I am finally done dealing with all my car stuff. Finally. It's been, like... man, I think it's been a year now -- the inciting incident of all of this happened last Halloween (not the car getting stolen part, the car getting destroyed by a mechanic part). It's such a huge relief to finally have a car and have it all fixed up and have the titling finished. I keep thinking about taking the old crushed-up plate and framing it (I wonder if I even still have it)? Or maybe the temporary. I gotta do something to commemorate my struggle.

I also had midterm finals right before that. I haven't had time to do much else (hence my sudden disappearance).

Site updates

I did a few really small things when I had the time. The main things being...

1. Telling google not to index any of my posts (I did this because I thought it was funny)
2. Adding webmention support -- this is the thing I actually wanna talk about (briefly, for real this time)

I plan on just using @remy/webmention and pass it the RSS feed. Incidentally, this is also where I realized... I could probably just automate the image resizing by throwing all that in the postbuild script. I don't know how this completely flew over my head before. Anyways, I decided that's not what I want to do with webmentions because for a blog that maybe updates once every few weeks, I am rebuilding this thing all the goddamn time. It'll quickly become a situation of like me spamming the crap out of people.

This site also accepts webmentions. I'm currently not doing anything with them, I'm still trying to figure out how best to display them, as well as put together some other more social-web-friendly stuff (as much as I've said in the past that I didn't wanna do that... it really seems like the internet is a better place than it was, in some aspects).

I also haven't updated I Post Music Every Day (Sometimes), which isn't a problem because, as expected, that "(Sometimes)" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me. I don't plan on doing it for a little bit, until I start feeling a bit more stable in school or get a job that's a little bit less demanding.

Other stuff

Anyways, I'm really tired of just posting site update after site update. I'm currently in the process of trying to find a good platform to post my music to. Or setting up something so people can listen to it. I posted a little bit of it on cohost, and I ended up dusting off my old Soundcloud, just so I'd have somewhere to put stuff in the meantime. This isn't really new news, I just remembered it for some reason.

I don't really think anyone will listen, but I don't really care all that much. There's something nice about just being able to make something and let it go out of your sight and beyond your control as an artist. I haven't done it in a long time, not really because I don't want to, but because I just haven't had enough time to actually work on anything. The last few times I did though, it felt really nice. It's so liberating, especially when you don't have to worry about, like, metrics or whatever.

I always kind of thought of creativity as like... an itch that keeps coming back, like a bug bite, and you have to scratch it (it feels good at first), but you can't scratch it too much or you'll bleed, you have to put something on it or ignore it or something (you have to say "this is finished" and show it to someone, or you have to rip it up and light it on fire or something). But, like, at the end of the day, you have to do something with it, or it'll be the only thing you think about.

Or, more recently, I watched this video by Thought Slime that expressed a similar kind of sentiment:

"Here's the thing about art and creativity. It's all very fun. We love it. We love to do it. But it's also, um, it's poison. It is corrosive to the human soul, and it will kill you if you let it. You will die. So, what you got to do is you got to get the poison out of you."
Thought Slime - You'll never be a good enough artist

It's not to say I don't think of this as art or it doesn't scratch the same itch. It's just that I've got too many bug bites or too much poison in me or something. Maybe I can think about further implementing webmentions on here while finishing up one of my paintings later.

Anyways, I'm gonna pick up cat litter, go hang out with friends tonight, and maybe do some homework!!

Thank you for tuning in tonight :)