Celebrate - 04/23/24
Published: 02:20
lately, i've felt weak. majorly in an emotional sense, but the physical deterioration of my immune system isn't helping.
i'm still hung up on that stupid website.
even though i'm not working on it anymore, every night, it's all i can think about. i try to remember the good that comes/came of it, but i just can't. all of the regret eats me away. in the beginning, it was really fun, which is why i think i let it go on for so much longer than i could handle. for my sake, i'm going to disclose the heart-wrenching irony of the situation piece by piece for the last time:
for the last 12 years of my life, i've poured my heart and soul into creating and sharing all of the art i could squeeze out of myself. did i have something to prove? did i crave attention? my inner cynicist wants to say "absolutely", but considering the sheer vulnerability, effort and time involved, i can't say for sure.
i was reaching my people. i had eyes on me who wanted what i was offering. no matter how dreamlike that scenario sounds, that support was treated like a push-and-pull by me, and supporting me was probably really agitating. to make a long story short, i was eventually discouraged and mistreated by my primary platform anyway, so i finally decided "enough is enough".
it took me too many years to finally say "i'm going to move on from this website". in all that time, it never taught me how to appreciate myself; all it taught me was that my creativity and passion are unsustainable.
my final upload was made in vain - built completely on misery and old habits. creating from the ground up and tying my own complicated website meaning smlwiki.com into it was just part of that "poetic justice"/"sticking it to the system" plotline happening in my head.
something i never expected or planned for was that video and website being the first time people cared in years. i was just trying to bury the hatchet and find peace within myself to be able quit on a decent note.
it blew up in my face, and i'm kicking myself for giving up just before it, and simultaneously yelling at myself for wanting to reap any benefits. my progress and comfortability to move on had just been set back by years, as i watched myself reach milestones i hadn't even at my peak, and i started spiraling.
the video itself was a formal love-letter to YouTube Poop: an amalgam format of nostalgia, remixing, creative risk-taking, indulgence and sensory euphoria. that video is its own beast now, contributing to my biggest fear: "a project people actually care about", and i'm almost completely detached. my intention, context, passion, anger, hate, & pity are all slurred together and suddenly… beneath the product. i took everything down so i could hoard it to myself.
i've been having trouble finding ways to celebrate this. some days, all i need to do is see people's art inspired by the site, or watch someone explore the site in a video - anything along the lines of seeing people get inspired by the web-experience i tossed into the internet ecosystem. any day i see that is usually a good day. that's more powerful than my self-critical ego.
today is 4/23 — specifically, 4/23/24. it's actually a few days before right now, but i'm tweaking this by the day so that it counts. 4/23 is a special day for members of a certain esoteric internet zeitgeist that i don't feel the need to namedrop here, but that i am apart of. this day each year is fun for us, and today is especially glorious thanks to the palindromic date.
this day helps remind me what it means to be an enthusiast and identify with the label 'artist'. this day brings us internet dweebs together… but when i think about today, i might sometimes get emotional and reminisce about the person who started it, and think about them not getting to join us.
art reincarnates: i'm going to try and learn to embrace this from the perspective i've neglected for so long—
and just temper myself better in general.
Reads
