in my heart. I remember doing that! I remember happily building a site made of iframes filled with stolen GIFs and random nonsense. It all felt so simple, things just seemed to work somehow. The world felt so much smaller and simpler. I've had a lot of frustrations and worries about site building over the years, I stopped finding it fun for a while, hence why I pulled down my caby.somnol site. I've never been the most technically minded person and I started holding myself to too high of a standard, expecting things from my sites that I just wasn't able to achieve, and then feeling defeated when it invariably didn't work. The way I could just happily write the most atrocious, evil HTML to get the visuals I wanted back in the day is something I'm trying to get back to, honestly. Rules be damned. Something that I feel has changed a lot for me in the last 6-7 years (Jesus fucking Christ) is my concentration levels. In 2017 when I started my first Neocities site, I was in high school, and had quite literally no friends. I was not speaking to people in real life, I was not speaking to people online. This was a chosen state of being for about a year, but it did leave me with a lot of free time. Take into consideration also that I'd also end up dropping half my subjects in school that year as well. I had lots and lots of time to idly browse the internet and make stuff. I also, unbelievably, had no social media accounts. I had a Blogspot set to private that I'd shitpost on, I used Neopets, and that was about it. My daily routine upon arriving in school was genuinely doing Neopets dailies, looking at nonsense like goodiesruleok.com, and then browsing Reocities (RIP). I've lost my train of thought here reminiscing about mediterranian couscous and being nonverbal for days on end, but my point is that I had a lot of time, and a lot of space to think. I don't have that anymore. You'll be shocked to hear that university is more work than high school. It's infinitely less depressing, and more focused on things I'm genuinely interested in, but it's certainly more work. I have friends! I have folks that I talk to on the daily, I have a boyfriend (who is visiting in less than a week! exciting times), and on a vaguely similar note I now have social media presence. These are all things I'm thankful for, and I'm glad to have, but again, it's stuff that takes up my time. I'm talking to friends, I'm thinking about having artwork to post to my accounts, I'm thinking of animating more to post to Youtube, I'm thinking of my university work, what I have to get done,, Add onto this the fact that I'm just woefully, obsessively online at this point, I don't get a whole lot done site-wise. Or in general. Cammy had a simple request for artists in the group to pick out six drawings of theirs from the last two years that they like, so that he could put them on the gopher. It took me close to two weeks to get that done. It was literally just a matter of looking through files and pasting some stuff into discord, and it took me two weeks. This isn't an active effort to waste as much time as possible, I'm just floating through space and being surprised by the passage of time. And I guess that in of itself adds onto my anxiety about site building (this is not a well-structured ramble...), the fact that I have so many things I want to do, things I should do. Cammy very kindly got the domain caby.art for a fair chunk of change and got it onto his hosting, and I've yet to actually do anything with it. My original caby.somnol site is still sat with a big ol "brb" splash page and nothing else and has been for years at this point. Upon checking my lil neocities site I realised it was saying it was last updated a year ago and it still listed me as being 22 years old (I'm 24!). It's just thoroughly discouraging having this endless pile of stuff to do, and it feels as though no matter what stuff I give up on and throw away, it doesn't change anything. I still miss deadlines, I still lose track, I'm still a disorganised mess that has to really, really fight to get stuff done. I'm not entirely sure right now what the answer is, what might help me. I think what I will have to just admit to myself is that I need to step away from,,, not the internet as a whole, but the sites I do use too much. I need to clean up and organise my computers, I need to close the eight billion tabs I have open, I need to give myself space to focus. Desperately. Youtube and Tumblr especially are gonna be the death of me, I swear. It's always been something I struggle with, the way that things get out of control so quickly. I was reminded the other day in Somnol about the fact that I, as a kid, abandoned my first email address because my inbox got so very full of junk that Thunderbird would crash when I tried to open it. That's the story of my life. I need to clear out a lot of junk. And it's hard because overall this is the best I've ever done. I've got friends, I've got a boyf, I'm doing well in university thus far, I'm happy with where I am on social media, I'm making money off my art even. I just wish I could get a lil silly site in there too, ya know? Or get my professional site done so I'd have something to point to when folks ask my commission options. All in all though, Cammy has said to me in the past that a site starts with just one page. And it can be just one page. And I guess this counts as a page. So maybe this is a good sign? I sure hope so. I have a lot that I want to do. And as far as clearing goes, I just closed 65 tabs. How clean and shiny.

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The Journal

4th of February 2024

Rambles about organisation, overthinking, and suchlike.

I've been itching again recently to work on site stuff. I've been putting it off for a very long time now because without intending to and without anyone really influencing it, I've developed this fear of it, I guess. Too many times feeling frustrated at some little bit of HTML not working or not feeling satisfied with my work in general. Being surrounded by talented, creative folks also, it's both inspiring and daunting.

That said, I think there are two current factors as to why I feel an urge to work on site stuff. One, Cammy's been chipping away at updating the Somnolescent gopher as well as a brand new CCSO database. Two, I've been browsing Neocities again. It's changed massively in the time since I was actively using it last, and I guess a little amusingly I've become nostalgic for old web revivalism. I see sites with buttons and GIFs grabbed from gifcities and it warms something in my heart. I remember doing that! I remember happily building a site made of iframes filled with stolen GIFs and random nonsense. It all felt so simple, things just seemed to work somehow. The world felt so much smaller and simpler.

I've had a lot of frustrations and worries about site building over the years, I stopped finding it fun for a while, hence why I pulled down my caby.somnol site. I've never been the most technically minded person and I started holding myself to too high of a standard, expecting things from my sites that I just wasn't able to achieve, and then feeling defeated when it invariably didn't work. The way I could just happily write the most atrocious, evil HTML to get the visuals I wanted back in the day is something I'm trying to get back to, honestly. Rules be damned.

Something that I feel has changed a lot for me in the last 6-7 years (Jesus fucking Christ) is my concentration levels. In 2017 when I started my first Neocities site, I was in high school, and had quite literally no friends. I was not speaking to people in real life, I was not speaking to people online. This was a chosen state of being for about a year, but it did leave me with a lot of free time. Take into consideration also that I'd also end up dropping half my subjects in school that year as well. I had lots and lots of time to idly browse the internet and make stuff. I also, unbelievably, had no social media accounts. I had a Blogspot set to private that I'd shitpost on, I used Neopets, and that was about it. My daily routine upon arriving in school was genuinely doing Neopets dailies, looking at nonsense like goodiesruleok.com, and then browsing Reocities (RIP). I've lost my train of thought here reminiscing about mediterranian couscous and being nonverbal for days on end, but my point is that I had a lot of time, and a lot of space to think. I don't have that anymore.

You'll be shocked to hear that university is more work than high school. It's infinitely less depressing, and more focused on things I'm genuinely interested in, but it's certainly more work. I have friends! I have folks that I talk to on the daily, I have a boyfriend (who is visiting in less than a week! exciting times), and on a vaguely similar note I now have social media presence. These are all things I'm thankful for, and I'm glad to have, but again, it's stuff that takes up my time. I'm talking to friends, I'm thinking about having artwork to post to my accounts, I'm thinking of animating more to post to Youtube, I'm thinking of my university work, what I have to get done,, Add onto this the fact that I'm just woefully, obsessively online at this point, I don't get a whole lot done site-wise. Or in general. Cammy had a simple request for artists in the group to pick out six drawings of theirs from the last two years that they like, so that he could put them on the gopher. It took me close to two weeks to get that done. It was literally just a matter of looking through files and pasting some stuff into discord, and it took me two weeks. This isn't an active effort to waste as much time as possible, I'm just floating through space and being surprised by the passage of time.

And I guess that in of itself adds onto my anxiety about site building (this is not a well-structured ramble...), the fact that I have so many things I want to do, things I should do. Cammy very kindly got the domain caby.art for a fair chunk of change and got it onto his hosting, and I've yet to actually do anything with it. My original caby.somnol site is still sat with a big ol "brb" splash page and nothing else and has been for years at this point. Upon checking my lil neocities site I realised it was saying it was last updated a year ago and it still listed me as being 22 years old (I'm 24!). It's just thoroughly discouraging having this endless pile of stuff to do, and it feels as though no matter what stuff I give up on and throw away, it doesn't change anything. I still miss deadlines, I still lose track, I'm still a disorganised mess that has to really, really fight to get stuff done.

I'm not entirely sure right now what the answer is, what might help me. I think what I will have to just admit to myself is that I need to step away from,,, not the internet as a whole, but the sites I do use too much. I need to clean up and organise my computers, I need to close the eight billion tabs I have open, I need to give myself space to focus. Desperately. Youtube and Tumblr especially are gonna be the death of me, I swear.

It's always been something I struggle with, the way that things get out of control so quickly. I was reminded the other day in Somnol about the fact that I, as a kid, abandoned my first email address because my inbox got so very full of junk that Thunderbird would crash when I tried to open it. That's the story of my life. I need to clear out a lot of junk.

And it's hard because overall this is the best I've ever done. I've got friends, I've got a boyf, I'm doing well in university thus far, I'm happy with where I am on social media, I'm making money off my art even. I just wish I could get a lil silly site in there too, ya know? Or get my professional site done so I'd have something to point to when folks ask my commission options.

All in all though, Cammy has said to me in the past that a site starts with just one page. And it can be just one page. And I guess this counts as a page. So maybe this is a good sign? I sure hope so. I have a lot that I want to do.

And as far as clearing goes, I just closed 65 tabs.

How clean and shiny.

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