Grand re-opening

I’ve been on the internet since the mid 90’s (a netizen, we used to call ourselves) and this is far from my first time writing on a new platform. Geocities, Xanga, LiveJourney, Friendster, Myspace… an illustrious list of internet fossils.

While writing this, I discovered a backup of my first little homestead on Geocities, which felt like opening a forgotten teenage diary. I chose the Athens Acropolis neighborhood, which probably means I sought a place among the “thinkers”. The only page is a high school essay about Romeo & Juliet, written in my first year of learning English - factually dense but analytically shallow, with a subtle undercurrent of romantic longing.

As I teleport myself into the mind of an adolescent immigrant trying to navigate a whole new world, I imagine dual motivations. One was to simply follow my natural curiosity about computers and light myself up inside with discoveries of new possibilities bestowed by the latest technologies. I still hold the best part of that essay is not the prose, but rather the custom gif (hard G) I proudly made to invite feedback:

The other motivation was connection. Growing up online, I quickly learned the value of finding people with shared interests and expanding my social world beyond the limitations of high school cliques. Beneath it all was a young person eager to share his voice with the world - wanting to be seen and understood.

These twin desires - to create and to be known by others - remain just as strong today. This new site, then, is my latest portal for creativity and connection - a space where those twin desires can once again find their voice. I hope you'll find something here that speaks to you.