little increments

sunday, 30 jun 2024

and just like that, the first half of the year is over!!! crazy how that happens. this is kind of a rambly post about some life/site/media updates, so it's very long, sorry.

here is where i talk about my life...

not much has changed with me over the past month. i finished the comic i said i was working on, which i'm quite happy with! there's 24 hours left on the campaign as of typing this and i think it'll get fully funded at the very last second, so i'm excited for that!

i'm happy enough with my work, although as always, i find myself looking back on it (after a bit of a break) with a more a critical eye, seeing so clearly which parts i phoned in and which were simply lacking, despite my efforts. i'm so glad this kickstarter looks like it'll be successful, because it's important to me that my work be produced soon after i've made it or else i won't be as proud to show it off LOL. there's like a statute of limitations... a time decay.

and man, i don't even like showing it off while i still kind of like it – the act of promoting it everywhere was excruciating. it's very silly given how much i talk about myself, but there's still something about earnestly baring yourself, your interests, and your desires to the world (specifically people you know in real life) that makes me seize up. but i guess it's just something i have to practice... i'd like to be someone with a strong sense of self, a strong love for herself, who doesn't care about being perceived or misread. arrgghghhhh. easier said than done!!!!

on the topic of self-love: i recently got into weightlifting! i've had a few sessions with a personal trainer and am surprised by how much i enjoy it. i'm not naturally athletic by any means, but i am always thinking hard about everything, and it turns out that that's kind of a good thing when you're lifting weights, because you have to be extremely focused.

it's a good thing for me too, since for the longest time i never really felt connected to my body... for lack of a better way to put it, i felt i was just a brain housed in something. having to really Feel My Body (eek) is helping me work on that lack of connection, i think.

i got into weightlifting because a) i was already on the lookout for a mode of exercise that i wouldn't hate or that wouldn't freak me out (something something weird unpacked fitness-related trauma) and b) i thought it would be cute to be an unexpectedly strong girl. i've always wanted to be able to lift a person, and now i'm on the right track.

my trainer is nice, nice enough that i felt able to be honest with him about my poor sleeping habits, and so we've been working on my sleep too. i slept at 12:30am the other night, which is the earliest it's been in a LONG time. i don't think i've really slept properly since the pandemic broke out! and even before then, i'd waffle between healthy and unhealthy sleeping habits...

i have to say, it's been nice to try and match my circadian rhythm. my mood is a lot better and i feel like there's more in a day. my dog seems happier with this change, too. i still fuck up (i slept at 4am last night) but i've felt enough of the benefits of sleeping better that i don't think i'm as at risk of repeating the misstep a second night in a row as i was, say, a month ago.

generally, i've felt more like a person recently than i have in years (again, the pandemic), even if nothing much else has really changed. i think part of it is that sleeping right and moving a bit is just good for The Animal That Is You, but another part of it is that it felt so shameful to not even be able to put myself to bed on time, and addressing that insecurity (by solving the problem, ish) helped me feel more confident. yippee!

i recently accompanied my sister to an art event and got to talk to some of her friends, who were very cool and nice. being surrounded by art and people was also really healing. it made me want to think about the kind of art i'm interested in and what i'd like to make... maybe this will be for a different post, but it got me thinking about how averse to vulnerability i can be with my work (which is why i keep it so close to me, or get rid of my art accounts as soon as my audience grows beyond my comfort zone), and how if i want to be a person who makes art, a person who gets to connect with people through what she makes, then that's something i have to address.

ah! my sister also introduced me to one specific friend of hers who'd gone to school away from our hometown and was trying to figure out how to make new friends after coming back – which is the exact same situation i'm in, lol, so i was very happy to meet them. i'm not really sure what to invite them to do, since i don't really have insider info on many cool things to do around the city (BECAUSE i was away!!!!)... but i will think of something.

here is where i talk about the site :)

sitwise: the site move i talked about in my last post happened! i bought a domain name and everything too. i'm honestly floored by how easy my new workflow is compared to the hellish drag and drop of the neocities dashboard. the build with eleventy -> deploy via git to vercel two step process is so staggeringly efficient, even though a few months ago my eyes would have glazed over reading that.

some people i have to thank for their beginner-friendly introductions to these things:

• whiona's workflow using eleventy and the cli. this one uses neocities too!
  • this post and this one were also infinitely helpful.
• scumsuck for their post on free site hosting resources as they introduced me to vercel! i never would have learned of it otherwise.
• 10kph's post on using global data... when i saw how this worked i gasped. automated updates?! (as expected, i use global data for a lot of things in my new build.)
• my friend misu, who explained to me how git and github work.

i experimented first by making an entirely new site and using 11ty – namely the layouts and global data. this worked out great because i did need a less horny site i could show friends/family who knew i was coding a bunch. (not that this site is very horny to begin with – just kind of sussy – but again, they simply don't need such a close-up picture of my brain...) so i played around with 11ty's features using the new site as a crash test dummy pretty much.

once i figured it out, i was really excited to start my overhaul, so the move that i initially scheduled for july got bumped up to june. early birthday gift for me!

seriously, i cannot emphasize enough how convenient 11ty is for me. i was team "my system is inconvenient but i am on top of it so i have no intention of changing" until i experienced just how convenient it was for myself... and vercel is super fast. love.

i am a little sad about my old room theme, because i still really liked it and so did many of my friends who i sent this new site to, but ARRRGGGGHHHHHH... pixel art is cute but so tedious, and that thing was so painfully unmobile friendly (partly also because of the pixelation, which sometimes looked bad when resized!). if i find a workaround i will 100% go for it but for now the floating stickers will have to do.

anyway, because of my experience learning about 11ty (even installing it took some sitting down and reading), it's given me the confidence to try and learn other things! i now Kind Of get how to use the terminal. i no longer balk when i see weird shortcut terms. i recently figured out how to use fancybox to make a nice little image gallery, and staticrypt to password-protect pages (like the freakzone). a win for the girl who did not properly learn to code until last year.

plus: it didn't really feel like "I HAVE TO GET BETTER AT THIS THING I'M NOT THAT GOOD AT!!!!!" (something i feel a lot re: art, language, work, and writing when i took it seriously), which is the best part. i wanted a specific thing out of my site, and decided to learn something new to get it. think this hobby has truly been a net positive on my life, if only because it taught me that improvement would come (with self-monitoring and curiosity) anyway, and that i don't have to use negative feelings about my shortcomings as a motivator. cool + good!!!!

here is where i talk, briefly, about my brainworms n media intake

• i am still thinking about ducks a lot... god, what a good show. i keep going back and watching episodes. thank you danny pudi for being in this show (as my favorite of the triplets, no less) so i could latch onto a new obsession
  • the duck triplet gf agenda is afoot. i have an oc for each but only two have been drawn
    • (i'm sorry to dewey for not having drawn his yet... it feels, sadly, befitting of the middle child that i have neglected his plot)
• i'm reading lolita sooooo slowly – i finished part 1 and am taking a break. right now i'm reading a book called mother noise by cindy house, which i've been meaning to read since i saw it a couple years ago. how do you tell your kid that you once suffered from a heroin addiction?
  • i'm reading this not long after i read monsters: a fan's dilemma where the author also speaks to motherhood, this time in tandem with (or as a threat to) artistry.
  • i definitely want to read more memoirs by writers who are mothers, who try to reconcile motherhood with aspects of their life that don't slot into place alongside motherhood quite so easily. it's something i think about, even though i'm nowhere near the milestone of having children lol
• i've been listening to itaino itaino tondeike on repeat since my best friend sent it to me a couple days ago. the MV is wild. really well done
• again, i'm thinking a lot about my duck oc/canons... i really want to care about my OCs, but it requires that i fall in love with my characters hard and i don't know how to facilitate that experience without existing media about them lol. another thing to ponder.
  • at least i know solving that should be my next step!