"What is this, even?"_
It is a wild bougainvillea.
10/26/2024
I had originally intended for this blog to be technology oriented. Perhaps it still will be. Perhaps if I have any truly original insights about web development (*barf emoji*) they'll go here. In my boringest dreams, the SEO for this STATICALLY-GENERATED NEXT.JS SITE will be SO-SEO'd that you'll be reading my prophetic words 10 or 20 years hence. Much like my Livejournal, which I started at the age of 16 and is hardier than a tardigrade. (Please don't look for it. But I also don't care if you do.)
But my primary concern over the past few weeks has been to try to re-engage with my creative capacities, which were sidelined (though I didn't really realize it) in large part due to my expanding tech startup career, especially during the COVID pandemic. You see, through a special technique called "going to therapy once a week" I've learned that my thoughts and feelings about myself and others are vastly improved when I am more vulnerable, and communicate more freely about who I am and what I admire in the world.
It's a skill I seemed to have lost during the rough transition into adulthood, where I imperceptibly gradually replaced my entire identity with various concepts of service to others. Service to a job so that I could afford to pay for food and place to live. Service to brides and grooms playing cello at various weddings. Service to musicians, producing and engineering their fabulous (and fabulous sounding) records. Service to tech trends, because apparently you're only employable if you pledge your fealty to React. It's a fine quality to have, but only when it is in proportion to other important facets of personhood.
Anyway, I think rather than worrying about whether my homepage will present me in a flattering light to potential employers, I would much prefer it to be a bit more unhinged. Loosey-goosey. A bit untamed and evolving, like an unke[m]pt bougainvillea.
For example, between the time I wrote that last paragraph and inserted that fabulous photograph of a bougainvillea that I took with my Graflex Speed Graphic, I did a little research to figure out how to insert HTML directly into the markdown I use to create the content on this site. The folx over at Unified seem to have a rather high-minded approach to these things, and for that I am truly grateful.
I expect to go down an abstract syntax-tree rabbit hole (wow, I think I just tied a bowline knot with that mixed metaphor) sometime in the near future. And you, dear reader (I flatter myself that anybody will read this now or in the proximate future) will prosper.