First blog post!

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

I made this website have a space away from social media sites AND to have an outlet for my writing hobbies. While I wish I could be better at how I write stuff, I still have a lot to say! That said, I’ll be writing posts that may or may not be best to share on a social media site. Sure, I could pass around the link to a new blog post, but I cannot write the post on the social media site if there are barriers like character limits. That would not be feasible.

If not that, then my blog posts could arise here for personal reasons. Maybe I have a take that's so spicy that I shouldn't be posting it on a social media site, lest I get dogpiled by some bad actors. Maybe I don't want to feel discouraged by the lack of engagement that a post is getting based on visible metrics.

I think this is all to say that I want to share writings in a space that I could call my own, rather than writing something that can get lost in the abyss of my social media feed (especially if said site sucks at archiving or makes it difficult to access old posts). If all other social media sites fail, I will have this blog to fall back on.

Furthermore, I made this website to surpass my previous site, which I made on Carrd. While Carrd’s site-building functionality is robust & easy to pick up, there’s imposed limits for free users (i.e., only two sites per account, & only 100 elements per site), so I initially built it as a link hub. At some point, my Carrd site will outweigh its usefulness to me.

Making my website, especially with a Neocities membership, will buy me time & space for a link hub, an art gallery, and a blog all on one site! Taking on this feat required me to become a better webmaster…even if that means that I'm plugging in JavaScripts that I found online. However, that IS what the Link Hub page is for. The bottom of the page has credited links to all of the code libraries & structures that I used to make this website possible. Despite taking the initiative to make my website, it's surprisingly hard to code it, especially if it involves JavaScript. It sure doesn’t help that JS is the only coding language I have the least experience in! Most of the time, I just plug in a JS file and hope for the best, for better or worse!

But it was still fun to make this site regardless of my struggles. It's very rewarding! I would liken this experience to cooking a meal for yourself: you're learning a personal & valuable skill that will benefit you. But instead of making yourself a good meal, you're making yourself a fun digital space to call your own.

That’s all I have to say for now. There is still so much work to do here, and I am SO excited!! I hope to maintain this site alongside my regular art projects for as long as possible because if I don’t, I will feel like this could be a waste of effort.