~/garfish

“habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine” -Merriam Webster

This is another continuation of my series of posts reflecting on hobbies, work, joy and relaxation. I realized that one important aspect was missing as a major theme: escapism. The obsession and mental occupation that (for me) comes with a difficult task at work, a new hobby, a good (audio) book, series or video game. The drive to get through the mundane parts of the day to get back to the thing that feels like I could do it forever. The taste of dopamine in the back of my mouth while I find ways to engage in the thing while I should be doing something else. Listening to podcasts about it in the car, searching information while I’m on the toilet, making spreadsheets. Planning ways in which I can manage to spend a whole day overindulging in just that one thing. Until I suddenly snap out of it, somewhere between two weeks or a month in.

It runs in the family

My father used to have two small cabinets on wheels in his office, each with twenty or so small drawers. Some drawers were meticulously labelled ‘pencils’ or ‘scalpel blades’ or more generally ‘drawing’ and ‘office’. The largest section by far was labelled ‘Krimskrams’ (the German version of ‘knickknacks’). From a very young age, way too young to be around scalpel blades unsupervised, these drawers fascinated me. I opened them, one by one, investigating their contents so many times that I remember them better than my own drawers and cupboards from that time. I remember their smell, a mix of the leather that softened some of the drawer bottoms, the graphite of the pencil lead refills, the metallic tinge of the various hobby knives and office supplies and the chemical overtone of the inks and glues and markers. The feel of the hard plastic cupboards and the slight rattle when opening the drawers. They always opened super smoothly, but the knickknacks rattled. Everything in those drawers was magical to me.

The title is the slightly adapted opening line from 2Chainz’s ‘Birthday Song’. Not a bad song, not a great one, certainly an unforgettable music video. What we do and why we do it is often inextricable from who we do it for. I’m not that kind of scientist, but it seems uncontroversial that as social animals, we do many things that appear intimate and self-facing for social reasons. At least in part. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we are only superficially looking at ourselves. To an extent, we want to see what others see when they look at us. As opposed to a diary, a blog does not have the appearance of being self-facing. It’s an emphatically public medium. So why am I writing? Who am I writing for?

Live Laugh Work

I have thought a lot about that post I wrote about doing work and work-like activities in my free time and how I find them very fulfilling. I reflected that this is in part a protestant remnant valuing work over leisure and my bad self-image that is temporarily improved by productivity. This is an accurate assessment, but I think it downplays a simpler truth: I find large parts of my work fun. I enjoy making code work like I want it to. I love diving into new data. I get a deep sense of pleasure from working on tight deadlines with my favorite colleagues and delivering something worthwhile just in time. And, ah, there we are again. That last one is definitely fueled by my sense of worth being derived from work achievements. The absence of innate, healthy self-love. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a real contributor to my enjoyment of work. I conceptualize it as a dopamine button, like a gambling addiction, but instead of losing me money, it makes it easier to earn it. That’s a super power, as long as it works. The problem is that it turns into a werewolf curse on occasion.

Short history of the page

The page started out with a fairly generic look that is documented in this post. That post also contained an honest analysis of what worked and didn’t work for me in that first draft. I liked the Tokyo Night styling but found that it clashed with the fish tank themes and hated the font. I struggled a lot with the page not being Neocities enough, because I loved other peoples creative retro stuff with GIFs and tiled backgrounds everywhere and really nice pink/peach themes. I failed to provide examples back then, but I was talking about sites from the ‘recommended’ page, like PetraPixel, Lazer-Bunny, Sakura Dreams or doqmeat.

I also started to realize that I don’t really have any use for pages other than the blog. But my instinct at the time was to try and push the styIing more into a generic Neocities aesthetic and go harder on the fish. Both aspects I found theoretically fun and wanted to explore, but my concluding sentences were prescient.

The deeper I dive into Neocities, the more I see other, more sober designs and other blog-first pages without shrines. […] Last week, I changed the colors into what I find a more Neocities-aligned Hanami-colored and pixel-fonted version. It might just be a different kind of generic, but I am more at ease with it.

I started writing this before the summer holiday and am finishing it now that the holidays are over (summer is not), so it might read a bit disjointed, because it is.

Summer blues

Summer is here and ever since I was little I have felt the anticipatory sadness of summer ending as soon as it starts. Free time and sunny days, so many plans and half-formed ideas of activities, endless hours of just gaming or hanging around at the communal pool, going to the forest. But the idea of the holidays ending and school resuming always hung over everything, autumn was always just around the corner. I don’t know whether this is a common feeling or a product of my anxiety (which also is a common condition). I am working on just enjoying the moment and not thinking too much about the fleeting nature of everything. But this feeling of the summer ending when in reality it just started has many forms in my daily life as an adult.

Webmaster? Hardly.

The idea of what this personal website is or should be has changed over the two-ish weeks since its creation. Originally, I just wanted to make some kind of website to learn more about how HTML and CSS work and where their limits are. I had a few stabs at this before joining Neocities. The obligatory demo page in my school’s CS class. Back then, Geocities was still around and some kids had personal pages, but most of us were hanging out on a regional network called Kwick. A proto-MySpace where predominantly German teens were tinkering with flashy profile pages that were fully customizable with HTML and were making friends for life in open chatrooms. I still sometimes talk to A, who lived half a country away from me then, multiple countries now.