2026-07-19

First Blog

There are times when something that happens triggers a change in your life, in your habits, in your priorities.

And while I may not want to go into details on a public-facing blog, my most recent something has inpired me to create a blog. Or a Digital Garden¹. Whatever this is going to turn into.

It's easy to get pulled by the ever-boring normal. It's safe. It's comfortable. It's a mental break.

But when something shakes up the routine, makes the future uncertain, presents difficult but unavoidable Big Choices, I eventualy find myself looking for community (after a healthy dose of panic-researching what the h*ck to to and worst case scenarios, of course).

This time around, I found myself on the outskirts of the DFTBA² Nerdfighteria³ community. And somehow that led me to learning about Mastodon⁴. And somehow that led me to discovering the indie web, and rediscovering webrings⁵, and discovering the concept of Digital Gardening¹.

The internet used to be a magical, human place. I like to think that I was, in a major way, raised by the internet. By people all around the world at all stages of life, who I shared my hopes and dreams and struggles with, and they shared the same with me.

But that internet slowly faded away. Replaced by apps, replaced by centralization, replaced by robots and bots and a *right* way to do things. No more bright colorful backgrounds, or rainbow banners, or scrolling marquees. No more creativity, no more humanity. Slowly, slowly, pushing us apart, pushing us into compliance, into standardization.

I love that I've rediscovered some of that old internet, flourishing anew. I love that I've found chaotic, creative, pixellated, scrolling, flashing nonsense images. It shows me that we're still here. We still crave that grassroots space. The labyrinth of discovery and the trinkets and the unpolished.

So I'm going to take some of that inspiration I've found on this modern retro web. I'm going to learn in public⁶. I'm going to accept good enough over perfect. And I'm going to see where this goes.

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