As of writing these words, it is currently past midnight on what was once December 31st; making today the very first day in the year of 2025. That’s wild to think about, and it will probably take at least a week or two for me to fully sink in that an entire year is upon us. We’re halfway into the 2020 decade and that’s a little bit scary but also exciting in its own special way. Since you're reading this blog entry, which just so happens to be my very first one, I believe now is a good time for me to introduce myself. I don’t feel ready to give out my real name, but my current username for the time-being(until I find a less lame one) is SquidHead! (or “Squidhead” or “Squid Head”, it’s a bit confusing but it doesn’t really matter to me). I like art, movies, TV, music, and writing. Okay, so maybe those are things that most people like, and don't really make me stand-out from the crowd, but I’ll be honest and admit I’m not that special of person, but I’m still very young. So I’ve got a lot of time and self-pressure to turn myself into a unique and fun person, and I truly believe that the latter half of 2024 has been one of the most important years of my entire life in terms of personal growth.
I graduated out of high school and had my first semester in college, and moved out of my family house into a college apartment complex for the very first time. At first I was concerned that I would screw up college very badly(and the award for greatest grammar goes to) because I thought that college would be way more difficult than high school, and that I would fail at living on my own. But in this fall semester, I was thankfully proven wrong. College still requires hard-work and lots of responsibility, but I can actually choose what classes I want to take and when I want to take them, and the distribution between class lecture time and homework assignment time feels balanced way better in college than in high school. The way high school is structured feels like genuine madness. You have to get up at 7:00 am at the latest to get to your first class on time, then you have to go to every class back-to back-to back for 7 hours straight, and even after that you STILL have to spend 2-3 hours doing homework assignments and studying for upcoming tests. Sure, in college I still need to put in a lot of time and hard-work completing homework assignments and studying for tests, but with how classes are paced in college it feels a lot more balanced and makes me actually WANT to do a good job on my assignments and tests instead of doing it “to get it done as soon as possible, consequences be damned”. Long story short, I feel that I thrive much more under the college structure than the high school structure.
I also find myself thriving and growing much more as an individual from living independently, as being in a new space has given me a whole boatload of new motivation and determination to grow and improve as a person and creative artist. And this newfound sense of motivation has already done wonders for me, by helping me make huge progress on a lot of creative ideas of mine that have been on my mind for many years. For example, for the past few years I have always wanted to create my own personal website using HTML/CSS coding after seeing all the amazing websites on Neocities, but the pathway to learning all the numerous intricate features of HTML & CSS coding felt really daunting to me, so I felt too intimidated to take the plunge and figure out how to make my own website. But this little dream of mine never fully disappeared from my mind. And now that I’ve been way more creatively motivated this fall semester more than any other time in my entire life, I felt like now would be a perfect time to finally make my own website. So after learning as much as I could about HTML & CSS coding and numerous moments of trial & error I was finally able to create my very own website, which you are currently looking at right now. Sure, it’s very empty and amateur at the moment, but I believe that if I keep chipping away at little improvements over and over, it can really evolve into something special. But the sheer fact I even have one created after many months of putting it off due to self-doubt is a triumph in itself.
This first blog entry is a bit longer than I thought it was going to be. I think future entries will be a lot more concise and to the point. This one needed to be rambly so I could get a proper feel for how it feels to be writing in a blog format. If you’ve read this entire entry to the very end, thank you very much for taking some time to hear some random guy ramble. I’ve got some interesting ideas for the future of this website, so expect to be pleasantly surprised by what lies in store for me and you, from this website. See you next time.