(disclaimer that this post reads a lot more like a personal shorthand ramble than anything refined i hope that's ok)
It's been a long time since I've posted. for many i'm sure it looks like i've fallen off the face of the planet, and maybe i have, in internet terms (or if space is a single bedroom). a lot has happened. i want to talk about some of it and register a pulse here, make it known i'm still breathing.
during march 2024, i got covid (again). right before this, life seemed like it was on an upswing. i had an album mostly done, i found a therapist i feel good about, i was dipping my toes back into ceramics, my job felt steady and doable. after i recovered from the worst of the sickness i found most of that completely inaccessible and myself exhausted at any possible effort. i wanted it to be a simple burnout episode but it became pretty obvious that something long covid related was going on.
This put me in a situation where I had nothing to look at in my life except for continuing to go to therapy and staying employed. anything else would put me over capacity. a failed couple of attempts at psychiatric medication diminished this capacity somehow even further.
i spent months doing nothing and i wish i could say it felt restful at all. i did learn a lot within this time though. therapy is good (i am tired of people saying otherwise but i do know how it feels to have a bad therapist. i wanna go on a whole aside about this but now is not the time nor do i know how to actually do it). trauma recovery is good (yay go pete walker wahoo). figuring out how to actually work with neurodivergence is good (again i want to go on an aside but all i will say is that passive acknowledgement of the circumstance is generally deeply insufficient).
things got better somewhat spontaneously about a year on (~3-4 months ago from the time of writing). i'm not sure that things are "good", especially on account of the circumstances of the world rapidly becoming scarier.
decent segue into the next point of interest. i don't want to be online nearly as much these days. it feels like the consequences of vulnerability without thick skin have gotten somehow more severe. there's no room for growth. looking through the social media platforms is depressing. i see no angle of integrating into community or even parasocial audience. ghost towns and ivory towers and burned bridges and something something allostatic loads.
bluesky feels uniquely stupid algorithmically. weird sort of panopticon where you see the most personal posts of strangers beamed into your discovery feed, just so you know that you are similarly watched. i don't feel comfortable there, or anywhere else i see. i barely feel comfortable blogging on my own website because i know the wayback machine keeps the score.
i feel sad about twitter being gone and mostly being isolated these days but i know deep down the way things were going before was always unhealthy.
maybe it's a bit vulnerable to say in a public blog post but every way i have attempted to relate to others on the internet (and real life, to an extent,) have felt like a weird drawn out trauma response. instead of elaborating on details i'll insert an anecdote about having a deer fursona instead.
in the process of fully recognizing this i have lost touch with a lot of people. sometimes on purpose, mostly on accident. it's a mess and i wish i had some emotionally mature justification for my behavior. i'm trying to be more intentional with myself nowadays. it's slow and confrontational work and doesn't mend neglected friendships and it doesn't immediately make me better at initiating contact or reaching out.
shortly before i got sick i took a strong liking to my old dell latitude laptop i pulled from the depths of my closet. i installed windows xp on it and found a lot of life in the modern retro tech community. it brought me a lot of joy to set up a machine that had nothing to do with the "goals" of "modern computing". old informational software is a lot of fun. old informational software is designed in really funny ways. there's an intimacy in looking at old sparse maps with old sparse interfaces.
i accumulated a few other old laptops over time. the one i'm using right now is a nightmare repair project frankenstein hp nc6120. my fondness for it comes from that it is both 4:3 and has more ports on it than i will ever use. i use this as my writing machine mostly but it sees music production (diving particularly into soundshaper/CDP) from time to time.
what gets me almost more than laptops is those old digital cameras, though. it seems like they're trendy (which makes them harder to find). i try to keep one with me at all times and use it instead of a phone for picture taking. i wrote a zine all about this which i need to upload somewhere someday. It's pretty long and thought out which is why i'm not waxing poetic about this subject right now. which is a GREAT SEGUE TO THE NEXT POINT OF INTEREST.....
i've been making zines. i have been tabling at zine events. i made my first in 2023 when i gave myself a challenge to make something abstract and impressionistic and complete in a single day/session. it kicked off a long thought process that has been fruitful for me.
i haven't talked about it online because i wanted to give myself a chance to flourish somewhere completely different than where i was. i wanted "old" identity not to mean anything for a moment. i wanted what i do to not be a product. it felt like starting from scratch, with all the fear and failure and amateurism and play. i loved and hated it in equal measure. my self esteem broke (both in the concurrent illness and amateurishness of the situation) and i played with its pieces. i came out feeling like i have a growing voice. with words! i don't think i can articulate how different that is for me.
i'm very proud of some of the things i have made. my intention is to upload things in some online-readable format, later, when i can do it justice (and give it all alt text / transcriptions). it should be pretty obvious on the homepage if i've already done this or not by the time you are reading this.
i have this titled in the outline but i really don't know what to write here. the idea of "looking forward" is a steep cliff of uncertainty. i have no idea what's next for "jade internet". i think i'm at peace with that in a strange way. i'll tell you about the things that i'm making.
ruby and i are still working on stray threads (our VN!). it's transformed into a small-scoped learning project to a tinker with it at leisure until it's done type of project. so much has gone into it and it feels like there's so much more to go. there's so much love that is going into it and i hope that you, dear reader, can look forward to it. i'm especially excited because it's ruby's first big project she's putting out into the world. she's immensely capable and skilled as a writer and artist and i want every single person to know it as much as they can.
i am dipping my toes back into ceramics. i will talk more about this as i have things to show.
i might be making an EP. whenever i listen to the ideas i have set out for it i get the feeling that it is incredibly weird and disjointed. i get the silhouette of something i really need to say from it, i just need to fill it out and detail it.
that's all i can think to say right now. i hope you are well. take care of yourself.