Today, I had an appointment I’ve been putting off for quite a long time. A couple of years ago, I went to see a dentist, and we had some plans for work that needed to be done. Then I needed to raise the money. Then COVID hit. Then I was dealing with crippling anxiety. Well, I finally managed to do it, and, well, I get to keep most of my teeth. Yay me??
That was actually a worry of mine, so, for now, at least, woohoo. We’ll deal with the future as it comes.
But you don’t care about that. I don’t blame you.
I don’t know what this site is anymore, if I’m to be honest. I’m shunting all of the really interesting stuff off onto other sites, so what’s left here becomes a personal blog, and who’s interested in a personal blog? I guess I can use it for site news and observations that don’t belong on the other sites, so there is certainly some use there. I can use it for general thoughts and other things that don’t belong anywhere else, so there’s some use for that too. I guess this site really just is what I want it to be, and when I figure out what that is, you’ll be the first to know.
Yesterday’s blog entry was weighing on me, though. You know, sometimes I use this blog to help organize my thoughts, at least as much as I use it to express them, and the honest truth is, I think I might have misfired with Texihabara. No, don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty good idea and I intend to continue to maintain and expand it. But I had built it with the intention of maybe commercializing it or using it to build community, and I think that’s a nonstarter. It won’t happen. It won’t happen because I am not comfortable with being in a community – not even one I’ve built. I thought maybe it could become a place for otaku or even weeaboo to hang out, and well, no. I’m thinking about it, and that’s a terrible idea. Again, not because I don’t like them, but if I’m not going to be a part of the community I build, what’s the point of building it?
So I’m going to subtly revamp it, I think. I’ll keep its core content and its core idea, but I’m going to give up on the idea of it being a many to many kind of thing, and make it instead a place for my personality to shine through in its own unique way, and if people like it, then they like it. If not, well, they can do as they always do and vote with their feet. I still like Emi Su though. She’s cute.
What I’ve done is a great starting point, and that was what I needed to do to get it off the ground, but it’s not going to go any further than that in its current incarnation.
So… other news. I’m really happy with the concept of Hidden Japanese. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done it in quite that way, but I feel it’s a bit content sparse. But that’s okay. I built it with the intention of adding content as I discover it, and maybe someday it’ll be a treasure trove of interesting and obscure Japanese information that will help learners. My biggest fear is that it’s already been done and I’m just reinventing the wheel. But even if so, oh well. There are places to branch off from there. The only thing I know for sure is, I can’t do what others are doing. It’s just not in my nature. Japanese learning resources are a dime a dozen, and not all of them are good.
Also, I’m spinning up yet another site, but this one is for fanfiction and other stories I’ve written or worked on over the years. I have a few things on fanfiction.net, but I really don’t like that platform. It’s a good place to get exposure, but you can’t really say much about what you’re writing without using authors notes, and I hate being restricted to that. So I’m going to play with WordPress plugins that let me post my stories there, and maybe I can annotate or make other interesting notes there in a better way than on fanfiction.net. I also have an adult story that is not good for fanfiction.net that I might want to drop there. Not going to link to it here for obvious reasons, but it’s still a project I’m doing. I’m trying to keep my online identities at least somewhat separate.
Managing all of these sites is not the easiest thing, especially because for some of them I don’t even want them on the same WordPress account as this site. But it’s interesting experience nonetheless, and I’m learning a lot about site creation and blogging. This site was the first and original, but branching out is good too. I do wish there was some kind of aggregated way to do stats.
The biggest question is: what am I going to do with the blog posts I’ve just obsoleted? I may have to do some editing and pruning. Oh well, something for a rainy day, I suppose.
It’s a great distraction from all the political idiocy going on right now. I don’t really want to say too much about that, except for this: Biden is a moron, but some of his opponents aren’t a whole lot better. And that’s all I’ll say about that. I’m tired of it.
Until next time, I guess. Tomorrow is more fun meetings, work, wanikani stuff, and fun fun fun.