I've been on the internet since I can remember the sound of dial up and the sight of the AOL connection progress screen. I've been much more the lurking type, looking for websites with more information about this "anime thing" that I would really like to rent from Blockbuster and catch on tv sometimes. I loved to draw pictures on the computer and I guess I'm bringing that whole thing back lol. My dad was and still is a computer programmer, so I guess he helped us make sure we had an internet connection before is was a bigger deal. When he worked for Sprint, I was around a cell phone for the first time too. I grew up the same sheltered, spoiled, middle-class upbringing that I'm sure many other only children my age experienced; filled with Pokemon and YuGiOh Cards, hoping for the latest Nintendo consoles each Christmas and listening to a NOW CD on my silver Sony portable CD player on the bus to and from school. Honestly I don't know if I can say this kind of "raised by media" upbringing is really that good for people to experience. I have really had to work on severing my unnatural attatchment to fiction and escapism. Every time I get into a new thing, such as a game or show, I'm usually marathoning it for 10+ straight hours without a single break except to maybe use the bathroom and get a drink of water. I can forget and drop things just as fast....it's a real shame sometimes, because it's hard to really even connect with other fans of the content I'm binging. Maybe other people do this, or are even more intense, and find no issue with it. All I can say is that it's not been a source of progress or growth in my life. It's a huge high that comes at the cost of feeling very low when the party ends and a source of anxiety when life demands I participate. Moving on, later in life, around high school, I was still using a "call and text-only" phone while my peers were getting Iphones and able to access media through apps anywhere they went, and of course I was jealous. A bit after graduation I got my first tablet, which gave me the ability to use Instagram and other apps as long as I had a Wifi connection. That tablet only had a front-facing camera, as you can see here, and I was exstatic to finally feel a part of the touchscreen gang even though I never really had the chance to document a very interesting life on it like my friends were. I still sort of wish I could have, though, at least for the local punk shows I went to. I still did my best, and have some pictures of back then. On another note, due to immense outside pressure and a big pair of knockers(not seen here in their full glory, you'll just have to trust me on this one), I thought of myself as fat back then. Honestly it's just kind of annoying because I was so bothered about my weight back then that it stopped me from just really enjoying myself due to how self-conscious I was. What a waste! Don't let this happen to you! That hunching over to make my chest look smaller was a dumb idea!
I've been obsessed with Japanese fashion to a cringy degree, as you can tell I was doing my best to create a "decora" and "fairy kei" inspired looks without any way to access the actual brands that ruled the overall looks and set the style rules, and I wasn't able to sew my own clothes, either. I suppose that by lack of resources, I made looks that were all my own. However, not that I'm older and less concerned with looking cute or pretty, I just wear whatever I like that's fun to me. I am the opposite of a fashion icon, and I love committing fashion sins and crimes and plan to do so even more in the future! Being a thick, curvy girl with frizzy, curly hair trying to fit into petite Asian girl styles was holding me back from being comfortable in my own body. I'm so happy to see these fashions come back in a way that all body types can enjoy them, instead of pushing people to alter their natrual selves to fit in at any cost to feel "worthy".
The first few years of adulthood actually really sucked for me. All the pressure to make myself sucessful with none of the freedom that comes with getting older. I'll admit I was a pretty mean and lazy person a lot of the time, but I had such a small scope for reality that it's no wonder I was such a defensive jerk wasting all the energy I had avoiding my small and unpleasant reality. I wasted so much time searching for the validation I was cut off from getting once puberty hit me and I stopped being cute and started having opinions, that I forgot to work on helping myself become someone I could be proud of. I wasted all that time wishing people around me were better instead of accepting that they're simply not enough to complete me, and move on to be enough for myself just like many of them probably had. I was so accustomed to being codependent and groomed to be borderline parasitic that learning to be anything else was extremely painful. It still is! But learning independence and having true freedom from where I was is a gift that keeps on giving, even if it can also be work.
I am so excited to have a place where I can be 100% myself even at the cost of looking like a washed up old lady with almost no art or design skill to think of. I stuggle with the whole "whats the point of trying if you aren't perfect the first time?" mentality, and this website is my way of fighting against that even at the cost of looking like a total loser to strangers on the internet. I'm ready to start this journey of improvement over time. I'm ready to see what it is that I actually excel at and what I actually like doing. I'm so excited to meet other people that find something of value here. I'm ready to refine and polish who I am as a person and what I do that represents me best. Maybe I'm not better than anyone at anything, but I still have something unique here that is worth keeping around! I would love to just be someone that people like me can feel like they're not alone about how they feel or whatever. That would probably be the most rewarding. We twist ourselves into so many different things just to be relatable to others so that we don't feel like we're in this life alone, but when we're finally being ourselves it's both freeing and terrifying to realize we might be the only one out there like us. It's hard to feel connected to people when you realize how complex we are and how many things we don't have in common with our peers. It's so isolating and I know the internet hasn't really grown to help that as much as it could have. I hope the stuff I write about on this website is either something that amuses you or makes you feel less alone. Selfishly, it will do the same for me.
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