Why I Started This Site

A Website as a Work of Art

As I said on my home page, one major goal of this website is to be an art project. This is important to me because I have a complicated relationship to art and to the internet as a whole, and I think making a website like this can help me understand my relationship to these things.

I, like many other transgender people, didn't have a particularly strong identity growing up. I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin in ways that I didn't yet understand, certainly couldn't express, and didn't even necessarily realize were abnormal. As a young child, I was introduced to video games by one of my few friends, and from there, I became interested in computers as a whole. I got into programming very early, and that ended up forming the cornerstone of my identity as I grew to spend more and more time online.

I saw myself largely as not much different than the computers I worked with. Fundamentally a machine that takes in information in the form of senses, stores that information, and functions based on how it processes that stored information. The world was a problem to be analyzed, broken down, and solved. This view developed into a lack of appreciation for creative/"right-brained" thought. Although I always enjoyed consuming art and music, I never put my energy into developing that interest. It was simply not something I allowed myself to do.

I think I was always fundamentally a creative person, as I believe all people are. Most of my friends throughout my whole life have been artists, and I've always looked up to them for it, but getting over the hurdle of being a beginner and developing artistic skill pushed me away. Because of this cognitive disconnect, my creativity slipped through in other places that I didn't at the time think of as creative. I spent hours toying around in Photoshop. I made stupid videos with my friends. I learned how to work with Linux and customized all sorts of different distros and window managers.

Eventually, however, I reached a point where I became more in-tune with myself, and I tried to begin a new life post-transition. After I started feeling more clarity, it began to feel like I wasted my childhood isolating myself. I saw how disconnected I was from my surroundings growing up, and I realized what many of my peers had already done, and I felt incredibly far behind. I still felt excited to be starting what finally felt like a real life, but it was bittersweet because it felt like I had an immense amount of catching up to do.

Because I didn't like the person I had been, I began distancing myself from them in any way I could. Many of those ways came naturally, but one thing that I did actively was try to pull myself out of the internet hole that I felt I had been trapped in. I made myself use computers in a far more "normal" way. I still don't fully regret this decision. Getting out of my shell and developing my in-person social circle has been more valuable and transformative than I can express. That said, I wish that change didn't have to come from forced rejection of who I'd been, and I wish I could have seen my childhood the way I do now sooner.

The internet acted as my social space, my creative outlet, and my source of knowledge and entertainment for the majority of my life. While that might have brought me some problems, it doesn't mean that everything it brought me was negative. I have skills and knowledge that, while somewhat niche, can be incredibly useful, and beyond that, interesting. Even if that weren't the case and it really was all bad, it's all still a part of me regardless. I couldn't change the past even if I wanted to, but I can use it to bring me forward. I want to rediscover the things that got me this far through a healthier lens, and this feels like the way to do that.

Outside of its healing value, I want this site to also be helpful to me in other ways. I have ADHD, and it's very for me difficult to structure myself and do the things I want to do without some sort of external motivation. I've found that the best way to learn something is to teach it, and having a place that I like to publish what I learn can provide that opportunity. I might not be able to study a certain topic, but if I instead tell myself to write a guide for that topic, I'm much more able to complete the task. Reframing in this way creates obvious goal markers, and being forced to write something that explains the topic step-by-step helps me make sure I do a thorough job.

Why You Might Want a Website

My reasoning for making this site has a lot to do with things that are very specific to myself, but I also believe there are some common things that make it sensible for other people to do the same regardless of their background.

• It's Just Fun - This point is very much subjective, and I can totally understand the perspective of not wanting to bother with learning HTML/CSS or some other tool just to customize a space for yourself, but I also think more people than currently do it would enjoy it if they gave it a try. The internet has become far less customizable in recent times as social media sites have grown, but those who have been around since more customization was common tend to look back on it fondly. I still fairly often see people who used MySpace, for example, reminiscing about how much fun it was to customize their page.

• You Can Actually Own It - The modern internet ecosystem where everything stems from a few major sites leaves you at the mercy of the giant corporations trying to make a profit off of the content you upload. There are advantages to this model in terms of ease of use, but it can also means that you don't control where what you upload goes, and if those sites decide to boot you off, you have no recourse.