I updated my Straw.page today; I'm happy with how it's looking now. A brief showcase of my likes & dislikes. I also included some background music (Peter Gabriel – In Your Eyes). That visitors can turn off if they please.
Not everything I create has to be so polished or even complete. I can share my WIPs, ideas, and incomplete projects. I find that simply getting things out of my head and putting them into the world offers a quiet motivation to see them through.
This way of working grants creative freedom as well. I need more play and freedom in my life.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” -Cesar A. Cruz
I have been on both sides.
I started writing actively online about three years ago, after not having an online presence for many years. To think I've written more than 600 posts already on Medium.
I plan to write less there and build up my website instead. I'm all for the small web these days. I might write or share more on my new Tumblr when I get round to it.
I have a lot of creative ideas spinning about in my head right now. All in good time.
Art is being reduced to entertainment these days. That's how I see things anyway. While art does have a huge role to play in entertainment.
It can also spark deep thought, creative insight, social questioning, existential reckoning, awe, and a host of other emotions.
I'm still playing around on the Indieweb/small web. My inner fatigue for Big Media Big Social is really showing its head. It's nice to have some space to breathe on the internet.
Social media and huge online platforms are so draining. It's a battle trying to navigate the algorithms and post all the time just to stay relevant.
I've also created a guestbook, like the days of the old internet. Anyone can sign it and leave me a message.
The old ways enrapture my heart. It's why I love learning Latin, forgotten skills like fermenting, reading and writing poetry, and period dramas.
I'm a soul nostalgic for lives lived and unlived by me. I'm okay with not embracing all of what the future 'advances' bring.
I love times gone by, and am an old soul.
Still refining my Atheneaum page in my digital garden. A page that invites readers into my world. I like using Latin names.
Atheneaum : a gathering place
Writing for me is a medicine for my soul. I'd rather be writing that watching silly nonsense online. There's something about creating and sharing our thoughts that makes life lighter and more bearable.
Yes, I'm including some Latin words and phrases on my website. I want to believe that my reader is intelligent, or will be curious on the meanings of unknown words.
Positioning my writing for the so-called average person doesn't appeal to me.
It's thinking like this that's dumbing down the internet.
Or rather, I choose to believe my average readers is an intellectual who appreciate finer verbiage and is willing to explore the meaning of words.
Stupidity is celebrated and elevated to the highest of visual presence online.While intellect and sound reasoning gets tossed in the dirt.
What sort of world is this?
I've decided to discontinue posting on Matsodon. I've only been using it for about two days. Yet it still gives too much of a social media vibe, and I dislike my attention being fragmented. There's too much noise from others on there.
I'm sticking with quieter ways of sharing thoughts, ideas, art, and more online.
Cosy and calm, over noise and clutter. That's what I'm after.
Yesterday I created an Adorations and Aversions page. Here I share some of the things my heart cradles and those it casts away. Here it is:
I don't have FOMO, I have ROMO
The Relief Of Missing Out
I'm okay with keeping my world small.
I'm choosing not to care so much who reads my writing. Or even if it gets read at all. I want to tap into the joy of the process. There is something so settling in meeting my thoughts, and translating them into words daily.
“I write to discover what I think.” Daniel J. Boorstin
Everywhere one looks online we're told to be the most epic we can be. Yet there is nothing wrong with a simple life.
Where we savour the beauty of everyday rituals that aren't grandiose or showy.
Algorithms suck!
Why should computer systems decide who gets to see our creative outpourings?
If you've somehow by some mystical forces stumbled on my thoughts page, say hello through my contact area, or check out my website
Everyday I'm just trying to show up creatively, and create whatever I can. It makes me feel whole.
It's hard to be a die hard feminist, when women have been equally as toxic as so-called toxic men. But I don't support patriarchal systems in general. Yet I'm weary of most women.
As they have bought into patriarchy and would crush other women who want to break out of the system. I suppose I'm more for kindness by all, male or female.
I'm also anti-abortion.
No one dares show up online these days without being a brand or influencer or expert of some sort. This is not the connection I yearn for online.
Give me weird, gutsy, soulful, different, quirky, creative, and quirky any day.
Ditching the branding feels like liberation.
website is up and ready. It's not a finished product, but it's good enough for now.
“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” -Rumi
A useful reminder to continue walking my multipassionate path, I'm curious about the self-art I create along the way.
I notice whenever I spend a lot of time watching one Youtube video after another, I often feel my mental landscape overextended. Even when watching educational or useful content. It's easy to slip into the realms of chasing information alleys that, in retrospect, serve no benefit.
Days where my world is kept smaller and where I don't overconsume digital information keeps me better balanced.
I'm still tinkering on my new website design. Instead of SHOP in my menu area, which has a detached and overly commercial vibe to it. I'll call my offerings Atelier.
I want this term to signal to my visitor and readers that my offerings are intentionally-crafted artisanry and of high quality. Not something shaken out of the murky waters of a mind that wants to throw anything out there.
Art first and foremost.
I find it hard to fully identify as a feminist. Men have contributed much melancholy to my life, yet so have women also.Â
Female-to-female cruelty has an added layer of harshness to it. When the so-called oppressors and subjugated take up their mental spears to oppress others, it carries a heavy weight.Â
I'm not sure what to call myself. At the heart of it, I see myself as a pro-human, pro-good person. No matter their gender.
I once purchased a domain called honouringmypath(dot)com. I worked on it for a few months until life happened and I ditched it. Either that or my commitment to it just wasn't strong enough. I'm not sure which one came first.Â
This multipassionate-authenticity thing has been knocking in the gates of my mind for a while.
Why the need for a brand? Even a personal brand is still a brand. What end does it serve? If we lose ourselves, if we lose our way and steer far from a path of authenticity while pursuing the elusive perfect branding. Will it be worth it? I don't think so.
Humans are so much more than a brand.Â
Embracing my multipassionate nature helps me better embrace who I am. It's exhausting trying so hard to be the best on a single path. I feel a stark rejection of the trueness of my being; this isn't the way I want to show up in the world. I don't want to show up as a brand.
"I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's. I will not reason and compare; my business is to create." -- William Blake
This quote is apt, considering I want to create a digital garden instead of a standard website/blog. The indie or small web aesthetics and way of doing things call my heart. I'll create my own system unlike any other.
It's okay to show up online authentically and however we like. My new site will be a creative web of thoughts, poems, essays, dreams, WIPs and more. It's exciting to see how everything unfolds in time.