very heartwarming realization occurred today.

i host my portfolio-slash-somewhatprofessional website with leprd. the reason it's not on neocities is because i have a domain name for it and i was not about to pay for supporter. it's been a wonderful place to host my shitty public site on since roughly late 2024 and i've recommended leprd to several of my irl friends. i found leprd through a listing of hosts for indie web hobbyists somewhere (will update with link if i find it again) and other than checking out what the maintainer, lysianth.us is up to, i haven't paid too much attention to it.

it's probably been over a year since i started hosting my other website there. i am browsing through various indie sites. the browsing trail goes as follows: a great mutual comments on a neocities profile i haven't seen before, i check that profile out and their thing is great, that website was actually inspired by another person, and that other person has a cbox, and in that cbox there was someone with a curious username, and on that someone's website i see a familiar name -- lysianthus.

incredibly mundane, incredibly normal occurence on something as small as this corner of the indie web. but it was just such a warm realization to see these webs of online connection play out in front of my eyes -- two entirely separated figures in my online life are actually not separate at all and we are all here at the playground building sandcastles and sharing sticks of chalk. this is exactly the kind of feeling of connection and community i was looking for when i made the decision to step away from conventional social media and i'm feeling very happy about that choice today. happy december