Site Launch & New Beginnings

As I start writing this, it is the 16th of January, a little over two weeks after the year has begun. I took a bit of a break from making this site for reasons I will get to later, but I'm nearing the tail end of getting everything set up. Not gonna lie, I sorta forgot a bit about the HTML skills I built up over the past month, but I can figure out my way through it. As long as it works and looks nice, I don't really care.

With that out of the way, I'd like to say hello to anyone reading this, whether that be people I've sent this to or those who've stumbled across it. I would assume that you'd already read the about section of the home page. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you do.

For a quick recap, my name is Ashley. As of writing, I am currently 19 years old and have a knack for all sorts of creative projects, whether that be drawing, developing, writing, among other things that would fall under that umbrella. I consider myself a fairly simple person. I try to stay out of drama and believe privacy and personal freedom are of utmost importance. With few exceptions, I wouldn't say I'm too judgemental of other people's interests. After all, I am into things that a lot of other people would deem strange. But that's for another day.

To quickly get into why this site exists in the first place, the first major reason is to act as my own personal hub for all of my creative projects. Over in the Works section that you can find on the homepage, there are all sorts of creative projects that I have had a hand in, such as an archive for as much personal art as I could gather from the past 3+ years, as well as a section detailing more collaborative projects that I helped out with.

What I consider front and center, though, is the comics section, right in the middle. It is very barren as of now, but I have big plans for this section. The idea for this site has been rattling in my mind for a good few years now, and it was always planned to be the primary host of any long-term comic series that I wanted to make. If you have been following me for a while, you may already know some vague knowledge about them, but if all goes well (and if I don't get burnt out), I would love to start filling them up with worlds that I hope you will enjoy as much as I have.

This leads to the second reason why this site exists. Over the years, my opinion on the centralized world that is the modern internet has grew negative, what with the constant efforts for censorship, plain bad people, or limitations in the way of algorithms and restrictions. The idea of creating a personal website, especially something for fun like this, has fallen to the wayside as social media has grown over the years, and I find it a major shame that is has. Creating this site has actually been really fun, and I highly recommend that you try it out. There are plenty of tutorials out there if you look for them.

Anyways, as you could probably articulate, this motivated me to go through with my idea of my own website, a place where I did not have to worry about what other people would think of what I'm into or what I post. With the Blogs section of the site (I don't think I have to link it here), I hope to go through general updates on my life, my creative works, or just random topics that appear in my head, and hopefully you enjoy listening to what I have to say.

Now, had everything gone according to plan, this is about where I'd end this blog. Pretty straightforward explanation of what you can expect from this site. However, as luck would have it, some big shake-ups ended up happening during the creation of this site.

Early into January, I can't remember the exact date, me and my family would end up losing our house. It was beyond our control, typical black mold infestation that they didn't want us to live with, but it came out of nowhere and no one really took it that well. In fact, as of writing, I don't think we've fully recovered from it.

Beyond the obvious problems regarding losing your house, it was a shame to leave it thanks to the consistency I was losing from it. I come from a family that is best described as capricious, it happened to be the household that me and my family would stay in the longest so far. From what I can remember, I've lived there from around my second or third year of middle school all the way to about a year after I left high school. Obviously, by then it was showing its age. I had a pretty big crack on my ceiling that I can't remember where it came from. Leaving that place was a long time coming, we had plans for years to move out somewhere else, but it seems that we waited a bit too long.

We didn't have to worry about being homeless, though. We're currently living with my grandma in a house that is very obviously too small for six to seven people, plus five animals. Now, the county we live in I actually find really pleasant. I'm about a 15 - 20 minute walk from the city that I enjoy exploring. I've frequented the library on a few occasions and tried out some of the local cafes, and once the weather gets warmer (it's January in Michigan, you can imagine how harsh it can get) I have plans to hit the city more and more. Outside of that, there's a really nice river that we're staying right next to, and some nice potential homes nearby that we plan on residing in once we get back up on our feet. Overall, this place is actually really nice, it's just the house itself that has... room for improvement.

I already mentioned that the house is small. Obviously thats fine if there's only one or two people involved, but once you throw in four to five additional people in there, that obviously causes issues to spring up. About half of us are forced to sleep on the floor, I managed to luck out and call dibs on an actual bed in a bedroom, so I have that going for me. Only problem is that I'm forced to share it with someone else and their dog. A dog that I just so happened to be quite allergic to. When I'm already not much of a dog person. Have to share a bed with them. Awesome!

That isn't the only issue. I consider my grandma a very nice woman, but ever since about a year ago, she has shared her residence with an uncle of mine. What an asshole! I don't care if he doesn't have anywhere else to stay or that he's hard of hearing or whatever. The way he treats me and my family is just vile, especially my mom and grandma. Just stupidly inconsiderate and disrespectful. I won't go into too much detail, but just know that if things went my way, he would've been right out the door yesterday.

Speaking of unpleseant people, I always felt like there has been a bit of hot water between this family, specifically me and my parents, and recent events have only heightened the tension. Pretty much every day has had some kind of screaming match, stressful scenario, or general discomfort that made it hard to sleep at night. I don't want to get too heavy on this site outside of my art, but having your mom threaten suicide multiple times a week does not help anybody. It just so happens that the room I've taken refuge in is pretty much the only private place in the house that isn't the living room, where my aforementioned POS uncle has taken hostage. That results in the people I've been beginning to have a negative feel for sharing a room with me for long periods of time, which pretty much prevents me from doing more personal stuff on the computer, such as use any kind of social media or talk to my friends. It doesn't help that this room also has a bathroom right next to my computer setup. Had there only be one or two people here that'd be a very big boon, but with so many other people that often means I have to stay out of the closest thing to my own room for significant periods of time. In fairness, we do have a second bathroom in the hallway, but surprise surprise, my uncle has claimed that as his own as well.

With all this, you'd think I'd be pretty stressed out 24/7. And boy, you'd be right! Feeling like you have to constantly walk on eggshells, without the solitude of your own place half the time, would drive anyone crazy. It's a good thing that I've gotten a knack for keeping my thoughts to myself and having the appropriate outlets to vent, but I fear that one of these days, given the direction we're going, that that, too, is going to crack. Yes, this whole experience has slowed down my creative endeavors, but it has not discouraged me from creating. If anything, it has been encouraging me further.

Pretty much for the past two to three years, I've been going through what's basically a filler arc in my life. I had plans to make the site, make it big with my creative projects, get a small audience and go from there. Problem? I didn't really have the drive to actually do it. Prior to mid 2024, I at least had the excuse of school, but during my gap year in 2025 I made pretty much no effort to make a name for myself. And well, look what happened.

Granted, I doubt that my lack of creative drive led to my family losing our house and being forced to live in a small house with a huge asshole for at least a couple months, but it gave me a valuable lesson that I hope others can also learn from: If you want to do something, do it right then and there. Whether its something like a creative project that's been on the backburner, or wanting to make friends with someone, apply to a position that interests you, or otherwise take a major risk, do it if you can. You never know what's going to happen in your life, and you'll just end up kicking yourself for all the opportunities that you missed out on. Life waits for nobody, and it doesn't just hand things to you. Once you put in the effort and give it time, I truly beleive that anything is possible. That's why this site began development as soon as the year began.

With that tirade out of the way, I want to thank you for spending some time on this site, and I hope you become a regular and see what I have to offer. I do wanna give a quick shout-out to some people that helped me get to this point:

• The people behind Neocities, for letting this site exist in the first place and creating a fantastic project.
• The people behind the dozens of videos and websites I checked out to learn HTML, CSS, and Neocities. Had I bothered to remember who exactly, I would've absolutely listed them here.
• My friends, including Gelo, SilverSpringing, Venus, Nate, and my girlfriend Isla, alongside anyone else I forgot to mention.
• You, for reading this and checking out the website in the first place!.

Yup, that's about it. I'm not too great at writing outros for anything, come to think of it.

Hmm....

Yeah, I got nothing.

Have a good year. Yeah, that'll work.