02012025 - on sandboxes
Jan. 2nd, 2025 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twomblying I did not make "blogging" one of my new years resolutions,
because I resolved not to do new years resolutions at all. My other Not Resolutions include: going to more cafes, reading more than 2 books (the abysmal reading count of 2024), doing more crafts, and generally being weirder-hornier-gayer. I also gave myself complete grace to do fuck all on the 1st of the year. I'm kind of over the whole "be kind to yourself" mantra because I don't think, in its current dissemination, it's done me any favors personally. But I am a big fan of the "you can do whatever you want forever" bit, and that's what I'm focusing on in 2025.
"You can do whatever you want" + "Try harder" are my twin guiding lights as I try to make myself do things that are ultimately in service of loving myself more and feeling more like an active participant in my own life.
Anyway, I didn't make blogging a resolution but I do want to do it more, so that's what this is. To be honest, for most of 2024, I spent a lot of time fiddling with the concept of Being Online, and whether or not I want to do it anymore. I know so many people who are very online when they don't seem to actually want to be, and I know a lot of people who actually did get offline or significantly cut down their online presence last year. I don't think that's for me, and I think saying I will do it is yet another way for me to just feel bad about myself. But then I kept trying to figure out if that meant I had some sort of unhealthy internet addiction or if the internet could still be a place that brought me joy. I spent hours thinking about this! Jacqui received many, many meandering voice messages about it.
I think the word I kept worrying over and over and over here is "place" - the internet does not feel like a place anymore, yet I use that word to describe it so often. It's nothing, it's nowhere. Maybe at some point that felt open-ended and inspired, but now it feels closed off and isolating and, at times, cruel. I miss when it was more like a place, or a gigantic collection of places like sandboxes. I miss websites etc etc etc. So now I guess I'm stuck trying to figure out how to make the spaces I enjoy frequenting online feel more like places, and maybe hopefully finding or creating some new places while I'm at it.
The easiest sandbox to tackle first, for me, is fandom. Toxic as all fuck in this day and age but, I believe, worth salvaging. I have a whole other blog post in my head about this -- not that's it anything new. I've been thinking a LOT about this post by popular drarry fic author letteredlettered on tumblr about fandom, creation and engagement -- but for me personally, I think fandom only feels worthwhile to me if I can engage with a community beyond DMing thoughts to my friends. I love to do that too (shoutout to JD for getting approximately 500 twitter messages from me a day), but what I miss more than anything is a feeling of a wider creative community built up around a fandom. And I'm guilty of pulling back and lurking as much as the next person. But the line between doing that while still actively participating in my own enjoyment and just sitting there consuming is thin, and I don't feel good when I cross over onto the strictly consumption side. So in 2025: more commenting, more writing, more reaching out.
The other sandbox is harder to describe but feels glaring to me: I'm thinking of it as a space for creative interiority. Which is blogging, yes, but also collecting, and archiving. For example, I spent new years eve making a personal vision board, which is the most fun I've had in ages, and I also made a vision board for the kpop pairing that's currently melting my brain. Images! Words! Fun fun fun.
It really all comes back to creating for me, which seems obvious now that I'm spelling it out. It's the opposite of consuming, in a way, but I don't think I know how to untangle to two anymore. Or where to do that. I think that's why DW appeals to me so much and why I've tried to convince a few precious friends to make one and use it. It's a little corner of the internet! I don't think I realized how much that concept had disappeared until now. I'm still working out how exactly I plan to do more of this kind of thing online, but it really is a big goal for me. I no longer want to sink hours and hours into looking at screens if I'm walking away feeling like all I did was give something up but didn't learn or create anything.
This is all to say, hi hello. I'm blogging again. If you're reading this, please feel free to say hi or tell me your thoughts on the internet and places and creating! Part of me posting this is an experiment to see if this (dreamwidth, longform blogging, etc) can be a mode of conversation.
xoxo
because I resolved not to do new years resolutions at all. My other Not Resolutions include: going to more cafes, reading more than 2 books (the abysmal reading count of 2024), doing more crafts, and generally being weirder-hornier-gayer. I also gave myself complete grace to do fuck all on the 1st of the year. I'm kind of over the whole "be kind to yourself" mantra because I don't think, in its current dissemination, it's done me any favors personally. But I am a big fan of the "you can do whatever you want forever" bit, and that's what I'm focusing on in 2025.
"You can do whatever you want" + "Try harder" are my twin guiding lights as I try to make myself do things that are ultimately in service of loving myself more and feeling more like an active participant in my own life.
Anyway, I didn't make blogging a resolution but I do want to do it more, so that's what this is. To be honest, for most of 2024, I spent a lot of time fiddling with the concept of Being Online, and whether or not I want to do it anymore. I know so many people who are very online when they don't seem to actually want to be, and I know a lot of people who actually did get offline or significantly cut down their online presence last year. I don't think that's for me, and I think saying I will do it is yet another way for me to just feel bad about myself. But then I kept trying to figure out if that meant I had some sort of unhealthy internet addiction or if the internet could still be a place that brought me joy. I spent hours thinking about this! Jacqui received many, many meandering voice messages about it.
I think the word I kept worrying over and over and over here is "place" - the internet does not feel like a place anymore, yet I use that word to describe it so often. It's nothing, it's nowhere. Maybe at some point that felt open-ended and inspired, but now it feels closed off and isolating and, at times, cruel. I miss when it was more like a place, or a gigantic collection of places like sandboxes. I miss websites etc etc etc. So now I guess I'm stuck trying to figure out how to make the spaces I enjoy frequenting online feel more like places, and maybe hopefully finding or creating some new places while I'm at it.
The easiest sandbox to tackle first, for me, is fandom. Toxic as all fuck in this day and age but, I believe, worth salvaging. I have a whole other blog post in my head about this -- not that's it anything new. I've been thinking a LOT about this post by popular drarry fic author letteredlettered on tumblr about fandom, creation and engagement -- but for me personally, I think fandom only feels worthwhile to me if I can engage with a community beyond DMing thoughts to my friends. I love to do that too (shoutout to JD for getting approximately 500 twitter messages from me a day), but what I miss more than anything is a feeling of a wider creative community built up around a fandom. And I'm guilty of pulling back and lurking as much as the next person. But the line between doing that while still actively participating in my own enjoyment and just sitting there consuming is thin, and I don't feel good when I cross over onto the strictly consumption side. So in 2025: more commenting, more writing, more reaching out.
The other sandbox is harder to describe but feels glaring to me: I'm thinking of it as a space for creative interiority. Which is blogging, yes, but also collecting, and archiving. For example, I spent new years eve making a personal vision board, which is the most fun I've had in ages, and I also made a vision board for the kpop pairing that's currently melting my brain. Images! Words! Fun fun fun.
It really all comes back to creating for me, which seems obvious now that I'm spelling it out. It's the opposite of consuming, in a way, but I don't think I know how to untangle to two anymore. Or where to do that. I think that's why DW appeals to me so much and why I've tried to convince a few precious friends to make one and use it. It's a little corner of the internet! I don't think I realized how much that concept had disappeared until now. I'm still working out how exactly I plan to do more of this kind of thing online, but it really is a big goal for me. I no longer want to sink hours and hours into looking at screens if I'm walking away feeling like all I did was give something up but didn't learn or create anything.
This is all to say, hi hello. I'm blogging again. If you're reading this, please feel free to say hi or tell me your thoughts on the internet and places and creating! Part of me posting this is an experiment to see if this (dreamwidth, longform blogging, etc) can be a mode of conversation.
xoxo
