Twitter stumbled, the #BelieveInFilm community spread across the web, and I stood still for a moment. I struggled to comprehend what was happening.
I had drifted from communities before. I had witnessed communities erode and spread apart. This is part of the ebb and flow of life, even more so when we are not tethered to a physical space. But this time, I was not prepared for it.
The #BelieveInFilm community lifted me and cared for me when I needed it. It was not explicit and I didn't realise it at the time, yet this community kept me afloat when my world was falling apart.
My world is no longer falling apart and hasn't been for a little while, but like many cataclysmic changes in my life, certain communities are intertwined so strongly with my feelings and memories of the time that I imbue a meaning to them far beyond what they mean to anyone else.
Unlike communities I drifted from naturally, the changes in the #BelieveInFilm community happened outside of my control and without me seeing it coming. The change was sudden, like a plaster ripped from the skin.
I felt numb and lost, unsure how to navigate Twitter and Mastodon, unable to find a way to merge them together as one in my life.
Then I got sick with Covid and didn't have much head space to consider how I felt about this change and how to find my new rhythm within this new landscape.
When I recovered, I was back at work during one of the busiest time of the year for me. I naturally checked my Twitter and Mastodon feeds less. I posted every now and again, but by and large I didn't. I wasn't drawn to social media.
This was nothing unusual. I've had periods away from social media. I have learned this is part of how I engage with platforms such as Twitter and Mastodon. I need time away.
Weeks passed and it became difficult to ignore the fact that I experienced no pull back towards Twitter or Mastodon. I tried logging back in. I tried scrolling through my feeds, following habits long ingrained in me. But unlike every other time I returned to social media, I felt no joy. This was a chore.
So I continued to step back, going as far as deleting the apps from my phone and sharing my e-mail address in my ongoing DM conversations.
I stepped away and for the first time in a really long while (ever?), I thought about my use of social media and my presence online.
I returned to my website and faced the truth that it too was bringing little joy in my life. The idea of updating it filled me with dread. So I left it.
Instead I wrote. I found solace in words like I use to.
I write.
I write like I'm 12 years old and did not know how to do anything else but write.
I write without a care in the world. Words tumble out of me effortlessly, messily, beautifully, and I am drunk on them.
I don't care about the edit button, I don't care about the typos, I don't care about the mixing and making up of words. I simply write. It has been over 15 years since I have been this free with words. I have somehow unearthed a part of myself I foolishly buried when I decided I had to become an adult.
And through this process, I noticed the familiar urge to share those words. Except I had no place to share them. My website is not built to be a representation of me. It has no space for mess and the complex multi-faceted notion of being.
So I looked for a blog, one that would be simple and not get in my way, not try to convince me I have to be a brand and become something, monetise my content and make it work for me.
I stumbled upon Neocities.org and unexpectedly I took to building a website as if it's the early noughties again. Bad half-remembered HTML and CSS poured out of me and I let it.
I felt joy from using the Internet again. I chill out and play around with things I half understand in an attempt to create a website that looks like me, not like a brand. It is messy. It is incomplete. It goes against all current web design rules but I am enjoying it. I tinker and see the effect of the tinkering. And I am happy in that place.
When not writing or coding badly, I work on my images. I print. I edit. I work on various projects that have long remained idle. I forget about the idea of selling zines. I just want to make because it brings a smile to my face and I feel proud of my images, of my ideas. I want to see them come to life and become a reality, even if only for me. Even if only for friends.
So here I am, typing words without thinking too much about how often I've used the same ones over and over, without thinking too much about how messy this post probably is. I'm not going to linger on it. I'm not going to craft it into something polished.
Because this is the point of this place, the point of all the changes that have happened to me since Twitter stumbled and my online world irreversibly changed.
I need to play again.
I often speak about play and how important it is, but truthfully I had forgotten to play myself. I had forgotten that before I got entangled in the corporate world of the Internet, I lived in a makeshift world cobbled together by people and communities. We came together and drifted apart, but always we made and tinkered together.
It was a messy place of bad design and spelling mistakes, but it was a comforting place of support and kindness where websites and forums had life imbued in them by people and where it was easy to be you. All of you. Raw and magnificent.
So here I am.
I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know where I belong in this vast place called the Internet. All I know is that it isn't on Twitter, it isn't quite on Mastodon, and it certainly isn't on my website.
It is somewhere. Maybe here? I doubt it but for now here is nice.
I am waiting for an access link to another blogging platform that I think will fit me better and link into part of the community I love so dearly.
Until then, I'll chill out in this corner of the Internet and write messy missives for anyone who cares to read them.