hi everyone, it’s my first blog post! i’m having a lot of fun building out this website and hoping to make semi-regular updates to both site and blog. neocities is an awesome platform and i’m excited to have a home for all my art, design, opinions, maybe music, idk! idk!!
full honesty, since i started coding this site i’ve had a real love/hate relationship with it. i’ve been conflicted from the start about whether to build it out as a new design portfolio (my old one is dated and password protected aka useless and will never get me work), or make a more personal and expressive site at the sacrifice of commercial viability. every time i see artists, musicians, agencies etc. posting “we need a designer! send your portfolio!” i go ‘AGH! i should be building a portfolio right now!’ but truthfully the prospect of building one fills me with dread. i’d rather make a site for fun, but then what’s the point? why waste time coding something that serves no purpose, when i’ve got work to do? i’m sure you’re reading this going “audrey that’s a stupid question.” well yeah, and i eventually got there too. it’s actually really important to separate the stuff you make from its commercial viability if you want to find joy in your work, life, etc. creating a website just for fun has been a great way to kill the voice in my head that wants everything i make to find commercial success. my wonderful gf elly has been working on one too, and it’s been fun to work in parallel and follow each other’s progress. it also helps that the neocities community encourages creative, expressive websites – and that its limited integration support makes it hard to develop slick, corporate UIs. it has felt sooo good to scrap my attempts at react/tailwind integrations and turn my attention to how i can bring the site to life with illustrations, music, silly widgets and whatever else. i’m inspired by the other sites i see people building, and it makes me so happy to see a community of people learning code and embracing the “old” web aesthetic when everything felt a little slower, smaller, and less serious. i think neocities is a great alternative community to the hellscape that is social media, and i’m happy to see people ditching algorithm-driven phone apps in favor of something creative, handmade, and desktop-first. i hope u stick around to watch this site grow and change and hopefully become something really cool! :3