So I guess I can start on this little journal here that I was planning on building.. I’d have to take some stuff from the welcome page later to move into here since it got kind of out of hand while I started writing. But as usual, I like to start at the beginning.. so I moved some stuff from the welcome in here.

So this one day, some weeks ago.. I was going through my RSS feeds as usual. I came across an article describing Nekoweb, which I can proudly call home for this part of me that needed this. Hours later of clicking through links, more links and more links, I ended up in different personal spaces, reading personal thoughts, seeing (im)perfect creations. I want to start of to say, I'm proud of every single one of you. Even for the mostly empty pages, just for taking the step of claiming a personal space online, write a little HTML/CSS and call it yours. I came to a realisation, I found my people once again, a new world. I found a place to call home once again <3

Little history, I grew up kind of like a lone wolf. The kids in my street didn't fully accept me, I was kind of an outsider. My mind worked differently, my mom was different.. and the pack of wolves called kids saw it as a weakness so they exploited it. I had troubles growing up, I stayed inside, played with Lego, my model train. I built my own worlds, my own stories and I lived vigourosly through them. Now I realise, I was just a dreamer with my head in the clouds. So at some point in my teens, I got access to the internet, still on a 14.4 kbit I think it was, modem on the phone line. A new world emerged in front of me, a better world.. I explored it like any other, found SNES roms to play on my computer which took between 30mins to an hour to download, but gave me hours of pleasure so it was totally worth it.

Fast forward a few years, I found a few BBS's, forums, chatrooms.. and wouldn't you know it, there were people like me. I found friends, really good friends. I remember encountering my share of online predators, and some bullies/stalkers too but they were esaier to shut off by just going offline. A few MMORPGs were starting to emerge, and I started my life online. Ragnarok Online, Guild Wars 1 & 2 and World of Warcraft eventually became my choice of poison. I built my first websites on Lycos, Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod.. most of those services are gone unfortunately now. I found some weblogs, following the portrayed life of a few people closely and eventually some evolved into friendships I can still lean on to this day. I discovered another world in a lot of anime, like many of us did or still do..

And now, I find myself longing for those days. In the past years I tried going back online to a few of those games, it's not the same. The people I lost, the people they got replaced with.. I felt that time was gone, lost forever.

Until today, I came across a few personal spaces both on Nekoweb and Neocities.. Some I will keep following, and some I give a special shoutout here in my loved box for those that really pulled my strings. But you inspired me to come back online. To come back home.