01/02/2021

Welcome to my digital garden!

This is a place for growth, casual exploration, and sharing about thoughts that I think would be helpful to others.

I had the idea to create a writing website where a single page would perpetually grow in size as you added more articles. I was thinking that the articles were formatted with boxes laid in a mosaic layout, sort of like how a newspaper is laid out. But then I had this idea along with the concept of a digital garden, put two and two together, and now this page exists as a result.

This is definitely not going to be a daily thing. There are seasons where plants may not grow, and there are times when plants thrive and I have a lot of thoughts to share. Some thoughts may grow big and strong; some may wilt away, never to be seen again, or they may serve as fertilizer for the next thought that may take its place. Some thoughts may even grow to the point where they'll get their own separate page in the writings section.

The mentality of this section is essentially "I post whatever I want, whenever I want". It may be an interesting space, it may not. Heck, this section could shut down at any time if I think it has lost its purpose. We shall see. Time will tell.

Judging Everything By Their Covers

I realize that it isn't really the books themselves that interest me, but book covers that do.

The same goes for album artwork too. I suppose my interest in design makes me like looking at covers themselves. But when I actually pick up the book, or listen to the album, I don't find it interesting in the slightest. Some of the best books I've read have very unassuming covers, or they don't even have one to begin with.

Maybe these books with overdesigned covers are compensating for something? I don't know. Covers do draw people in for sure, but I've stopped assuming anything from the cover, even if I like the design.

But I suppose that their only goal is to get people to open the book. Even if it doesn't interest me, having a flashy cover increases the likelihood that someone else might.

It's interesting to note that while "alot" is a very common mistake when people try to write "a lot", you don't see people mistakingly write "a ton" as "aton", despite both being very similar in usage and definition.

Humanity: the only species that is shockingly good at making itself obsolete.

The true creator may be recognized by his ability to always find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.

~ Igor Stravinsky

To My Past Self:

Are these really your friends, who greet you with mockery and derision when you grow as a person?

When you solve a problem, know that over the horizon there's another problem that will make you feel like you know nothing.

And don't save face either when you finally solve something. You may say after it's finished "oh, that wasn't too bad", or "that was easy"—but look at how you wailed and groaned and complained in the middle of it all! Like a child crying until they're given what they want.

Is any of that necessary to get the job done?

You don't miss people for who they were, but who you thought they were, and who you wanted them to be.

Be in the same room with them for a few minutes and you'll immediately realize why you left in the first place. There's always a reason why we leave people—the issue is that we tend to forget why.

And when we forget? That's when we risk experiencing hell for a second time.

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.

~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Website Spelunking

It's interesting that there isn’t really a good gauge on how popular a website is, especially personal ones, since at a glance there aren’t many metrics to see as a visitor, unless the webmaster purposefully displays them.

Sometimes you stumble upon a website and you have no clue if other people even know that it exists. It gives that feeling that you’ve “struck gold”. Since the only real way to show up to people as a website is good SEO, getting linked to, or simply recognition outside of said website, personal websites by themselves are completely underground.

The Spotlight Effect

There’s a certain type of insecurity that I observed within myself a long time ago which I like to call the “Spotlight Effect”. It’s essentially when you start questioning the motives of another person as the social environment around them changes.

For example, a driven underdog may suddenly become wildly popular, which may lead to some people calling them a “sellout” as a result. It’s suddenly easier to believe that they did it “for the fame” or “for the money” when they get those things, despite the possibility that their core motives did not waver since the beginning.

It’s toxic to think this way, because not only is this easy to project onto other people—thinking that people who gained fame and/or fortune are greedy panderers—but you can also fall into thinking that people will inevitably start thinking that towards you as well—that when you accidentally become famous, you yourself are now suddenly a massive sellout who was out for the recognition and nothing else.

With that mentality, no one wins, because everyone’s motives is dictated by the end which occurred, despite it being outside of their control and contrary to their true motives. It’s basically a real-world example of affirming the consequent.

Expiration Date

You’d think given the amount of media we have now, that the things of the past simply stop being acknowledged, and thus stop existing, but they don’t.

The work which have stuck for years, even centuries, have a timeless quality to them. Despite being confined to the contexts of their generation, they transcend it and have relevancy even in the future.

But the things being pushed nowadays? They can't even go beyond a few weeks—months if they're lucky. They spoil the moment they’re outside the oven for more than a few minutes.

Heck, some of them are spoiled while they're still in the oven. People push out their work too late, and find that it's already irrelevant. The population have moved on from the work before even seeing it.

If you fail to make your work relevant to yourself, then your work has failed absolutely. There's nothing you can recover from it.

And that's assuming you even finished the work. Most work irrelevant to you doesn't even get a wisp of air before flopping dead—they're all stillborn. Forcing it to live outside of its power just makes it more apparent how dead it is.

Botanical Weaponry

I find it funny that people back then just had rotten tomatoes and vegetables on hand when going to a concert, just so they can throw it in the case that the performance was terrible—and regarding this, I have a few questions.

Where did they even hide their ammunition when sitting in the concert? Like in their coat pocket? Their purse? Or was it in their hand the entire time, waiting for someone to cast the first fruit? I can imagine someone being disappointed that the performance was actually good, and sheathed their tomato back into their front pocket, waiting for the opportunity to strike some other day.

Was there guards outside who confiscated that sort of stuff, and they had to sneak it in? "Ah, sorry officer, this was meant to be a snack—not at all meant to throw at anyone or anything!" Or was it acceptable, or even encouraged to have random vegetables on your person? Maybe the guards joined in on the fun too if the performance was really bad.

And did they bring the spoils of their garden to every concert, or merely ones that they suspect will be bad? I'd like to think that every household has an organics bin situated right beside their front door, so they don't forget their indispensible method of humiliation.

It's like the 19th century's version of concealed carry, except for snobby aristocrats. Saving it for a rainy day, I guess, when the performers really deserve it.

I need to give myself permission to forget the things that I don't want to remember.

Excellence for excellence's sake.

There's no such thing as good art or bad art. There's only Art—and damn little of it!

~ James Thurber

I will be forgotten, but must I be resentful about it?

People forget about you when you're still alive. How much more then when you cease to exist? You might as well be upset that people didn't tell you how cool you are before you were even born.

Looking Back

It was just recently that I realized that this garden page right here is old. More than two years old, as of writing this.

Many people don't know this, but I actually cleared this page out 6 months after I started it (June 21, 2021 to be exact). I was looking through my old backups to see if there were any old thoughts worth putting back into the current page.

And my goodness, when I was reading my old garden entries, I was woefully unaware as to how pretentious I sounded. The entire time I was reading it all, I was cringing and thinking to myself "you ignoramus, you fool—what are you even talking about?"

I will say, though: I applaud my past self for having the slightest tinge of self-awareness to wipe this page and start from scratch. While I'll probably look back on this page a year or so from now and think the same thing, I doubt it'll be to the same extent as before.

I was more (unnecessarily) verbose in my writing then, but now I'm a lot more blunt, so while my thoughts and opinions may become outdated, at least they don't sound like someone that I'm not.

So if you think I sound pretentious now, be glad that you didn't have to listen to me two years ago.

Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art.

~ John Dewey

Great for starting fires, though.

There were times when I read books that I was so upset with that I literally threw them in the recycling bin.

And these weren't books that were cheap either; these weren't books that were like "I picked up and disagreed with what they said 10 pages in and said 'enough was enough'". I made the effort to go through the whole thing, trying to think where the author was getting at. But there are times when you just cannot stand what the author is pushing that it's straight up going to the trash. I don't even want to donate it—that's how bad, or harmful, the ideas can get.

That's the hidden tax when it comes to books: you pay for it, expecting something good, and then you find out that what you're reading is literal rubbish.

If I could borrow every book out there as a litmus test, I would, but sadly with some books there's no other option than to buy them first before finding out it's garbage.

If everyone is your mentor, then I worry for you, as they all contradict each other.

There are very few people whose ideas are worth adopting, and are worth listening to.

And the sad part? Most of them are already dead. All that's left of them are the writings they left behind.

No one cares, but so what?

People can become incredibly demotivated when posting to their website, because doing it feels futile—it's a thankless hobby. "No one cares!" they lament.

And I'll be blunt: yes, no one cares. No one cared for me, my writings, my art, nor my website either—and that was for multiple years.

But why should that stop you from ever sharing anything? If it stopped me, this website wouldn't even exist; my hundred or so paintings wouldn't exist either, nor my essays.

Here's the thing: people don't care about what you do regardless. If you don't post, no one cares (and will ever care, because there's nothing of you out there to care about). If you do post, no one cares either—but at least there's the potential for someone to care. Though despite this, they won't care about you eventually, if they had cared about you before.

So in every case, the worst of your fears are a reality: no one cares. And is that fear even that bad? That's not an outcome you can control, so why should you even worry about it? It's just as futile to get upset when it doesn't turn sunny outside when you post something to your website.

No one cares, so there's two ways to go from there: either not make anything and give up, or create to your heart's content.

If what you do makes no difference, then why is not doing anything suddenly more favourable than doing something that you love doing?

Don't let the admiration of others be the sole reason to keep living, to keep creating. It is nice to get compliments, I'll admit—like an air freshener for your car—but it isn't going to fuel your car like gasoline would.

And what fool would try to make a car run purely on air freshener?

You're spending more time denouncing the things that you shouldn't be doing, instead of doing the things that you should be doing.

Enough of this.

Like Birds Chirping

What's the point in getting angry at those who make a large amount of noise, whether through their phone or otherwise, on public transit?

You'd call a person who gets upset over the birds chirping or dogs barking as someone who lacks tolerance. How different are those animals from human beings who make a whole bunch of noise?

Even if you can tell them to stop, or you say that they have no conscience or sense of social etiquette, you have the right to treat them as if they were just a bunch of wild birds making noise, in that case. At least there's an excuse to call them bird-brained due to how they act in front of people.

Not feeding the "beast" (i.e. negative thoughts) is also a way to fight back.

In a way, to consciously fight it is to also keep thinking about it, and that can make the battle worse.

Why not kill the thoughts with neglect than constantly trying to rebuke it? There's a reason why during war, destroying the supply chain is a valid method for defeating the enemy, or at the very least weakening them.

Never try to gain someone's companionship by partaking in their vices.

And if that's the only way they're willing to make friends with you? They're not worth sacrificing your life to.

You're not going to save these people by bringing yourself down to their level.

Think about it: people like you based on what they know about you in the present, and try to extrapolate the rest of your personality from that. Basically, people tend to like the shallow version of other people.

Do you think it's possible, then, that everyone would hate each other if we got to know each other more?

I will not be surprised, in any case, if people who used to like me when my site had less of my thoughts started to hate me more as they got to know who I really am. So be it. They didn't like me for who I am, but who they thought I was.

And this outcome (certain people not liking who you really are) is an inevitability. So you might as well not get attached to such things, when you can.

How could you boast about possible gifts (like physical or intellectual capabilities) when you didn't even choose it yourself?

If everyone had the option, everyone would opt to be intelligent, good looking, etc. But they don't get to choose those things.

So why flaunt to everyone about a choice that you didn't even make yourself? If anything, you doing that shows more of who you really are: a person who takes credit for a being they didn't even create.

And in the same vein: why judge people for characteristics that they couldn't even choose themselves?

The truth rings clearly when people have to work for it.

Things said as a matter-of-fact often just fall dead. People will ignore it.

There's a reason why stories work better than pure sayings alone—people want to work, knowingly or unknowingly, to realize something on their own, rather than have someone realize something for them.

That's likely why the best stories are ones who have a lesson intertwined in its events, where the reader implicitly understands what the author is trying to say. Explicit moral lessons being bluntly given by the author are often ignored, seen as lazy, and are comedically bad more than anything.

LOL

A long time ago, I had a really dumb idea for a program, or more fittingly: a piece of malware.

Essentially, if a person sends "lol", "lmao", or anything similar to another person via text message, it'll automatically take a photo using their front-facing camera (which captures their face) and sends it alongside the original message.

I'm just curious as to whether most people are actually laughing/smiling or they're sending these interjections with a complete deadface. Would be fun to see the contrast.

Overwhelming Garbage Heap

A vision which I've had for the site for the longest time is a rather strange one, but it's this: I want my site to have so much content that it overwhelms people.

Of course, it's not particularly welcoming to be greeted by so many things to see that no one knows where to start, but I loved the idea of having so many things to wade through that it'll take hours to go through everything.

Imagine this garden but like so astronomically big that it has thousands of entries; hundreds of paintings in the art gallery; hundreds of articles in the writing section. It'd be like a kid in a candy shop... well, for me anyway.

I suppose it's because the site in itself is a container which holds a lot of what I have made. If the site itself is brimming with content, then that means that I made a lot of things which I thought were good enough to be shared. It also shows how much I've developed as a person over time, and I think that's really cool.

Probationary Period

I was reading through the ancient blog that used to be on this site two years ago, and the one thing that I've noticed is that there's a massive difference between my writing then compared to now.

Looking back at my older writings I can't help but cringe. I was more enthusiastic, but it felt like I was acting. Maybe I played into a persona, an exaggerated version of myself, when I was more conscious about retaining and growing an audience?

It was around the time that I removed the blog page (around March 2021) that I was getting agitated with posting my work publically as a whole, and something switched after that. The act was over. My writing now is clearer, sharper, but... substantially colder. And I'd say that's more accurate to myself. It's much closer to how I'd write in my personal journals.

It's like the probationary period had past: after a few months, I could not keep up with who I "should" be online and I ended up becoming who I really was. I expect that the move to independent hosting will lead to more developments in that direction.

We shouldn't allow an entire community to mold itself around a small group of people just because they're easily offended.

It's like spoiling a child because they won't stop crying and whining. You're not addressing the issue—you're simply shutting them up temporarily. They're not growing as individuals. All we're really doing is making the world around them sterile.

As a result? Even something as meagre as someone sneezing in an adjacent zip code will kill them.

Songs I've Been Obsessed With Recently

I'm the type of person who will listen to the same song over and over if they found it to be really good (see the amount of times I've listened to 36's Ego Death: over 247 hours!) Here are some songs that I've been listening on repeat for a while now:

Naoki & Tatsh - RED ZONE - I remember discovering this song and wondering "why does this sound so familiar?" It turns out, I listened to a remix of it a very long time ago. Apparently it was heavily remixed and was a meme during the early 2010's. Regardless, the song itself is such a banger that I can't blame people for doing so many remixes of it.

DJ TOTTO - DORNWALD ~Der Junge im Käfig~ - Something about the combination of electronic music with a medieval choir just hits different. It's so catchy and yet beautiful at the same time. I really can't describe it.

Zektbach - Turii ~Panta rhei~ - someone in the comments of the video of the previous song (DORNWALD) recommended Zektbach if people want to hear something similar to it. So I searched them up, listened to this song, and I actually recognized it! I don't remember when I first listened to it but I was pleasantly surprised when I heard it again.

Zektbach - Raison d'être ~Masinowa~ - this song from Zektbach was new to me, but it's fantastic, just like Turii.

The Lad from Burger King

I was walking home from school one afternoon when I saw this man dressed in a way that was rather... bizarre. This is not even near the city or anything—this all happened in the middle of the suburbs.

He was wearing one of those cloaks that kings wear (imagine a red cape with a white fur collar—that type of cloak). Not only that, but from what I recall he was also wearing a formal vest, with distressed jeans and cowboy boots. Cowboy boots.

To top it all off, the crème de la crème, the piece that ties this guy's entire fit together: a paper crown from Burger King. Like, the ones that you get when it's your birthday. He was wearing one of those.

And as if it couldn't get any better: he was also playing on his Nintendo Switch, while walking near a street with a lot of traffic. Did I mention that this is a man who's clearly an adult, with great amounts of facial hair and everything?

The way this guy composed himself was out of this world. Truly one befitting for royalty. An absolute chad.

Pseudopermanency of Writing

It seems that we take writing to be more "permanent" than other forms of communication such as speech. And as a result, it's not uncommon to assume that the opinions of a person in a past piece of writing are the same opinions that they hold in the present—an assumption which plenty of Twitter's "social police" ride upon as grounds to cancel someone.

This subconscious thought process often tempts me to remove older writings in here and in my articles section when I don't agree with an opinion from my past self. But despite that, it's good to keep them around, and possibly do an updated piece concerning it. It's like having discourse with your past self, which is invaluable.

It also shows that people's outlook and observations of life are capable of changing and developing, and isn't that a good thing?

It's Time

Before I started writing, I'd often try and find blog posts, or videos of people who have similar thoughts as me, only to find that nothing specific really crops up.

That's when I realized that there's only so much that other people can say for you before they fall short of articulating what you think.

When you reach that point, that's when you know it's time to write your own words.

Moving in a different direction compared to other people isn't complacency, nor is it "failure".

Gatekeeping inevitably comes from insecurity.

To bring down someone's achievements, people create arbitrary rules to create a system of honour, and from there box people in with such rules so that they're guilty about their achievements—how it isn't genuine or it isn't "legitimate", to make their own achievements seem greater.

It's funny, because people often gatekeep things that are so inconsequential that you'd think that they're preserving some cultural heritage or something, to prevent "appropriation", but as a result they end up killing the culture that they were so adamant in preserving.

Don't regret leaving a life that you hated living, even if it is nostalgic to look back on it.

The opinions of a troll are easy to identify: it's the ones that intentionally piss you off.

And as such, why is it worth listening to someone who has no opinion of their own, but rather adapts to what everyone hates and spews it right back at them?

If anything, we should feel bad for these people—how can they really know what they believe in if all of what they believe is what the person in front of them hates?

Very little accomplished people are known for their pessimism.

to myself:

Look, you don't have to die to end your suffering here.

The universe may not revolve around you, but at the very least you can make your website revolve around you instead.

Some people may find that to be somewhat egotistical or conceited, but is a person selfish just because they need a place to live in? How much more then a platform to share what they want?

If there's one thing that I need to learn, it's that sharing what matters to you isn't being egotistical, but assuming that people will love (or care about) what you share just because you shared it is. That assumption often leads to resentment, which at that point you know if you're really being conceited or not.

AI-Generated Everything

Would it surprise you if I said that everything in this site was made by an AI?

Of course, it isn't, and honestly I would be extremely impressed if it was, but maybe in a few years time that won't be surprising.

I mean, it'll suck, considering that most Internet traffic is already from bots. If the majority of websites on the Internet are also made by bots, it's not going to be long before we start being surprised when we find something that is made by an actual human being.

Will it become some sort of fad or trend? "Why did you make all of your site's assets by hand when you can just use AI software?" Why make anything, in this case, if you can just have AI make it for you?

That doesn't sound like a future I want to live in.

Glasses

Despite my online persona/avatar wearing glasses, I seldom wear them in real life, funnily enough. I just find them to be a good place to integrate some shape design.

But even though I don't wear them that often, I still need them. Since I'm near-sighted, I need glasses to see things from far away (especially with activities like driving), but my eyesight is not bad enough to where I have to have them on all of the time.

Boxing People In

People can get unbelievably upset at you when you don't align with their conception of who you are, instead of who you actually are.

But is it your fault when people just make blatant assumptions? No one is obligated to follow anyone's conception of anyone. It's also rather aggravating as it's easier to put people in a box when you don't know them very well.

Flattery

People may flatter you, but it's best not to hear it. Because when they start dissing you and insulting you, there's an implicit assumption that you want their approval to begin with. If you are attached to their compliments, then there's a natural aversion to their disapproval.

But if you don't care for their validation, what do their insults mean to you? It's just as worthless as their praise. Like how fire is hot, and how gravity will pull you down, it's almost like a law of physics. It happens like a distant event, wholly irrelevant to you.

If you don't care about praise, then insults mean nothing, because these two things are based on favour. And if you don't care about gaining the favour of this person, then how can any amount of approval or disapproval from them coax you to do anything that you don't want to do?

How much more then, being aware of approval or disapproval from everyone? Almost like being jerked around like a miserable puppet. The approval of one leads to the disapproval of another, and vice versa. You never win.

To be obedient to everyone isn't to love them. It's more like having multiple masters; in essence, you're prostituting yourself.

That painful realization that even though you may have plenty of things in common with this person, your connection with them can be extremely lacking, if not nonexistent.

It seems that being abandoned is more painful than never being cared for.

One presumes a reality and it is shattered and defaced. The other accepts that it's just how reality is.

Painful all the same.

A Question To Myself:

Who will care that you're good at ____ when everything else in your life is in complete and utter shambles?

Lame Prosecutors

If people insult you, or accuse you of being a bad person, know that they expose their own ignorance, for if they knew more about you, then they would have said more. But they didn't.

It's on them for being a bad prosecutor, a terrible judge. No one wants a lawyer that is ignorant about the person they're examining. If people are going to say something foul, they should at least do their due diligence. Not only are they insufferable, they also fail at insulting people.

Influencers

I can’t help but think that influencers are essentially walking and breathing mediums of advertisement.

Also, what is with the title “influencer”? It’s entirely superfluous. It makes just as much sense to call parents as “influencers” to their children, or any human as an “influencer” for that manner, because what person doesn’t influence the people who are around them?

And turning it into an occupational title just makes things worse. “Influencer” sounds like a sterile name for salesperson, marketer, or organic billboard, with the caveat that they seem more candid than those roles, when in actuality they’re practically the same thing.

Accessibility vs. Relevancy

What is popular with the masses has to stoop down to their level.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. To be esoteric for the sake of being esoteric is its own problem.

But I suppose there's a difference between accessibility and relevancy. It's good to make work accessible to many people, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be relevant to them.

It's like owning a very clear instruction manual for an item that I don't even own: accessible, but irrelevant. Not necessarily bad or good. It just is. Some people may find things irrelevant, but I cannot judge the work purely on its relevancy alone.

Correlation between Skill and Age

This is a fallacy that I often see: people gauge their skills as if it's equivalent to the amount of time they've lived since they've started.

"How long have you been drawing?" “Well, since I was a kid.” But how does that translate over to their skill in the present? Some people have drawn "all their life" and they still draw the same as when they first started. Meanwhile, it's not uncommon for a person who has only been drawing for "two years" to completely blast them out of the water.

It's such a strange thing. If I made my first drawing at 2 years old, and just sat here doing absolutely nothing until I was 70, why should I expect that I'd be good at it? Though an extreme example, that is what this fallacy is assuming: if you start something at an early age, then by extension the passage of time since your start date should develop your skill. It makes zero sense.

Skill doesn't grow with age. Skill grows with practice. We should determine the time a person has dedicated to their craft by the time they invested, not when they first took up the practice. Age just means that they’ve had more time allotted to them to practice. It doesn’t mean that they’ve used that time to actually practice.

The First Plateau

From what I've seen when developing new skills, the first plateau is always the worst plateau.

For once, you start seeing improvement. Enthusiasm goes up, skill rapidly develops, and then you hit a massive brick wall—a brick wall which people don't expect, especially those who have only experienced it for the first time. This is where people often find it hardest to keep going.

If the journey leading up to the first plateau doesn't stop them, it's often the plateau itself that will make them give up. If they don't give up outright, the other outcome is to stagnate indefinitely, which also happens to a lot of people, as it's not far-fetched to see the first plateau as "peaking" in skill.

However, if people keep pushing and reach the second plateau, they acknowledge that plateaus are a thing that exist in reality and the only real way to improve is to keep working until you get to the next one.

It's still difficult to plateau regardless of your skill level, but it's easier knowing that there's an end to it if you keep pushing.

Trends in Body Modifications

I understand body modifications and why it can be appealing to some people, but what I don't understand is trends regarding body modifications.

Trends are transient in nature. Why make something that is fleeting something that is permanent? Why do irreversible change to your body just because people in the present thought it was fashionable? To expect trends to stick is like expecting food to never decompose, but the body will keep the score.

It's only a matter of time before there are so many trends that have come and gone to where a person just becomes an amalgam of various body mod trends that they can't reverse. In that case, their very existence is irreversibly unfashionable. What a way to live.

Best-Selling Books

Has anyone really paid that much attention to the "best seller" label that you see on so many books nowadays?

I think that it's so common to see that label to the point where it stops holding meaning altogether. It no longer holds any distinctive quality because every other book that shares the same shelf also has that label. Not to mention, some books intentionally deviate from the standard "New York Times Best Seller" just to gain a leg up.

And plus, many best-selling books are painfully mediocre at best. Best-selling doesn't mean it's a good book. It could just mean that the author is well-known outside of writing (e.g. celebrities) and they marketed their book well. I've read some amazing books that have been barely reviewed, let alone seen.

Relative vs. Absolute Hierarchy

We often compare ourselves relatively. In a room full of beginners, the amateur looks like a professional. In a room full of professionals, the amateur looks like a beginner. Where we stand relative to others, that's how high we are in the local hierarchy so to speak.

However, that lends itself to often wild overestimations of ability, which often destroys the ego when you inevitably find someone better than you. This typically happens when you think that your position in one hierarchy transfers over to other hierarchies. It often doesn't.

To take the example I previously mentioned: if the amateur in a room full of beginners really thinks that they are a professional, then when they are moved to a room full of professionals, there's dissonance with what they perceived of themselves and what they actually are. But their perception didn't change who they were, i.e. they were still an amateur. It's just that in a relative sense they've been brought back down.

What I have adopted a long time ago is this notion of an absolute hierarchy. Instead of gauging yourself relatively with your peers, you're now gauged by your position compared to infinity in all aspects. And compared to infinity, not only myself, but everyone is incomprehensibly incompetent and ignorant. It doesn't mean that there aren't any people better than me, but we can all share the fact that we know nothing.

Of course, this is rather far-fetched, which means that it almost always reverts back to a relative hierarchy due to lack of practicality. But I posit that there's a lot of practicality in thinking that you're not the best person in any place or time. People may call me smart, but I know how deep my stupidity goes, regardless of the people I'm surrounded by.

In an absolute hierarchy, there is a place beyond the best. I'd rather aim for an unattainable ideal than settle for being only better than the people around me relatively. It keeps my ego in check, and it facilitates discovery beyond what is already known.

Zoo Exhibit

Maintaining my website makes me feel like one of those animals in the zoo.
I do my own thing while people watch.
People give me random snacks sometimes,
but I don’t attract attention.

On Public Reading Logs

Many times, I've considered having a reading log on my website so that I can leverage accountability. But I've repeatedly stopped myself from doing so, not without reason of course.

I feel that those places where you can see what people are reading can lead to people reading for all of the wrong reasons. Sometimes people read certain books just to say that they've read them. Sometimes, they simply want to inflate the number of books they read in a given year, not because they want to actually read, but because it allows them to show off how well-read or "intelligent" they are. Of course, that's not everyone's intentions, but I have a hunch that some people track their reading publically for these reasons.

In making my reading log private, I cannot say that I'm reading books to make myself look more knowledgeable, or to look "cultured", whatever that even means. I read what I want to read. I don't want to read books only for their reputation or for possible implications of my character when I do read them.

Let the things that you've read spill over into the things that you say or write (in proper contexts), instead of merely saying "look what I've read!", because that means nothing to me. What does mean something to me is if what you read leads to an interesting idea, a positive impact in your life, etc. If that makes people upset, then they're tracking their reading for the wrong reasons; they're reading to make themselves look better, instead of actually making themselves better or enjoying themselves.

Enjoying Obscurity

I found that for me, obscurity is the perfect sweetspot for attention. Complete isolation feels meaningless, and being too popular is like trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose.

In a way, obscurity also feels more intimate. You feel more closer to an audience when it is small compared to when it is large. After a certain point you end up processing people as simply statistics and not as individuals.

It's funny, because I've had nightmares of accidentally getting popular and having to deal with the aftermath. I've learned to trust my gut and I've stopped searching for attention at any sort of capacity.

I find it rather interesting just how differently experienced and unexperienced artists do their process.

When an experienced artist works, it’s hard to tell what step they’re in. For a large majority of their process, it’s not clear what they’re doing. Sometimes people keep pestering them with questions, asking what they’re doing—sometimes even in a mocking way, because what they’re drawing looks nothing like what they’re trying to replicate.

Then the artist finishes and people find a solid representation of their reference.

Meanwhile, there's no need to guess what an unexperienced artist is drawing while they're drawing it. Those two lines? They’re drawing the base of a tree. The circle on top? Those are the leaves. They’re drawing a person. Now they’re drawing a house. It’s easy to tell what line or shape is supposed to be representing what.

But their final result looks nothing like what they were trying to draw.

It seems that people naturally gravitate to use drawing as a method of communication first before training finally allows them to draw accurately. Either that, or it's hard to shake off the worry that their drawing will be misunderstood than to portray what they see accurately, not regarding the steps taken to get there.

The Dumping Grounds

To be honest, I don’t know why I’ve been feeling so timid about writing stuff for this site these days.

In reality, not very many people want to have a huge text dump unloaded onto them in typical online conversations. Really, this is the only place where I could unload all of that garbage without feeling like I’m forcing people to read it.

And I think that’s what I should’ve realized earlier: even if I post stuff, no one is obliged to read it. That’s a good thing. I don’t have to worry about whether I wasted someone’s time, because they probably wouldn’t have read it anyway.

Interacting with a website is entirely optional. The fact of the matter is that I should post more here, regardless if people engage with it or not. If people don’t want to see it, then they don’t have to. It’s that simple. I get to post what I want, people don’t have to see it if they don’t want to, it’s a win-win in my book.

The Cost of Proficiency

Isn’t it weird that we sometimes interpret the cost of things only through how long the person took to create/do it? I suppose this is a result of taking hourly wages a bit too literally.

Like, as an example, if I hired a mechanic to fix something substantial in my car, and they did the job in 10 minutes and charged me a ton of money for it, it would feel kind of weird. Almost like they didn’t put effort and expect a large payout. But really, we should see this speed as a marker of proficiency. If it took another mechanic 4 hours to do the same job, then it feels like they’ve put in more “effort” but in reality they’re just not as proficient.

It’s like how professional artists will charge a lot for a sketch that may not have taken them even 30 minutes to do, because you’re not paying them based on how long they took, but for the amount of time it took to master their craft to the point where they can do it that fast with great results.

More time spent doesn’t necessarily mean greater value. Give a beginner artist 100 hours to create a painting and a professional artist only 1 hour and it wouldn’t even be a fair comparison. It’s because the professional invested thousands of hours behind that one hour to do that painting, so technically you could say that the professional had thousands of hours + 1 hour to do that painting. A competition that was one-sided before the results even came in.

I guess proficiency is a good parallel to expedited shipping: the faster you are, the more expensive it gets.

JavaScript

I used to be in the camp where I hated JavaScript. Probably as a result of having to deal with bloated sites that use it too much, and also having to make my own site before that uses it extensively, seeing how unoptimized they are.

Nowadays, I’m more in the camp where I accept JavaScript for what it is, but I really dislike it when it’s used excessively, and when it’s used despite the fact that HTML and CSS by itself work fine. If I don’t have to use JavaScript to do something, then I won’t.

There are some uses for JavaScript that make it pretty handy. However, if your entire site explodes just because I’ve disabled all scripts from running on the browser, then I don’t think that’s good.

Those who are strong are not those who never feel like giving up (for that hinges a lot on naivety), but those who keep going even when they don't want to.

Of course, it depends on the thing that one is giving up on. There's a difference between tolerating something that is unnecessary or harmful and tolerating something that is for your own good. Considering all of this, it is good to know when to stop being persistent.

Opposite Preference Phenomenon in Art

There's this thing that I've seen always happens when I share my art (whether on social media or elsewhere): the pieces which people like the most are the ones that are literal dumpster fires of terrible. Like, sometimes what I made took no effort and it looks irretrievably awful, and yet it gains a lot of engagement. Meanwhile, the pieces which I'm actually happy about get absolutely nothing. Zilch. No one cares.

It's not just me, but practically every artist I've seen has experienced this one time or another. And it's not like we're just conjuring this up in our minds, it could probably be proven to be a statistical pattern. It's not compliment-fishing, either. You could literally have no description posted and the same outcome will result. I'll never understand why this happens.

I've definitely have reached the point where the moment I like the result of my own piece of work, I immediately assume no one will care. Just assume the worst. I've made the conclusion myself so I don't have to worry about it going forward.

It's almost as if people are playing some sort of sick joke that we artists are not in on. It's like the world is telling us to stop caring about such inane nonsense.

Superficial Causes of Skill

I find it odd that some people attribute a person’s skill to superficial things. And the fact that I can’t tell whether it’s a rhetorical statement or not doesn’t help.

With musicians as an example, some people say when they see them play “I wish I had their hands”. As if these people didn’t have any hands of their own that they could use. You could surgically replace your hands with theirs and you would be just as incompetent with the instrument.

Artists tend to get the same deal. I find it very funny that some people, when they watch Kim Jung Gi draw using his brush pen, say “I wish I had this dude’s pen”. My man, he could probably draw better than 99% of artists with ketchup and a toothpick regardless if we had his pen or not.

But then this question would arise: what brand of ketchup is he using? Because of course it would.

I realize it's ridiculous to try and appeal to people who are beyond your interests, especially with something like the Internet where people will seek for the things that interest them. Why appeal to people whose interests don't even interest you? Sounds like a great way to make yourself someone that you’re not.

If they lose interest, so be it. If they change, so be it. If they weren't even interested to begin with, so be it. It's not within your power to withhold or enact any change towards a human being outside of their will to co-operate.

Compensation

I am a failure in many ways, but I try to compensate by being good at certain things.

But running away isn’t going to solve the issue. A good thing ceases to be good when it starts taking away from things that are of greater importance.

I’ve never understood why some people would think that digital art consists of the computer doing all of the work. If you frame it in different contexts this assumption is ridiculous.

Does the computer write a novel for me just because digital text editors exist? Do “real” writers only use pen and paper?

Does the computer code programs for me because of the existence of IDEs, and compilers? Do “real” programmers use only punch cards?

Digital software is a tool. Just because more optimized and convenient tools exist doesn’t mean that they do all of the work for you. It’s like assuming that the creation of modern power tools means that the tools themselves will build the house for you. It’s stupid.

The issue we face now in the present world regarding knowledge is not a lack of access, but finding its relevancy in our life.

Perfect Hue

I'm very curious if there's an ability in art that is an equivalent to music's "perfect pitch", where you can identify a note only by hearing it.

One obvious ability that would benefit an artist is photographic memory, but it isn't really a parallel to perfect pitch.

Is there such a thing as "perfect hue" or "perfect value", where an artist can immediately mix a colour with 100% accuracy when they see it? Or they identify a value of a shade correctly first try? I mean, artists already build this ability when they start training, so maybe. Not sure if there is a person that's born with it, though.

Distant Cultures

It's interesting to note that culture is becoming less and less bound by the place that you were born in, and is now largely influenced by the places that you frequent in the Internet.

Being able to choose the places that you frequent and the people that you hear from on a daily basis makes you start fitting into places that are far beyond where you live, which is something that has only really happened until recently. This also means that cultures of very niche interests start to form, which is something that may not have occurred before the Internet.

I also wonder if this may cause heightened feelings of alienation and isolation for individuals who cannot seem to fit with the people in their immediate surroundings when they disconnect from the Internet.

You know artists have it rough when one of the main platforms for sharing art is Twitter. Twitter. Really?

I don't know, I think that art is treated as well as the environment it's displayed in. It's why gallery walls are white to ensure that all of the attention goes to the artwork. If the walls were just a hodgepodge of random colours, it will detract from the artwork it's supposed to display.

With Twitter, it's clear that art isn't elevating the platform, it's just degrading the art.

Sometimes what I write feels so obvious that it almost feels shameful to share it.

Applies to everything, really. It feels like everyone has known about this "thing" except for me and it's only now that I'm realizing it. It sometimes demotivates me from sharing stuff.

Remembered Contributions

People always seem to want to make a name for themselves, wanting to be remembered by their name. But that's what all of their actions aim towards: to be recognized and remembered.

How about being remembered for our contributions instead? It often comes with a price, however: you don't get remembered by your name, but through your contribution instead. You make a greater impact in the world, but you don't get remembered.

People may know popular celebrities for X, Y, and Z, but how about those who invented/discovered things that lead to modern technology? Who are the people who invented the first transistor that led to the creation of modern processors? Who invented the microwave? These people's contributions have lasted way past their lifetime, and yet if you pose that question to the average person they'll likely won't know who these people are. And could you really blame them?

We remember more about people who only aim to be remembered than those who have made long-lasting contributions to the modern age. If that isn't completely backwards, I don't know what is.

I wonder how differently we would perceive the world if we never saw what we looked like to ourselves. Without a mirror, reflection, photo, or even the possibility of seeing a portrait/bust of ourselves.

Would we become less self-absorbed and more selfless? Would we be more concerned with our actions rather than our appearance? Would we be more suspicious with how other people describe our appearance to ourselves? Will the idea of self-image disappear?

Or in not knowing what we look like, we obsess over it even more?

Unconditional love facilitates growth in the most authentic way possible.

Those who think that love can only be earned through works or favours or bribery won’t grow as individuals, but instead will bear the image molded by the people whose validation they seek.

Dead Sites

It's quite bittersweet to realize that there will be a point in time where a person will update their site/blog one final time before (knowingly or unknowingly) abandoning it for good.

For some, they'll update their site until the day they die, and for others they've long since abandoned their site already, with no sign of returning. Eitherway, browsing the site of a literal (or figuratively) dead person is a very strange feeling.

To be in the history books doesn’t mean you’ll be remembered; your existence is just archived.

To sit as some text on paper in a dusty corner that no one will ever read is one sad way to get immortalized. Is that something even worth pursuing?

Which is more wretched: accepting that one's relevancy in the world is but a mere blot in time, or trying to immortalize yourself and still being forgotten? The end result is the same, so why bother?

Just do the work that you're given to do in the time which you were allotted.

Articles That Quote Itself

I honestly don't like it when people quote themselves in their own articles. Something akin to this:

Like, they put some random sentence in their own article in a quote box, and then have buttons under it that make it easier to share that quote on social media. The fact that you've emphasized a passage in that manner doesn't mean that it's suddenly quotable or noteworthy.

A person who self-proclaims to be a "thinker" or "intellectual" doesn't prove to me that said person is in fact intelligent.

If anything, it only tells me that their identity revolves too much around the mere belief that they are smart.

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Our School Mascot

Our university is perpetually under construction. In fact, the construction workers often surprise students by suddenly putting a high traffic area under construction, creating massive congestion and causing hundreds of students to be late for class.

It got so out of hand one semester that the students unofficially made the construction workers as the school mascot. To be honest, the construction workers represented the university far better than the official mascot ever did.

Exposing Ignorance

To share one's knowledge exposes one's own ignorance.

It's a humbling thing to write about anything, whether it be for myself or the site, because no matter what I write about, I simply cannot account for every single viewpoint, and every single fact. In sharing what I know, I also implicitly share what I don't know.

Why should I then boast about knowledge? For if I boast about all of what I know, then what I don't boast about is what I don't know. This means that in my boasting I'm also declaring myself to know nothing: a fact which holds regardless if I share my knowledge or not.

And the ironic thing about flaunting one's knowledge: if you share it, then the people you've shared it to are no longer ignorant. Why in the world should I boast about knowledge when boasting about it removes the reason to boast in the first place?

A somewhat relevant example from Epictetus:

"Whenever someone prides himself on being able to understand and comment on Chrysippus' books, think to yourself, 'If Chrysippus had written more clearly, this person would have nothing to be proud of.'"

Enchiridion, Chapter 49

It essentially says that if knowledge were more accessible to more people, then people with knowledge would have nothing to boast about. And if people boast about their knowledge by sharing it, they make it more accessible by making people aware of it, and now suddenly they have lost all purpose to boast.

Funny how that works.

Short-term Influence

I think that the general liking system that is an integral part of online social communications has really warped our sense of what's going to stick around and what's going to be swept away.

People often look to the likes counter to see the "performance" of their work over a few days at most before they move on to the next piece of work. However, that is such a small window of time to judge how much influence a piece of work will do over the long-term.

There are many pieces of work which did not have a large initial reception, only for it to snowball into something greater months, years, or even decades later.

The culture nowadays focuses way too much on the short-term influence that their work brings, being easily discouraged by how much their work "performed" in the short-term rather than in the grand scheme of things. Present-day relevancy isn't indicative of the impact it'll have in the future.

Contempt

Would you say to a possession that is worthless "you are useless!" over and over again? No, because no matter what you say to the object, it'll still occupy space in the house. To constantly voice your contempt for something is to still care about it.

If you truly think it to be useless, throw it into the garbage and give it no more thought. The same goes with fame, attention, and externals. To treat something with contempt is not to lament about its existence, but to treat it as non-existent.

Throw it out and forget about it. Declutter.

Thankless Work

The work with garners the least amount of thanks are also those jobs which are met with the most complaint when they are never done.

That's quite sad, seeing as that is probably the greatest evidence for its necessity.

You can make anyone hate almost anything if you get them to associate said thing to something disagreeable.

You don't even have to convince people that this "thing" in particular is bad. Only tell them that it's related to something bad, even when it's so distantly related that associating it makes no sense whatsoever.

Unconventional Losses

We often take a loss more badly if unconventional behaviour leads to a bad outcome. We'd rather fail conventionally than unconventionally, because we can blame social convention rather than ourselves.

Those who use their time trying to prove to others that they are smart are not using their life in a smart way.

"To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work."

Art & Fear

Synonymity

I think that people correlate certain things that aren't necessarily correlated way too often.

Being popular isn't synonymous with making good work. And creating good work isn't synonymous with being popular either.

To do something unique isn't synonymous with getting distinction. The fact that it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it wasn't ever conceived, but because it's probably not appealing to a large amount of people.

Being worried about what other people think of you isn't synonymous with being valuable to others, and treating others as they should be treated.

Taking care of yourself isn't synonymous with being selfish.

"If your silence is taken for ignorance, but it doesn't upset you—well, that's the real sign that you have begun to be a philosopher."

Enchiridion, Chapter 46

Norms in Social Platforms

I've realized that despite having been away from the art community in social media, I've still been affected by the norms in those platforms.

Worrying about views, likes, validation, style, whatever, a bunch of that carried over. It's weird, because where I am right now these things don't matter at all. And after realizing that I'm basically carrying a burden that was handed to me from a different platform, it dawned on me how fickle these things are.

The interesting thing, too, is that people who come to Neocities from all sorts of platforms have carried with them these social norms as well. It's often obvious from a glance of a person's website whether they came from 4chan, Twitter, IG, Tumblr, and etc. They treat their site as if they were still using those platforms, with the same expectations and such.

The good thing about Neocities not really being a platform and moreso an index is that I don't have to care about any of this nonsense.

"Without great solitude no serious work is possible."

~ Pablo Picasso

The maximum is not the average, so stop expecting it every single time you're doing something and being disappointed when you don't reach it.

Under Construction

You know what I've never understood? The under construction thing in websites.

I guess it makes sense if you've only just started and are working on things as you go along. But when doing a redesign, I don't see a need to pull off all of the things on your website just because you're doing a redesign.

Why not wait until you're done redesigning everything before overwriting your site? I simply don't see a need to slap an "under construction" thing when you already have things on the site to occupy people until you're done.

I suppose it's because of the use of the Neocities' built-in editor, where it updates the site every time you save.

Personally, though, I think it's better to locally edit your website on your machine, and update everything when it's all done. Hiding your entire site from the public until the redesign is complete is wholly unnecessary.

Sarcasm

If you had met me 4-5 years ago, you would have found that my humour was entirely composed of sarcasm. But it wasn't long before I realized that it wasn't good in the slightest.

I mean, I like a good bit of sarcasm every now and again when used sparingly, with some decent comedic timing. But if it's literally the basis of all of one's humour, I found that it sets up one's self for the "boy who cried wolf" situation. Like, if all I made were sarcastic comments, then how can people even tell when I'm trying to be serious? It would just be assumed as sarcasm at that point.

Not to mention sarcasm in text becomes very difficult to even discern, because a lot of the social cues for sarcasm are in one's vocal tone and inflection. Take that away, and it all just becomes a huge mess. Cue the obnoxious r/woosh comments that you see in Reddit, and now YouTube out of all places.

I realized that it was just wasting my time, and wasting other people's time, so I've given up on using it as much as I did. I think that the use of humour certainly has more impact than people think, seeing how the humour nowadays turns people on each other. Whether or not it's because of a lack of tolerance, or people's taste in humour has gotten worse is up to you to decide. It's probably both, if anything.

Insecurity

There's always something to jostle your own sense of worth, given enough effort on your part.

If you think you are an accomplished individual, know that:

• Someone has accomplished the same, but at a younger age.
• Someone has accomplished the same, but they got there faster.
• Someone has accomplished the same, but they get more praise for it than you do.
• Someone has accomplished the same, but they've accomplished more things alongside that.
• Someone has accomplished something completely different that you're not able to do.

Seek for insecurity, and you will surely find it.

Attempting to bend time to your will leads only to frustration. Try to slow down time, and it only speeds up. Try to speed up time, and our perception of it will slow down to a crawl.

Live in the present.

Positive Vision

If I can't imagine a life where I finally stop doing bad habit X, or finally start doing Y, how could I ever expect it to happen in reality?

That's like driving forward looking at the rear-view mirror: vision and reality are completely inverted, and it's likely that reality will win.

At the very least increase the chances of not crashing into something by looking forward. It may still happen, but at least you have some sense of control when circumstances arise.

Logic, Emotions, and Revelations

Something which I've observed for a long time is how people frame their conclusions about certain beliefs or stumblings.

Some people preface their conclusion with "I think that...", others with "I feel that...", but interestingly enough I preface a large majority of my thoughts with "I realize that..."

It's as if I was blind to something obvious until it was shown to me, rather than logically or emotionally deduced.

Whether or not there are greater implications to these use of terms, I'm not entirely sure. It's interesting nonetheless.

Dialogue

If we had to read the words we say inside of a novel, we would agitate ourselves with how much filler we say on a daily basis.

Hospitality

I've begun to realize that most of the stuff that I create for the website isn't even for others, but solely for myself.

And it's not even in a selfish way, nor is it something that is negative. The philosophy that's beginning to crop up for this website is what I've called the "hospitality" model of sharing.

I basically treat this website as if it is was my own home. I decorate it however I want, I fill the space with articles, artworks, whatever. If people are coming over to visit then I let them hang around the house. They can read whatever they want from the shelves, look at the artwork on the walls, etc. They're not obligated to visit all of the time, and they're not obligated to give anything back either.

Sharing in this manner is more intrinsically motivating since there's no real gain from all of this. I don't decorate my house the way that I do for the visitors, but for myself, since I'm the one who's going to be looking at it the most. The same way goes for the things within the house: they detail history, rather than something to be admired. If people aren't drawn to it, they're free to leave.

Now the other model, which is applied to more things than it ought to be, is the "business" model of sharing. "Sharing" in this case should really be redefined to "exchange", because it often becomes a business transaction rather than sharing. People consume my "content", I get views, attention, ad revenue, clout, influence, followers, whatever. I give the people what they want, but they better give something in return.

There's a time and place for that, but a personal website such as this shouldn't have to conform to such a thing if it doesn't need to. Imagine if you get invited to someone's house for dinner and they give you the bill for the expenses of your meal. That's less hospitality and moreso malicious business tactics.

Jigsaw Puzzles

I recently realized that doing studies of photos/artwork is almost like a jigsaw puzzle.

You see the solution that you're supposed to get (the work that you're studying), and now all you have to do is piece it all together. However, the problem is that you don't have discrete chunks that make up the solution; instead, you have to manually create the whole thing from scratch, with a pencil, paint, or the tool of your choosing. It's basically a jigsaw puzzle but on steroids.

The emphasis of the puzzle can also vary, depending on one's focus. It could be exaggerating colour, proportions, or values; done with only line or only shapes; monochromatic or off-the-wall palettes. A single image can have a variety of ways that it can be studied, which enhances "replayability" to put it into gamer language.

Framing artistic studies this way sounds way more fun. It's like something that I'd do as a chill pastime rather than something I'm obligated to carry out to better my skills.