Two Years
Monday February 24, 2025
I’m a little late. February 14th was the actual 2-year anniversary of maerk.xyz. Some highlights from the past year include…
- The introduction of Naomi, the new mascot.
- A page for the high scores set on my machines. This was the best addition.
- Naomi/maerk.xyz stickers finally being printed (and distributed.)
- The homepage becoming a bit more interesting with the “Latest Posts” section.
- A Third Strike rankings page for my friends and I.
Along with plenty of other things. Lots of tidying up, tweaking CSS, grammar fixes, etc. The “personal websites are like gardens” comparison might be a little overdone, but it’s true. It is very satisfying seeing what this garden has become in only two years.
Looking Back
I think that in the early days of the site, I wanted to go from idea to finished post as quickly as possible. Posts from the past year were written with a little more care, and I was okay with something sitting in the drafts for a while. I have a much better grasp on Hugo shortcodes now. A lot of ideas for the site become fun little puzzles to solve through a shortcode. The “Latest Posts” section of the homepage is one example. I am really happy with the high scores page. I think it looks nice and it’s actually useful. I’ve pulled it up many times to check who currently holds high scores, or just to show off the latest picture. My dad must look at it too, because he reminds me when I forget to update his Donkey Kong score.
It feels good not using someone else’s intellectual property as the face of my own site. I think the drawings of Naomi featured on this site have “aged poorly”, meaning I have realized how shitty they actually look. That’s okay. I can always edit/redraw them, and every new sticker design will be better than the last. Slowly improving my drawing skills beats yoinking some official Cammy art from Google. To those who have given me advice and criticism, bought stickers, or simply looked at the sketches I’ve sent, thank you for being supportive.
Looking Forward
Something I need to work on is my “relationship” with “the viewer.” I’m a little better about it now, but sometimes I worry that I come across as an idiot in my posts. It mostly comes from looking at the websites that inspired mine and thinking “These dudes are smart as hell.” I also find myself checking for page views slightly obsessively. I advertise this site in public via stickers, on guestbooks, tiny image boards, etc. The interactions are fun, but it makes me wonder if I’m treating this like social media. Obviously it’s not the endlessly scrolling attention grabbing content part of social media, but the “number go up” part that comes from page views, (You)s, comments, and compliments.
A few months ago, I really started to regret showing this site to people in my real life. The initial plan to keep this site grounded to my real life seemed like a good way to keep things “normal.” I was inspired by Luke Smith’s website, as well as arcade related sites like SOLID-orange and ShootTheCore. I had the vision for the site, plus the idle thought that “everyone on the internet is a loser.” My site will be a cool and normal representation of myself, because I am cool and normal. I will show it to everyone, because I will never post anything weird. I set myself up for this anxiety by cramming everything I do under the same name, and linking that name to my real life only made it worse. It’s another reason why this site sometimes feels like social media. I wonder if it would’ve been best to keep this site strictly arcade related, using a second website for everything else. Blog posts, photos, art, whatever. However, is the solution really more of an attachment to the web? I already use the internet too much. Maybe this anxiety I feel about the whole thing is a direct result of spending too much time here. If this site is a source of anxiety, why even have it? Would having two websites make me happier? Probably not. As you can see, I think about this a lot. What complicates things further is that some of my favorite parts of this site are the pages that are directly attached to my real life, specifically the high scores page and the rankings page. I think about it so much, that sometimes I feel like I need to take a long break. I almost scrapped this entire post just to write another one basically saying “I’m taking a break. See ya.” It’s the main reason I was late to make this post.
General internet fatigue, plus a bit of maerk.xyz burnout has left me feeling a little crazy. So yeah, I think I will take a little break. Nothing too crazy, I just feel like I’ve been neglecting my other hobbies and that I should spend more time in the real world.
Despite all of what I just said, I did get new stickers printed. The design is completely different from the one I previewed in an older post. You can see them on the shop page.
Thank you to everyone reading this.