on-this.txt

I made this website to look like a Windows 95 desktop. I think I did a good job. The real idea behind this format, though, is getting to explore my posts, crosswords, or whatever I put on here like a file system. I like to keep old files and projects on my computer, on a drive, or on the cloud. In fact, it gets to a point where my hard drive begins to yell at me because I have too many screenshots of my art that was only supposed to last for a single text conversation. “But maybe I’ll come back to it,” is what I often catch myself saying to myself, when considering wether or not to delete a file.

I celebrate this trait of mine. Honestly, I try to encourage it, but I have yet to perfect it. Sometimes my file organization isn’t good enough, so I try and organize it again, and again, and again. That method has always landed me in “designed something that only works for myself” jail. After I learned this, I began just- letting my files pile up, letting my Downloads folder become a long list of one-time-use files and messy folders. Sure, it goes against all of my perfectionist instincts, but in a way, its perfectly disorganized. I don’t use this method anywhere else in my hard drive, though. Whenever a file leaves Downloads, it is immediately organized in whatever directory it lives in, and the process of over-simplification repeats.

Recently, I bought a 2TB drive for personal use. I use it to archive assets, old projects, or anything I feel like keeping for a long time. It gets treated like a time capsule, almost. My drive is the home of my all-time favorite pictures of my cat, backup files from my CFW-ed consoles, and MP3’s ripped off a handheld recorder’s SD-card that I found in the theater I work in. Even if I have no clue what I’ll ever do with some these things, I plan to continue archiving them.

This is the part of the post where I would ramble on and on about internet archive, but my coffee wasn’t strong enough today. So just pretend there’s a lengthy paragraph about lost media, piracy, and media preservation here.

Because of all of these nice organizational things I like doing, I wish I was better at doing it with everything. I value owning my data, so I use tools like Obsidian sometimes to take notes. The thing is, Obsidian just doesn’t make enough sense to me. People on YouTube make all these videos about using it as your “second brain,” but that just doesn’t work for me. It does have a bunch of really fun customizations, so you best believe that I’ve decked that shit OUT, but it just doesn’t work as my main writing tool. I do like Notion, though. It really does peeve me how WYSIWYG it is for a Markdown editor, but it’s fine anyway.

Anyways, I say all of that to explain why this site is the way it is. I’m excited to spew some more thoughts onto here in the future. I hope you enjoy exploring my hard drive.