Whew. Better day today! It’s been a lot of ups and downs these past few months. Some days are better than others. Today is a good day. I ended up getting really into working on a small project for my site and it reminded me just how thankful I am to have this space as an outlet. When I can get the motivation to work on it, it’s incredibly therapeutic. Honestly I think even writing about things here is really therapeutic. I don’t expect many people read this section, maybe skim it in passing but whether people read it or not, writing here has just been a great outlet for me to blow of steam and organize my thoughts and feelings.
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Anyways, as for the project I started working on, I made my first clique! I’m not sure how successful it will be yet but I’m hoping it catches on. It’s a neighborhood clique! So essentially, folks who have a similar navigation scheme can become a resident of SatyadΔsa, claim a plot to be featured on the Town’s front page, and start their own neighborhood. I think it’ll be a fun way to make friends on the small web and give a sense of physicality and coziness to digital spaces. I don’t know. I think it’s a cool idea. I’m psyched but we’ll see if it catches on. xD
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I’m not really sure what I want to work on next yet. I’ve been thinking about finally setting up a shop on my site to sell static HTML layouts for folks on Neocities or other static website hosts. I’m sure there’s already tons out there for folks to use that are free but it’d be nice to have a small section of my site to potentially bring in a little income.
There isn’t much in this world that I’ve been able to stay consistent with when it comes to things I enjoy. My site is actually one of the longest running projects I’ve ever had that I still really love and continuously work on, and I think the reason I have stuck with it for this long is because it is very personal and not business focused. There’s no pressure to pump out social media posts or marketing emails every day like a machine. I’ve made this space my home on the internet, and I don’t ever want it to be taken over by business and marketing. My website is precious to me.
I hate marketing and advertising, despite being somewhat educated in it, it’s what burnt me out and killed the joy of every creative thing I’ve ever tried to sell to the point I eventually quit everything. So I think if I am to have a little shop section on my site, it’s going to be a small part of my site overall. I’m not going to plaster it everywhere starting advertising campaigns for it, it’s just going to be here and if something sells it sells, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. And at the core, I don’t want my website to ever be business focused, because I think if that ever happened, that would be the beginning of the end for my love of this project. I’m not a brand, I’m a person, and I don’t ever want that kind of pressure to be put on me with something I treasure so deeply. That being said, I do want to provide more resources here, and for as much as I’ve provided on my site for free, between actively maintaining my webrings, providing resources and graphics, and helping folks get started in site building, it would be nice to have a little monetary incentive to work on the more energy heavy projects that can help people such as pre-made layouts for folks who might not be very code or tech savvy. I’m a professional graphic designer, and this would be a great way to combine two things I love to contribute to the small web. So I think I might attempt to get that little section set up soon and see what I can create with it. Hopefully it will be helpful. π