tl;dr I expect this will be rather long and rambling. I'll probably end up covering a whole bunch of topics in this one post: where did the site/I go, the trigger for posting here again, eurovision, nostalgia for lost fandom circles, people drifting with time, twitter, the value of online acquaintances, what even is “blogging” in 2023, and what am I going to use this for now?

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I didn't forget about this place.

I had originally added “placeholder etc.” a year or so after deleting the site on impulse back in 2014. The intention was that I would revive it in some form or another fairly shortly after. Clearly that didn't happen. However, anyone who checked last year will have seen there was a slight update in wording to “forever placeholder etc.”, reflecting my resignation that the place would likely never be revived.

(As an aside, the only reason I never let the domain lapse is because it's actually my main email domain. >_< And, the reason that update in wording happened is because I realised that paying for a full package of web hosting at like £100 per year just for a bit of static text and email was a little crazy when it could be hosted free on CloudFlare and a much cheaper dedicated email host. Therefore, it felt appropriate to at least indicate something on the site had changed. It was after all the biggest change behind the scenes in a decade. xD)

What happened?

So first question: what happened to me, where did I go, why did I delete it and my other online accounts etc? Without going into specifics, I would say the root cause in 2013/2014 was a combination of naiivity, inexperience, and touch of arrogance in the face of complex life situations. My usual coping mechanism in the face of anything extremely negative is very much in the “flight” part of fight or flight. Withdrawing, curling up under the safe blanket of my own company, ultimately pushing others away, believing that only I can support myself or solve it. In the process I hurt some close friends, said and did a lot of stupid shit that I still regret, and while many of those friendships have since been repaired, no doubt they still retain the scars somewhere. In the midst of all that I felt what's the point of having a blog, social media etc, fuck everyone and everything, I'll go live on a farm somewhere far away and not have to deal with any problems, or with any of the people I hurt.

Suffice to say that didn't really work out. >_<;;

A year or so passed, now 2015, I realised that friends actually mattered a lot, tried to repair the damage with many, but perhaps not all. I recreated my twitter account (though under a slightly different name, perhaps out of a combination of shame in not wanting to just step straight back into things as they were before, but also out of a desire to not have decades of tweets easily searchable and identifiable to the same online account for anyone that looks you up). I tentatively started following people again on twitter and occasionally posting (and am still somewhat tentative even today). At that point I added the placeholder text to the site with the intention of reviving it in some way.

After that, more time passed, more positive life events happened: got busy with work, completed a BA and MA in philosophy, got married, got a house like 30 mins north of London, got a dog, flew some planes, grew a lot more tomatoes and chillies, and spent my spare time in FFXIV playing mahjong (currently expert 2 on Mahjong Soul).

Overall though, things were not the same as before, I watch far less anime than I used to, listen to less music, less JPop, spend less time at events and with friends. There are probably many factors contributing to this:

1. Many in the circle of people I originally followed on twitter seemed to gradually be drifting away from posting there.

2. Friends were getting older and doing their own life things, getting married themselves, having kids, and therefore less time for meeting up, or for the youthful consumption of all things Japan as before. Ayo, when are we doing karaoke again, last time was pre-covid. >_<;

3. Members of favourite bands graduating and being replaced with ever younger versions, it's hard to follow the revolving door idol bands when the age difference gets increasingly large, and the music increasingly churned out at low quality. Hello Project or AKB members are pretty much alien to me today, eve