what i am doing

almost exactly seven years ago, an ex-girlfriend of mine made me buy a notebook for myself. she said it would be a good idea for me to have one and use it to write and scribble and do whatever else, because it was a thing that helped her. it wasn't much later that she broke up with me, but i've been keeping notebooks ever since and i carry them almost anywhere i go. i think i've filled about twenty and lost two and both of those times it was so painful, i was sad for over a week. there's phases in which i write and scribble more than in others, sometimes the things that i produce feel more valuable to me than other times, but a part of me is missing when i don't have one on me.

a few months ago then, on a friday night alone by myself, i wanted to look something up that i had written or drawn in one of the notebooks. i can't even remember anymore what it was. and in doing that, i started looking through all the things my old self had produced, with a sort of distance that one doesn't have when looking at stuff one just made. and so i saw this person that i was back then and i realised something about them: this is someone who desperately and constantly tries to express themselves, but feels so inadequate that the only place they can do this is essentially in private, just for themselves. there were times in which i tried to show the contents of my notebooks to people with a weird mix of boasting and shame, but in that friday night all i could feel for the person that had written all these things back then was sympathy.

now this website and this blog in specific is me trying to get over these feelings of shame and letting that kid express themselves with all their faults and inadequacies and just letting go. that is also where the name of this site comes from. in the area in germany where i'm from, people, especially old ones, speak a local language called low german (or plattdeutsch). the language is slowly dying out, but in my generation most of what is left of it are a few sayings. one of them my mom would always say to me growing up, when i was crafting something, a thing i was never quite good at: "n bietje scheef het gott leev." it roughly translates to "god likes it slightly askew", so that not everything has to be perfect.

in the spirit of that, i'm trying to just do things now and share them with people. i started making videos and posting them on youtube. these are collected here. i made something to display some of the analog photography i've been doing throughout the last years. in doing this, i'm also showing some of the software development knowledge i've acquired throughout my life and finally use it creatively. and then i'm writing, hopefully in some sort of regularity from now on.

ps: i would be remiss if i didn't mention that minnow is the one who inspired me to actually start doing this. i'm incredibly grateful to them for ripening this idea within me and making me feel that there is at least some audience for this.