a very messy welcome into this odd little corner of the internet
I am… very awkwardly forcing myself to write a somewhat-coherent sentence here, to very graciously welcome readers to this new space. I’ve spent the past couple of days tinkering around with the backend of my loft, and a couple more hours obsessively scrolling through others’ websites (https://neocities.org/browse is one hell of a rabbit hole). I figured if I don’t actually start writing a draft here I will never get to it. the perfectionism will completely consume me, and this website will continue to remain abandoned for the forseeable future… and I don’t want that! I’m trying my best to restore the joy i had in the old web, of browsing, collecting, reflecting and creating in a way that doesn’t overwhelm me with information and perfectionism. that’s a whole other topic for a whole other post actually.
so welcome! stuff here looks decently neat, almost too neat for a blog section of my website that i’m afraid it looks too impersonal… i’m hoping to give this space a more old web/neocities vibe, so expect extra effort for it to deliberately look messy and unpredictable.
stuff on/about this website that has been pissing me off
i’m not sure what to put on the left sidebar - it’s a cute little feature that i (guiltily) figured out how to code with the help of chatgpt1. I thought I’ll only use it on my homepage but it’s growing on me. I’m thinking of chucking in extra content, notes and embeds there. i also still gotta figure out how to make this viewable on mobile (maybe move it to a collapsible callout inside the post?), but part of me is tempted to just leave it, leave these little crumbs as a reward for desktop viewers (yes, get off your phone)
getting used to writing in markdown and html - i’ve been loyal to notion and pen+paper for years, and although i’ve become quite the expert at writing and analysing data in Quarto, stylistic writing has been less of a priority (since i was taught this for data analysis in uni). and i’m trying to not let the extra steps demotivate me from doing simple cool things like changing the colour of my text. also just trying to free myself from the constraints of neatness and perfectionism - i’ve been using a very consistent bauhaus colour palette, but this is the personal side of my website, i think i should live a little.
i can’t seem to figure out how to put html and website embeds on here! i spent a couple of days adapting this music player, and i’ve created my own that fits the aesthetic of Mag’s cRib (haven’t uploaded all of my songs yet, just the one on top to test it out), all for me to struggle embedding it on my homepage… the player itself is fine (it embeds perfectly on notion), it’s most likely something to do with Quarto’s html quirks. and i’m again, trying not to rely on AI to give me a solution (it doesn’t do a good job anyway).
why does this post not feel like a blog post? it feels a little too sterile, it looks like i’m about to teach you something, like a documentation website…
related to the above point - i wanted to figure out how to add more aesthetic character to this post before i started writing. but knowing me that will send me down an endless loop of looking for and collecting stuff. so i’m soldiering through the discomfort of drafting something here, very plainly
a couple of ideas i have for my loft
weekly consumption roundup, i.e., i tell you what i’ve been (digital) gardening, cool stuff on the web that i’ve encountered, maybe i expose my screentime
a post about how i digital garden, how i’m creating routines and processes for it, how that is all going (i’d love to scan in my pen+paper notes) (this one’s insane… i aspire to be able to write at this skill level and volume)
bookshelf and reading lists (i love this person’s palestine resource list)
a tweet-style box on here, maybe that’ll help me spend less time on social media apps (something like the ‘Qixzy says’ section on this site)
shrines! collections! cataloging galore! I think this is such a great way to talk at length about the stuff you like and/or own, and it naturally makes you more conscious of your consumption habits. so stuff like my stationery/fountain pen collection, stardew valley (when i do eventually get back into it), etc. (i loved this person’s collections)
definitely a page or something for music
oh and not to forget, a guestbook! i miss the good ol’ days where random people would start beef on mine
(i feel like i should stop here. i definitely have a lot more ideas but this is already a great working list)
life lately
i haven’t been up to much… but shhh, that’s the capitalist in me (that i’m trying to kill) that has internalised the idea that i need to be doing something that costs money
and looks like i have a lot going on in my 20s in order to feel fulfilled.
i’ve been okay. i’ve spent the last couple of months recovering from burnout, the first two-ish months consisted mostly of rotting, and i’m now at a stage where i’m restructuring my life. i’m figuring out what balance looks like to me, re-centering social connections, while also valuing the time i have to myself, allowing myself to be absorbed in whatever interests me. it hasn’t gone without panic or anxiety though - i’m constantly still second-guessing whether i feel ready to get back into academia and work. for now, here’s what i’ve been up to:
this website!
reading - i never had time to read or to enjoy it as it is (i.e., without the expectation of an output, or that it was done for the purposes of unwinding and de-stressing) while i was in uni or working, and now i’ve been ploughing through a lot of stuff! mostly non-fiction, but thanks to friends’ recommendations, i’ve finally rekindled the love i have for fiction. some highlights -
what we don’t talk about when we talk about fat [aubrey gordon] - i had been a little cheesed off by autism is not a disease by jodie hare, where it positions itself as sort of a manifesto for neurodivergent liberation/justice, but it just lacked an awful lot of depth and read like a twitter thread. so i approached this seminal text for fat liberation/body justice cautiously (which i shouldn’t), but i was so glad to be proven wrong. i love this book. i feel seen, heard, understood. more on this in another post maybe?
empire of normality [robert chapman] - i’ve fallen off this for the timebeing, but it has introduced me to the concept of normality as a social construct, how averages were calculated and used, and its racialised origins, among many other things.
if we burn [vincent bevins] - i’ve just started this, and i’m excited for where it takes me! analysing social movements and its outcomes on all levels of analysis is one of my key research interests, and it has always intrigued and frustrated me how the world reacts to uprisings. are we finally close to revolution? or are we going to rinse and repeat the global pattern of demanding for left/liberal democracies only for them to be overthrown shortly after? and how does that shape activists’ strategies and visions for the future?
the long way to a small angry planet [becky chambers] - such a cute, wholesome work of sci-fi with the most wonderful characters, that simultaneously manages to draw parallels to current day systems of governance in the real world, to power, greed, bureaucracy and how they have seemingly persisted in this advanced intergalactic universe. more notes on this to come for sure!
and a bunch of other stuff in the realm of sexual deviance/kink that probably deserves a whole carefully crafted post
de-techifying my life - this website is a significant part of it, along with a couple more things -
degoogling - this… is hard folks. i’ve decided to do this after news that google has struck censorship deals with the israeli government, which also opened me up to a whole can of worms regarding data privacy and tech fascism2. I’ve switched my browser over to firefox and changed my search engine to Startpage (i’m still looking for alternatives! since startpage still routes searches through Google, it’s just that a lot of alternatives don’t produce great results…). one day… i will get to my emails… 🥲
yeah… how do i get myself out of this (trying to) quit spotify - it’s not going too well folks… for now i’m back on spotify, after trying out qobuz (which has great audio quality and pays its artists extremely well, but for some reason has been so glitchy that it’s pissing me off?!). i’ve been in a slight hyperfixation over going completely analogue and getting an mp3 player, but a) i’m not sure if i’ll be able to sustain the inconvenience of downloading and updating my music library, b) i don’t want to spend more money on a whole new device + iems, unless it’s secondhand, c) i do still have a bunch of retro tech from my childhood, so i’m sure i still have an mp3 player somewhere, but they’re all in singapore and i’m currently in the uk. i’ll figure something out, maybe in the meantime use vlc or some other offline music player on my phone.
(sorta) dumbifying my phone - i’ve had the same customised home screen pages for years, long enough that some of my widgets have stopped working and i’ve just left it there as black squares. it has very minutely irritated me, and i was also craving for minimalism (which i’m normally not into) so that it actually makes going on my phone less exciting and dopamine-inducing. more on this in another post too!
looking for a job, thinking about a phd, trying to settle down abroad - big stuff, i know… if you know me personally you’d know that i’ve never felt rooted in singapore. she will always be home to me for many reasons, and i care very deeply about her future wrt social justice, but it’s not somewhere where i can be fulfilled and happy by physically staying there. i’ll just leave it at that for now.
creating resources and brainstorming research projects in kink - not gonna elaborate too much on this since this is a sfw space, but eventually i’d like to talk all about this in an educational way!
finding my people, talking to people, spending time and having fun with people, loving people - trust me, this doesn’t come very naturally to me when i’ve spent every stage of my life being completely consumed by whatever’s the most salient (e.g., work, getting a degree). but now that i’ve taken a proper break, i’m slowly learning how to be human again, and i love it, obviously. the point above this definitely played a part in this.
closing thoughts
as predicted, i’ve rambled on far longer than i thought i would. but it’s nice to see my brain all laid out like that! in fact, i’ve rambled on so much that i’m not sure how to close this out. bye?
and well, i guess it’s time to hit quarto publish netlify
