After experimenting with innumerable websites, I think it is fair that after creating one that is scaleable and that appears to stand the test of time, I would just stick to that, because there is no point having websites if there is no content of which to speak, since I am spending all my time deciding and overcomplicating (which can be a good thing if for artistic purposes) when I could just be put all the labor that went into the website to good use by using it actually. It makes sense that I would feel a sense of disillusion at just how much effort it took for me to make the website. I could go even further and familiarize myself with the complexities of web development, but while that is certainly a valid path, I do not believe that it is for me. I am not going to start going so far to get good at coding only to forget how to sit down, look around, and grab the first useful thing and use it. I will be so caught up with what I can do if I worked hard enough that I stopped to think whether it is practical to do so, or if I'm just losing myself in some art or endeavor that does not lead back to the ground, but leads further into a hole of esotericism, specialization, and isolation.
I need to remember again and again that it will never end and I will never truly be satisfied, so the best thing to do right now is to do something that makes me happy and content right now, because the present is all there is, not the future or some potential actualization of specialization.
I feel so strange, like I'm floating around. I don't know how to take this feeling. This is not about the websites anymore. I realize again and now that yes, I can feel the weight of everything. I cannot pretend not to feel anything. I can only accept that this is just the reality which I'm dealt.
There is a desire to run away somewhere just as much as there is a desire to overcommit and burnout. There is a desire for balance.
But balance is an active negotation, one that can at times feel either too proactive or too immediate.
In the end, I'm okay, and I'm dealing with things in a healthy and sustainable way. I just have to keep going, as I have always done.
It is strange, you know, that I'm even here. After writing 2 million words in 540 days, you'd think that I'd be so different, and yes, I am different, very much. It is just that I still feel like I'm here, in the most underwhelming anti-climactic way possible. It feels like my brain has not budged even a single bit, even if I have changed and grown so much. I don't know if this is humility, or is this just another day? Or both.
I mean, I'm not denying that I did change a lot, but it is so interesting that even if I know that my past self from 540 days ago would be surprised at what I've accomplished, experienced, felt, thought, written, and addressed, I still feel this strange weight or weightlessness.
Perhaps, I really have normalized the extraordinary. There is indeed a point where you cannot tell that you've grown and became so much more skilled because you've forgotten imperceptibly what it was like to be "weak."
Even when I read my older work, I only feel this feeling like I've only just started. Like right now, after all those words, I can see so much to slide or grow into. It never ends, and I feel this fistful of a beginner's mind, insomuch that I question whether I accomplished anything at all. It is strange, having both the recognition of my labor and the feeling that I'm still only beginning, like I'm the underdog that I was years ago. It feels like I've been holding it in all this time, and the more that I grow into all of these skills, the more that everything that I've been holding in finds a medium and place. It appears to be a self-actualization process.
I still feel very much invalidated, not in the sense that the world is trying to destroy me, but I feel that I have yet to release everything that I am, as if I have yet to be honest truly because I have yet to refine my writing enough to do so. I am in that journey of self-releasement.
I feel this endless drive, and I feel like I'm just another man bitterly and expressively biting and clawing my way up the mountain, that I might make a dent (not popularity or anything), but the actualization and true honesty of my self, that I might be free, because if I do not have a voice or cannot speak effectively, then I am effectively unfree.
It is not that I am over-editing or self-censoring, but I am refining the precision of my communication skills. Articulation is freedom.
It is strange, you know. I can see the futility of so many of people's writings. I can tell immediately that they have nothing to say. They either sound too standard that they're skimmable or sound too personal that they lack vital precision.
I know well just how valuable people's lives are, but I also recognize how hard it is to communicate.
That is why I find it so excruciating, just the feeling of flesh, the feeling of trying to hold it in, to bite onto something, and to gain something after everything. But nothing sticks.
But that growing recognition, awareness, exposure, refinement, and drive will address the issue. The relentless drive to address, put together, and live in utter ambiguity while retaining the simultaneous belief in any communication (and, by extension, truth and definition) to a practical, workable degree.
I can feel the weight of my hands, and I can feel just so much more intentionality and choice I have now. I can feel that my actions now have much more weight compared to when I was younger. I can feel pain and digest it, taking from its nutrients and growing from it without letting it consume me. Instead I consume it. That deliberative digestion relates to the feeling of being able to do anything, yet being so specific about my choices, without feeling that I'm just being dragged away in a stream.