Why I Built This

You can tell a lot about someone by their home.

If it's a minimalist vibe, they're boring. If they have a TV on the floor, they're a man. A single one. But if they have a bunch of random cool knick knacks scattered around – I like those people. They got texture.

I love self-expression, and homes are like a physical representation of someone's brain. I want that, but I don't have a house budget yet. So where do all my brain's knick-knacks go?

Self-expression sounds selfish, but it really isn’t. It brings people together. You think you’re sharing your random obsession with – I don't know – Hot Pockets into the void, but somewhere out there, another grown man with a basement full of Hot Pockets just felt seen for the first time in years. It’s like sending up a Batman signal: Hey, I have interests. If you’re interested in my interests, then I’m interested in you. That’s how you build a community. Even flat-earthers have friends.

My obsession with expression has taken me down a million roads. All the skills I’ve learned over the years – photography, film, web development, and 17 other things I learned down a 3am YouTube rabbit hole – I acquired them because I needed to express something specific, or because I wanted to be valuable to the world, but I didn’t have the right medium. So I’d learn the medium.

But now all this knowledge sits in my head doing nothing. What benefit am I giving the world by knowledge-hoarding?

Learning without teaching is selfish. I’ve been through the pain of trying to figure things out alone many times. Googling the same question for 3 days straight. Somebody could’ve given me that answer in 3 seconds. I could be that somebody for someone else.

But there’s a problem: teaching requires writing, and I suck at writing.

Not that I can’t do it, but  it feels like I’m giving birth to a child with a massive head. Every sentence takes so much out of me. Writing is one of the hardest things to execute well, but it comes with a huge reward: you learn how to think.

You know how hard it is to think? Most people don’t even try.

Writing forces thinking, and thinking is painful, but I’m done avoiding it. This space makes me want to try. In a place free from the dreaded algorithm.

Why not just use social media? You and I both could go on a tangent about all the things wrong with social media, so I’ll just say this: it used to be fun. People didn’t overthink themselves. There were no ulterior motives, no “personal branding”. Just self-expression that led to social connection.

But now that space is so trash I don’t even want to raise my ideas there. So I had to build my own platform.

That’s why I love the free Internet, and why I’m happy I’ve been able to add building custom websites to my bag. There's something pure about it. I don't need to optimize for anything. I can just build some random shit on a Tuesday. I already learned how to create images, to film, to shape ideas – but where do they go? To Zuckerberg?

Also, every time I’ve had no idea why I was creating something, but I threw it out into the world anyway, it’s done something for me I could’ve never predicted. There’s a cool word for this. Lemme Google it.

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

To be clear, I have zero expectations for how this space goes. Maybe no one ever stops by here. But I still love having a place to organize my thoughts. Maybe a few people stop by and I get to be of value to them. Maybe someone cool stumbles by and we become homies. Maybe this will become something I can't even imagine yet. I don’t know. But I believe you build your own luck. Can’t win if you never play the game.

One day, I’ll have that home with high ceilings and a room dedicated to all the weird things I love. It’ll look like a museum curated by mandem with ADHD and a credit card. I’ll host dinner parties where we argue if hot dogs are sandwiches. There will be charcuterie boards. I won’t be able to pronounce half the cheeses. Someone will bring up cryptocurrency and immediately get kicked out.

But that’s for another day. Today, I have this.

This is my home on the Internet. A place where my ideas can stretch their legs and exist beyond 24 hours. Where I can learn, I can teach, and I can be myself, and nobody can stop me.

You can tell a lot about someone by their home.

Welcome to mine.