For some reason I got in my mind to see if any of my old sites were captured by the Way Back Machine. I did find a few! I copy/pasted what I could get into a doc just so I have it. It’s charming and embarrassing to read; it also renews my resolve to blog here more often. It’s a nice record to have.

By the way, the reason I have so many images of my old layouts is because I kept them for my “web portfolio.” I really thought I was gonna be a web designer lololol. The ones in this post are just a lil’ samplin’.

Marzenie.com

I was in high school and my parents bought me a domain name. I think they wanted to encourage my computer skillzz—at that point I had already taught myself basic HTML, some CSS, etc. I remember in the early days of the internet I literally used to just email people who had sites that I liked, asking how they did it (particularly re: frames. lol remember FRAMES?). They almost always responded and told me how! I would also look at and try to pick apart their code.

In the early days hosting was like $20/month and domain registration was like $35/year? Sounds about right. Not insanely expensive but wow domains are cheap these days. I’m sitting on a couple domain names I don’t even use right now because it’s so cheap to keep them.

Anyway, my parents helped me pick out marzenie—the Polish word for “dream.” This was the fun age of the internet, before blogs came around and “online journals” were all about changing your layout every 8 seconds, joining webrings, hosting other people on subdomains 4 free because you’re such a nice guy, and just writing about whatever you wanted.

Haha, I remember once in English class, I wrote something on a piece of paper to Magda, and it wasn’t funny..but then I started laughing. She asked me what was so funny, and I was like, “It’s not funny, that’s what’s so funny!” And then I continued cracking up. Yeaaaah, good times in English class. ^_^

AMAZING CONTENT from my 15-year-old self

Low-key: this is what I’m trying to re-capture with this site. I hate that everything these days has to be a Hot Take™ or a Full God Damn Essay. I guess social media is the place where you can tell people what you had for lunch. But if I want to spend my own money on a personal site to tell people what I had for lunch, I feel like I should be able to do that.

Witch-Bottle.Org

Something happened to Marzenie and I was no longer able to access it (some tomfoolery with my host and/or registrar?) so I moved. Unfortunately Way Back didn’t capture it, but I do remember that one of my splash images (REMEMBER SPLASH PAGES?) was of my own self inside a bottle. I had to take a photo of myself pretending to press my hands up against the glass and then use my ~photoshop skillz~ to put myself in there. Amazing.

Another thing I miss from this era is making weird layouts just because we could. Also, each section of the site would often have a different layout that may or may not have related to an overall theme. These days websites all feel very corporate because they are pre-loaded templates or whatever. BUT, things are also a lot more accessible—both in terms of anybody being able to make a website an in terms of people with screen readers etc being able to look at a website.

Oh, speaking of webrings—I administered the OFFICIAL (?) fan listing for the song “Upside Down” by Tori Amos. It wasn’t my favorite Tori song but I think “Father Lucifer” was already taken.

Kiwi-Tree.Net

I think I just got tired of Witch-Bottle so I switched to Kiwi-Tree. More of the same on a different domain. Eurynome was my poetry subdomain. At least, I think it was on KT. Everything blends together.

With regard to my terrible, clearly-Tori-Amos-inspired teenage poetry, I do remember I had a regular reader—some internet stranger. At one point they complimented my poetry and I remember the said it had a “sense of (wanting remembrance)”—yes, in the parentheses. SO ART. I didn’t know what it meant then and I don’t know what it means now, but thanks anyway.

I also had dream journals and photo journals and…for somebody who never actually did anything I was really prolific. It makes me wonder why I can’t seem to create anything now. I think that’s due in large part to knowing more of what’s in the world—I am more keenly aware of just how unoriginal I am!

Marizateria.com

Marizateria is actually technically still around—I tried to revive it into my art journal domain (and I may still) but it has been dormant.

In its previous iteration, it was my regular blog and where I posted all my art journal stuff. This is back when I was making art journal videos. I posted a lot in Livejournal communities. Good stuff and good times.