nobody's fault

there's a lot i have to be proud of. when i say that, i usually default to my websites, things i host. i'm forever grateful for the day i tripped and fell down the self-hosting rabbit hole, because i don't know who i'd be without it. probably a lot worse off.

there's the problem, though.

i've poured so much of myself into my hosting work that it is identity. it's me. it's not all i am, because i am a lot of things (fan, gay, lover, loser). but it's me, just as much as everything else. it's no exception in terms of identity: with it comes baggage that i will forever put off unpacking.

it's kind of painful to have put so much stock into an identity built on hosting rather than creating. i don't make my own software; i host, i borrow. i can build off of it — see superlove — but it almost never is enough for my impossibly high standards.

i have a tendency to bite off more than i can chew. more than i can handle. often it's out of guilt, or some fucked up form of self-imposed obligation. i don't know why i do these things. i don't know why i do a lot of what i do, or don't do, these days.

this tendency has gotten me way in over my head in recent memory. it's caused me more pain than usual. on and on, over and over, endless dance. i spend so much time caught up in my own head that i don't know how to get out of it. i haven't gone outside in over two weeks.

most of my time is spent at my desk, especially as i write. i've made efforts to detach from this chair — a laptop, git-synced obsidian notes, any attempt at portability possible. but it feels futile when so much of my identity is caught up in a web of my own making, in the servers that surround this desk.

i don't regret any of my hosting work for even a second. i am a fucking sysadmin and i am proud of that.

but sometimes i wish i could find the means to become more than that. sometimes i wish i could create more than i could transform.

transformation is hard, though. i'll give myself a tiny bit of credit there, because even then, i feel i don't do enough of it. transformation takes effort that i often don't have the energy for. my energy is spontaneous and as all over the place as this post is. it's impulsive and quick-witted and absent-minded. easily distracted. i wish i could transform more: become the girl i see in my closet, the one who wears the skirts i bought (magical girl style, anataboshi in my head) and can never bring myself to put on, not without first thinking of the shame. or become the kind of person who has a social life, whose heart doesn't pound in their chest after shutting the front door and walking outside with legs trembling, who can meet friends in person without the damning dread that comes with debilitating anxiety.

there's a lot of transformation i've already done. it's just somehow always hosting-shaped.

i've put myself in a mold. it's somewhere between comfortable and suffocating. i think of the words sakurazaka46 sing in the video embedded at the start of this post...

Saying stuff like 'Let's change this world'
Don't be so full of yourself

No matter how much you've regretted and screamed
Will you do it? Will you not? That's all there is

...and i wait for my wake-up call, but i fear i'll never hear the ring.