a new year approaches. i've been so stressed out over the past few months, i've hardly felt like posting, or even really doing much of anything with the site.
i had a lot more thoughts i was intending to write here, but i don't think i have it in me right now to record it all now. i'm just so tired. holidays are pretty much universally draining to me and negative amounts of enjoyment, i'm just glad they're mostly over now. so much of my life, so many decades, have been tireless and unrelenting to me, and i barely have the energy to stand against it anymore. i certainly don't have any hope in the future anymore. but an absence of hope is not doom, it is merely a closed door. there are so many other things that can drive you to keep living, not that many people want to hear this as even the thought of losing hope entirely in existence is mortally terrifying. i suppose it is. but it's not the last door. it doesn't have to be the end.
i ended up caving and buying myself a domain and paid webspace at dreamhost. as much as i love neocities and as much as i don't want to rely on paid webspace, i'm starting to run into things i want to do that require the server to do some processing, like having my own forum again, so i've relented to my own whims. i did cancel my ff14 sub for it, but to be honest i don't miss that game at all. i tried to find its good points but it just wasn't enjoyable; in fact it was distinctly the least enjoyable of all the mmos i've ever played. it did have a bunch of great characters despite the hideous gameplay and terrible attempts at worldbuilding, and characters are not something you need access to the source material to enjoy at all, thankfully. i can think about them while i play wow.
... but i'm getting sidetracked. anyway i'm not incredibly thrilled with the idea of relying on having income to maintain a website, and i'm not sure what the migration will look like and how much content i will or won't keep on neocities. unlike FF14 i love neocities and will probably continue to pay its very small monthly fee just to support the host even if i only barely use it anymore. but i'm left wondering what i want to even do with my site, whether i want to use apache's ssi or php for includes, whether i can or even want to bother converting this blog to wordpress. i don't hate wordpress but it seems very.... heavy for what i want, and may take a lot of plugins to end up how i want it. like i was considering having icons on each post like livejournal had (and i can have as many as i want, eat shit livejournal icon limit) and i'm not sure how easy that would be to implement in wordpress... i guess i could see. the roommate-friend was telling me a lot of professional websites use wordpress so it and php are not in danger of going away anytime soon, so it may be a good skill to learn. i'm not sure how much i want to learn php. kinda? if nothing else, i do know i'm fucking SICK and TIRED of serving my layout with a combination of javascript and a hideous iframe no-js fallback. very ass. i can't want to cast off those particular shackles.
i may not have hope for the future both for myself or humanity, but i can at least have faith in my own ability to weather hardship and challenge. may the next year bring me closer to realizing my website the way i want it.