Yesterday, me and my partner went for a walk. It was sunny and I took my digital camera - I got some nice photos to put in my journal.
The apple trees were blooming and the air smelled sweet.
Fav songs at the moment:
SUNDAY 20th APRIL 2025 - 22:05
Just checking in to document the fact that I have PASSED ALL MY EXAMS and I am mega proud of myself.
SATURDAY 29th MAR 2025 - 13:57
Hello again. Quite a lot has gone on in the past few weeks. I finally got my first tattoo - and I really love it. It's quite simple at the moment, just the line art but I already have plans to add some shading and a bit of extra detail, and an idea for a 2nd tattoo. The artist who did it was so lovely too, we had a conversation about cats and she made the whole experience a really positive one.
I've been at university a lot, and doing a lot of driving in the past few weeks which has me absolutely worn out. I've found that I have quite a low threshold for social exhaustion - being around people for any more than 2 or 3 hours is really quite difficult for me. I used to work full time and go out a lot and I never felt that way, but I think since getting sober and generally developing healthier coping mechanisms and listening to my body more, I've realised a lot of my apparent extraversion was actually just masking.
That's OK though - it just means I'm learning more about myself and what makes me happy. This weekend, for example, my plans mainly involve spending time with my cat, reading, journalling, and playing animal crossing. Ideal.
Music on repeat at the moment:
SATURDAY 08th MAR 2025 - 13:58
Yesterday I completed exam 2 of 2, and all being well, they are the last exams I'll have to sit for my degree, which is a bit surreal considering that when I started the five-year course in 2021 I couldn't even imagine being near the end of it. Mixed emotions. Mostly relief.
Today is international women's day. To be honest, I almost exclusively listen to music, read books and generally engage with media created by women. It's not so much a conscious choice, as much as a natural progression as I've got older and I'm more selective about spending my time on things which I actually enjoy and which resonate with me.
In other news, I've made some quite big changes to this site - I now have the domain ellekay.net (again - I used to own it and linked it to a tumblr page at one point, then a cargocollective site after that). I've made some layout changes too, added new backgrounds and just generally been customising it. I'm happy with it. I didn't realise how much I'd missed having a personal site until I made this one. Especially now that I have no social media - it's good to have a creative digital outlet.
I have a week off now which is unheard of for me, so I'll probably be working on this site some more. I also want to make a start on a project which has been in the back of my mind for 15 years now. It started off as a screenplay, then changed into a novel, and now I'm not sure what form it will take, I just know that if something has stuck around for that long, it's probably worth writing. I'm thinking of making it more of a multimedia project - with its own site etc. When I was younger I was very fixated on the idea that I wanted to get a book published - and I think that's what stopped me from actually writing one.
Now my career path has ended up firmly based in science rather than the arts, but the urge to create still remains, and the most important thing regarding this idea that I've had for so many years is that I just want it to be out there in the world - not so I can make money from it or try to pursue a career as a writer. The act of sharing it will be more fulfilling than any grand ambitions for success. I'd be happy if even one person read something I'd written and got something from it. Or even if nobody read it at all, I'd be content knowing that I gave form to my ideas and gave them somewhere to live that isn't my subconscious mind.
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of Debbii Dawson's great music:
ONLINE REFLECTIONS - SATURDAY 1ST MARCH 2025
It probably won't come as a surprise, considering you're reading this on a neocities website, but I am not the biggest fan of social media, or the current state of the internet today in general. It's hard to write a criticism of social media without coming across too "old man shouts at cloud"/"what if phones but too much", but I have some strong feelings on the topic so I'm gonna do it anyway.
My first experience of computers was a Windows 98 PC in the spare bedroom of my family home when I was a child. It wasn't even connected to dial up at that point. I'm not exactly sure why we had it, looking back...but I did spend many an hour on MS Paint and MS Word, creating Word Art and just generally having a great time. After that we moved on to a Windows XP, dial-up connected PC which is where my love of website-building began - I wasn't particularly great at it and neither were any of my friends, but that wasn't what mattered - what mattered was that we had a place to express ourselves and be as creative as we wanted. My first website was made on 'matmice', I've checked the internet archive but sadly it was never indexed. I also spent a lot of time customising my pet pages on neopets, and I had a piczo site at some stage too. These pages were full of rainbow divider GIFs, blinkies, stamps, MIDI files of Avril Lavigne songs, etc etc.
The main thing I remember from that era is that I could spend HOURS tending to my websites. All that would end up changing would be a few text colours, maybe a customised button and a new tiled background, some marquee text - but I would spend so much time getting things just how I wanted them. My parents definitely thought it was a bit strange that their kid would sit staring at code for hours on end rather than going outside - in the days of the Communal Desktop Computer there wasn't really any way to hide how much time you spent staring at a screen. They would tell me to take a break, do something else, etc. I don't want to fall into the trap of romanticising those days too much, and demonising social media as it is today. I think every generation thinks the way they spent their childhood is superior to how the current generation of children are spending theirs. If you went back far enough, you could probably find someone arguing that 'hoop and a stick' game would be the downfall of humanity, or that Yo-Yos poisoned the minds of a generation.
When I was a teenager, I definitely fell into the 'hating-anything-that's-popular-just-to-be-different' crowd, but those days are well and truly behind me. I wear crocs on a regular basis and I own a Stanley cup. But all that being said...I really, really don't like social media. At all. I grew up watching it morph and mutate in real-time. I remember when facebook became available for the first time and my friends were excited to sign up for an account. I thought it was weird that it demanded your real, full name, home town, school, etc. It felt more like filling in some kind of government paperwork than having fun online like I was used to. I got an account because everyone else was, but I never really enjoyed using it. It seemed like the worst aspects of being online - the virtual popularity contest - were at the forefront, and it never felt very authentic or unique. Of course there was an overlap during this time period with more customisable platforms which I used too - Myspace, tumblr, etc - but facebook and later, twitter, were massively taking over, and it was seen as really strange not to use them. So I did. For years, I kept up a constant presence on facebook, twitter and later, instagram. HTML became a distant memory.
But about a year ago, I deleted all of my social media accounts. I also spent a few weeks using a 'dumbphone' - a Nokia 800 Tough - mainly because I was working outdoors a lot in all weathers and I don't think my iPhone would have survived it. The biggest realisation I had is that I don't miss social media even slightly. I suppose it's like any addiction - it creates a need for itself. At some point I discovered Neocities and that's when this site came about. Basic HTML stuff was still in my brain, filed away, and I absolutely love tending to my website again. It's quite a therapeutic feeling for me, doing something I loved doing as a child again, that I'd assumed was lost forever.
I went through a stage of thinking I would go back to a 'dumbphone' full time - it wouldn't be that difficult, or so I thought. But in case you're considering doing the same, let me save you potentially months of trial and error with a summary of my experience. The main obstacle is that some smartphone-exclusive features are basically unavoidable nowadays, or just make life a lot more convenient. Mainly - the ability to scan QR codes, things like online banking/apple pay/etc, maps and navigation, music, WhatsApp, Teams, etc.
At first, I thought, no problem! I will put my SIM card in my Blackberry 8520 and live a simple life of phone calls and SMS messages. If I want to use WhatsApp, Teams, etc, I can use them on desktop. That's fine in theory, but in reality it is just not feasible when you have work/study related group chats which are used to communicate important updates, as is commonplace today. All older phones are 3G which is being phased out. Another issue is music. Yes, I used to cope just fine with my (casette tape!) walkman, then my portable CD player, succeeded by various MP3 players and eventually, an iPod nano 1st gen then an iPod touch.
I do still add to my CD collection because I love physical media, and supporting artists. But it cannot be denied that Spotify is extremely convenient. All this to say - I settled for 'dumb-ifying' my iPhone 12. I've turned off all the notification badges, deleted all the unneccesary apps, and have created a simplified homescreen with plain custom shortcut icons. The interface is now a lot more reminiscent of earlier phones, it doesn't demand my attention, and I spend way less time using it. I finally feel I've found a good balance between the old and the new.
I do not miss social media one bit. It is in my opinion, fundamentally pointless. If I meet someone and I want to stay in touch with them, I get their phone number. I feel a weight has been lifted - no longer do I have strange, voyeuristic glimpses into past aquaintance's lives, nor do they have any access to mine. My interests aren't harvested, processed, then fed back to me as adverts. I have my own piece of the internet again, and that's more than enough for me.
TUESDAY 18TH FEB 2025
RODEO CLOWN (fka YNES) - love her music, been on repeat for me for the last year or so - she deserves way more attention!
SUNDAY 16TH FEB 2025 - 22:57PM
I've been listening to a lot of Chappell Roan lately. She makes the music I needed when I was younger - certainly beats the horrendous 'I Kissed a Girl' era which skewed my perception of relationships with women into something awful and performative. Every time I hear a good song by a woman about loving a woman, I feel the world has healed a little bit.
SUNDAY 16TH FEB 2025 - 12:58
My first blog entry - how exciting. Simplicity is key for me, so I've made this nice straightforward page and I'm just going to add posts, photos, videos etc to it as and when I feel like it. The purpose of this blog is really to keep track of things I can't put in my IRL journals - mainly music, videos etc, but I will put the odd update on here too in more of a journal-entry style.
OK now I really need to revise for my exams which are in 2 weeks but here I am updating my site. Going to go and revise now for real.
