#tiny violin

Ok picture this:

The Year: 2008 The Setting: a large state university in a hot, humid place The Girl: a hot damn mess of emotions, struggling to recover the pieces of herself she was losing to a cult-like religion, introduced to a weirdass website by her art major roommate The Website: TUMBLR.COM

Here on this weirdass site, I found a place where I could scroll endlessly through a seemingly infinite supply of design, gifs, movies, quotes, fandoms, photography, and softcorn. I "curated" a collection of magpie findings, poked at the corners of queerness, and posted some of the most pretentious, sophomoric opinions a 20-something ever did thunk. But I also and totally by accident built a visualization tool that helped me make sense of the person I wanted to become. Swords and moss and whimsical lil guys and interiors and LOTR and motorcycles and vintage posters and cool outfits and Anais Nin quotes. There was no niche, no fandom, no small corner I was painted into, only an ever-expanding understanding of self.

Hours and hours of scrolling and reblogging. Hours of tuning the dash to show exactly what I needed to see at any moment. So many rabbit holes to fall down. Years passed.

The late night scrolls continued.

The alignment of the stars was perfect.

And then... it started to come true.

The cool people wearing cool clothes in cool places - suddenly they were friends and I had their phone numbers. Like, the actual people in the pictures I was reblogging. What the hell. The hot, beardy guys on vintage motorcycles - dating one. The cozy, whimsical, Japandi home - living in it. The beautiful adventures around the world - having them. The life full of ~*aesthetic-ass shit*~ was all around me.

I had the realization of this manifestation practice in 2020, wrote about it, and that writing was published on a much larger blog. But then, perhaps because of some dark Scorpionic instinct towards privacy, or a freak transit of planets, or just blame it on the tendency towards chaos that came with that year, I started tinkering. And nothing good comes from tinkering with your Tumblr.

I was trying to delete a page made for a side project I'd run with an ex. I got a warning pop-up that was like "if you do this, it's all gone and we can't bring it back lol!" And I was like YEAH FUCK THAT GUY!

And then, it was gone.

12 years of my blog. Gone. Wait, is that how math works? 2008 to 2020... yeah. 12. More than a decade of self-definition-through-gifs had disappeared. I went through the cached page and got screenshots of as much as I could, but it was gone. I'm not ashamed to admit there were some very confused tears shed. Was I really grieving the loss of a fucking BLOG?? Especially while living a beautiful, magical life that I had conjured while using that blog as a cauldron? Yeah. Yeah I was.

And then I got mad and tried to start it again (which explains the first 70 images on THIS blog that were me trying to recapture some of that earlier magic while also using Tumblr as a way to ~build my personal brand to gain a following on IG~ BARRRRRFFFFF) and then I got mad again because it didn't feel the same, and moved to Pinterest.

But Pinterest tries to get you to section off your thoughts and feelings into different buckets and categories. This idea goes with "outfits," this one goes to "DIY projects," this one goes to blahblahblah - not a fan. I made a mega-board called "The Vibrary" and treated it like a Tumblr page - all the cool things I see go here. And it's great! It's very pretty! My Pinterest algorithm is very very very well-tuned! BUT THE ADS, MY DUDES. THE ADS ARE BAD.

And I was also spending more time on YouTube. The algorithm there also knows me Very Well and in the last year or so I was reintroduced to Tumblr culture by way of the crossover stars (Strange, Zero, etc). And in their online presentations of self I recognized a version of me that Could Have Been if I'd succumbed to the allure of hellsite and never left, never tried to be an IG girlie, never sought internet fame, never let go of the core weirdness that brought me so much joy. And I realized... holy shit I miss Tumblr.

I wasn't ever Really part of the Culture here, even back in the day. I had crushes on people I only knew by avatar, sure, but I missed a lot of the messiest years because of some messiness happening IRL that kept me off the internet as much. Really from 2012-2018 I basically forgot I had an account, so one could argue that I was only REALLY a Tumblr person for like 4 years, but fuck off. That time of heavy-usage shaped me in ways that are difficult to define, as it does all users. There is a particular flavor of dark, dry, sarcastic, snarky humor and a particular twist of a smile that I see on people I meet where I'm like "oh shit you're a Tumblr person." And most of the time (I'll say like 6/10 instances of such interactions) it's an immediate new-best-friend situation.

Tumblr is a tool for making headcanon visible. And maybe that's what made it such a powerful ~*manifestation*~ tool for me. I was building a world out of other people's stories, writing myself into narratives that I had no business being in, creating a version of myself that I was excited to explore. But it was ultimately a glorified cosplay. And maybe that's why the accidental deletion in 2020 was a good thing. The life I'd built was AWESOME, but I never quite felt at home in it. I was always waiting for someone to call my bluff and tell me to get my loser ass out of the cool kids club.

And between 2020 and now, I've spent a lot of time tearing that version of myself back to the foundations and rebuilding - again, and again, and once more just for fun. But this version, the one I've made with my own two hands feels REAL. Yes, there are still elements of the blog-manifested version - the beardy motorcycle guy is still the love of my life, our home is fucking adorable, and my hobbies are aesthetic and whimsical as hell. But I'm also consciously choosing to include parts of myself now that I had put aside during that Tumblr-less season of life, pieces of my personality that didn't fit in the Very Cool world I'd weaseled my way into. (Turns out, the cool kids Do Not like to talk about swords, dragons, poetry, and fanart!) (Don't worry, beardy motorcycle guy is actually a secret nerd.)

Alllllllllllll this to say: I'm fuckin back baybeeeeeee.

unable to determine

what that snack will be