4.7 KiB
| Date | Location |
|---|---|
| 2025-01-26 01:08 | /website-making |
what making websites means to me
there are a lot of reasons these days to make a website. you may have a niche topic you want to share with the world. maybe you have an interesting collection of items with a lot of knowledge about them to share. maybe you're a natural story teller, and the character length of social media means a blog is more your style. there's a lot of reasons, a lot of good reasons to make websites right now. i'd like to tell you mine
it is very common these days for folks to be making websites as a refuge from social media. they've realized it isn't working for them anymore. whether it be taking a toll on their mental health, or they've become very aware of the dance they are playing for a heart icon. but this was not a reason for me to be honest. i was a teenager when facebook came out, i was a very lonely one at that. the thing about social media sites when they first come out sometimes is, you need actual real friends to get started. most of the world wasn't acquainted with the idea of having an internet friend halfway across the world at this time. so you needed a friend circle. well i didn't have one. i had no friends. so by being lonely i escaped facebook oddly enough. as other sites came out the overall social component of them seemed hostile to me. i was not a social person, not in the way these sites wanted you to be. so i never got on them. in all this time, i had a spotify account that i got rid of because discover weekly became about offering me safe suggestions rather than that friend who could challenge your tastes while still knowing exactly what you'd like. i had a youtube account that i stopped using when it was clear the focus was no longer about keeping up with channels you were subscribed to
so if social media wasn't something for me to escape, where did this need to make websites come from? well to be honest, i've been on this planet for about 35 years now. i've learned a few things in this time. the first being, i've lived a lot of experiences, i've seen a lot of things. both of which are worth talking about. the second is, i've generally learned someone will listen if you talk. it may not be thousands of people, but you may just end up making a friend or two if you let yourself tell your stories. i think that was the big part for me. that i could share how much i loved my cat in exactly the way i wanted to. i could blog here about things i've been through, and know that people cared enough to read, even if it wasn't the whole world, it was still a few very good people kind enough to keep me going.
there was one site in particular that took a long time to make. it was my homepage. i am a writer first and foremost when it comes to communicating. i think it how i express myself best. but beauty in colors is certainly not lost on me. but it was neither of those things holding me back. a homepage to me is just that, a home. it would be my place to tell you all about me, the things i love, the interests i have. you should be able to visit it and walk away with an understanding of that person. the problem is, you can't make a page about yourself when you don't know what yourself is
if i had known the word transgender existed, and what it was, i would have figured this out when i was a teenager. but i was very alone, very isolated. no one around me knew these things. so i largely went through life feeling quite lost and disoriented, because i had no identity really. most of the time i just felt i was whatever made me fit in or have the tiniest bit of acceptance. because the opposite was so much worse. so when i finally could sit down and be honest with myself that this is who i am, the homepage wrote itself. all the wonderful colors were easy to pick because they were colors of the joy and love that is me. all the text is softly and tenderly written, because that is me. finally being me meant i could have a homepage. emmas.place needed emma to exist first, and i'm so glad i'm here finally
if you don't have a website right now, that's okay. if you think you might want one, that's good too! but i want you to know that as personal as these reasons are to me, at the end of the day, i want you to feel like you should have a website simply because you can. no one can put their hands up and say "no, you can't do this". so if this is something your interested in, go for it! stoke that flame that is your curiosity, learn how to paint wonderful works of art with HTML and CSS, and maybe even some Javascript too! there's so much beauty behind personal websites, whatever the reason is that they exist. we'd love to have you be apart of that too if you'd like