Been a while, huh?

So I’ve noticed a boom in Neocities and indie web content lately, which is super cool and has made me start thinking back to my own little corner of the internet on here with a mix of fondness and embarrassment. I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while, and backed out of it a couple times because of nervousness about looking at my old teenage website, but I think it’s finally time to give this site one final update.

I was 15 in December of 2018 when I made snowy dot neocities dot org on a whim, and now I’m 20, so a lot has happened. I’ve gone through some really hard times, had to reevaluate what I want to do with my life more than once (and I probably will again), found new works of art that resonate with me and new hobbies to devote my time to (I’m a fencer now, and it's like, about 40% of my offline personality), fallen out of others (sorry homestuck), and just kind of… grown up. It’s a bittersweet feeling, looking back on a part of you and realizing that it’s not really you anymore.

I had a lot of fun with snowy, and I’m sincerely grateful to everyone who interacted with me, left nice comments, or just visited my site. Younger me was too anxious to really get into social media (I still kind of am), so Neocities was my first real foray into the world of talking to other people on the internet, and the encouragement I received from everyone here and the way Neocities allowed me to express myself were really special to me and helped me get through some of my lowest points in a way that I don’t think I could have found anywhere else. Just going back to edit this site one more time has made me super nostalgic. All the kindness I received from this community is something that I treasure to this day.

I’ve gone back and forth over just what to do with this site and whether I want to leave it accessible, attempt to update it, wipe it and start fresh, or just delete it altogether, and after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided to keep it up as a time capsule to another version of myself. That doesn’t mean I’m done with Neocities though! I do want to get back into the indie web scene, and have been planning out some newer projects, though I’m leaving them unconnected to this site so that I can have a fresh start untethered to my teenage self.

To be honest, it is a little (a lot) embarrassing to look back on this site as an adult, but ultimately I want to preserve and remember it as a love letter to the experience of being an awkward teenager growing up on the internet. It’s a relic from a different part of my life, and while, I won’t lie, the fact that anyone can just go on the internet and see 15 year old me talking about my yaoi personality quiz results does sometimes keep me up at night, I’m really glad that I found Neocities when I did and that it played such a big part in my life.

Thanks for everything! Neocities forever!

Skylar “snowy”, 8/30/2023

Important note: my cats are still alive and doing well! They turned 12 this year :)