One Week In, and Figuring It Out
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February 9th, 2025
It's been just over a week since Mind Gone By launched! It feels pretty nice to finally have this page online and begin to take part in the indie web. My plans have had to shift around a bit due to personal circumstances, but I think that changing my work pattern a little has been a good choice. When I was first planning this, I had originally intended to launch the site with most of my entries on various films and books already complete. I thought this would give potential visitors a lot of stuff to read if they wanted to. I soon found out that that was an extremely daunting task. When you own over 1,300 movies and over 260 books, making individual pages and writing some thoughts on every single one quickly becomes a gargantuan undertaking. I then decided to launch the site with Movie Index - A complete, but even those 50+ pages were a massive amount of work to do in just a month's worth of time. I had set my launch date for February 1st, and I really didn't want to keep pushing it back.
So, I made the decision to just develop the Movie Index and Bookshelf as time goes on, and treat it as an ongoing project instead of an already completed thing. It gives me a daily task to keep up on, and I think it's been giving me a little bit of motivation in life. I like having a goal that I can set for myself every day, even if it's something as small as writing a few paragraphs. It's beginning to combat some of the burnout that I've been feeling because of my job and the daily grind. I've recently been dealing with a large resurgence of depression and stress in my personal life, and because of this, it's been hard for me to find enjoyment in things like films and reading. My concentration has been shot, and I've mostly been playing video games to unwind after work. However, writing my thoughts on things that I love has started re-ignite my passion for stories told through film and text. I'm hoping that this ongoing project will keep that flame going for a while.
Right now, my current plan is to get one page written a day. If I have the time and drive, I can potentially get two or three done. I'd like to find a rhythm where I feel like I'm making progress, but I'm not burning myself out more at the same time. I'm a perfectionist at times, and I have a habit of beating myself up if I don't reach my goals. But I'm currently making it a point to break that thought pattern in myself. After all, hobbies are supposed to make you happy, and not be an obligation that turns into another form of work. I can't say I ever expected a website to be a form of therapy, but if it helps, I'll take it!
On a very positive note, switching over to the indie web has been an absolute blast. I've been making a conscious effort to not use YouTube and Reddit constantly like I used to, and instead spend my time looking for independent pages and passion projects. I've found lots of interesting personal blogs, hobby pages, independent film sites, and even pages that help users explore for content that get buried by algorithms. It's been giving me that old web surfing experience that I hadn't felt for a long time, and it makes me so happy to see that stuff like that is still going on out there. I'm probably going to update my Internet Revival page soon to include some of these helpful search links and web directories. I'm even considering adding a Cool Sites page just to showcase the random oddities I've found out there, but that will likely be at a later date. I'd like to keep exploring first so I can build a great site collection to share with people.
I think that's all from me for today. Expect some updates to trickle out every day or so, as well as a blog post to cap off the week. If you've read all of this, thanks for putting up with my rambling and taking the time to check out this site. I'm just a guy looking to have fun online, and I can't wait to share more of what I love with you all.