About me!

My definition of being a slow thinker is based on Derek Sivers' "I'm a very slow thinker", which resonated with me when I first read it. When someone asks me a question, I am most times quite uncertain how to answer. Sure, I can rarely to sometimes give a servicable knee-jerk answer that keeps the conversation going without making it feel awkward, but that also sometimes includes wrong initial thoughts that immediately fall apart once more thoughts rush in and highlight it's flaws. In such situations it requires a bit of willpower to overcome my emotional awkwardness about correcting what I said 10 seconds ago.

This is also the reason why I've made it a habit to answer in probabilities/uncertainties rather than certainties ("What time is it?" -> "I believe it's about 14:40?"). The initial reaction is the one most prone to error as there hasn't been one other thought that can question it.

This reminds me of something I observed with certain YouTube channels that put a ridiculous amount of effort into editing. It's like art that nobody explicitly looks for or cares to really dive into because there's so much of it.

I'm not good at talking with, starting to talk with or responding to most messages. This gets much worse depending on how much pressure there is to respond and how the topic may cause internal conflict in me (which is quite easy to do as I'm really indecisive). One slightly stern talking about the right topic (one I'm conflicted on) and the pressure of needing to answer/do something and I'm done for.

I feel better at expressing my thoughts on this website, where the stream of information usually is one-way (barring emails or guestbook replies, which I still somewhat struggle with), at my pace (I don't have to respond at any time without worrying about if it's too late and how that affects how the other person might think of me) and at the viewers discretion (They don't need to read what I say which qualms my worries about if what I'm writing about is interesting to others). This kind of seems like a double-edged sword as I've found a good way to "talk with others" without most of the anxiety in the way, but that also means that due to my sheltered way of life, I'm complacent and don't really seek out any social interactions even more than I normally do, which then in turn sometimes fuels this strong fear of me being friendless and lonely for the rest of my life.

I mean, in hindsight, it seems good to have both ways of expressing yourself. Talking with others is instantaneous and allows a quick back-and-worth which can be quite fun while learning something or playing a multiplayer game where information exchange is needed, while writing something is at your own pace, with redo's and text formatting to really hone your words to align with your feelings. It also seems like a forum is a marryment of both.

One other way I'm socially fragile is that I take a lot of stuff personally and am intimidated by the slightest tilt or sign of a person being displeased with me, like when a person points out an error I did. This attachment to the opinion of other's is also sometimes visible when a person commends me for something (like when people like something from my activity feed on NeoCities, or seem intrigued/interested/happy by what I said/did).

Most games stay in my mind for one reason or another, and the worlds, stories, characters and such inspired, shaped and to a little extent probably helped me grow as a person. Some games I remember right now are:

• Splatoon 3, which, to me, is a good sandbox for learning how to enjoy that type of game (A shooter). For example, I partly learned how to mentally focus on small goals like "Let's try to splat one more guy" or "Let's see how I can use my special ability effectively" so that I think and theorize about what could work and in the end feel happy that I did it, instead of looking too much on the bigger picture (which team inked more ground in the end?) and feeling bummed and helpless about it. That way, it doesn't matter if I loose five matches in a row – I still have fun experimenting with my weapon, movement, special abilities and strategies.
• The world of The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker just stands out to me and marked a certain kind of love for the mapping of fantastical seas and discovering all the mysterious islands.
• I have fun memories of playing games like Battleblock Theater, Ultimate Chicken Horse, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess or Castle Crashers together with a friend, just laughing and joking and having a generally great time!
• Playing Rain World I found it really satisfactory to finally be kind of on top of the world, able to handle the random encounters, hazards and situations the game throws at me and just generally feeling good whilst moving around in it. I also enjoyed some of the community-hosted events like the Rain World: Bingo Events.
• Outer Wilds just has a really cool world and it was really fun seeing all the different planets, how they changed over time and discovering every emotional puzzle piece of story.

Video games are just great! Mixing interactivity, music and visuals like no other medium can and just exploring so much of the cool stuff one can do with it!

2026-01-19: Nowadays, as I'm feeling the pain of growing up, I now mostly seek games that challenge me to grow instead of using my as-of-now limited free time for fun. If I do play something for fun, I then prefer playing new games rather than squeezing fun out of those I know – I want to see new concepts and ideas, places, gameplay, characters, stories and environments. Experience the ideas other people had for how one can play a game.

A pretty common trait.

• I like listening to music and have a grand music library in the form of .mp3/.ogg files (I started with .mp3, but switched over to .ogg as I believe I heard that it's just objectively better or something like that) on my computer which I spend way too much time curating by editing the metadata to how I like it.
• Neatly enough, I don't have the blessing and curse of detecting minor deficiencies in audio quality, meaning I don't really care about file formats and stats of audio files as a high quality flac and my ogg's really just sound pretty much the same to me, saving space on my file system.
• I like the idea of making my own music, but a large hurdle would be learning a DAW to the point where I could naturally transcribe some of the melodies I have in my head.
• I both enjoy drumming on any nearby surface along with the music I'm listening to and singing/humming, although I'm not too good at both.
• There are also times where I don't know what I want to listen to. I've been reluctant about not listening to music during those times, but it seems like not listening to anything at all seems to be the only right call there.
• Music has this unique, singular ability to comfort me when I feel really down. It feels like the music is the only real thing that really acknowledges or understand the hardships I face during those phases, and it can give me the feeling of determination to continue onward. Nothing else seems to replicate that ability.
• Singing when really emotional in particular feels like a really good way to let them all out.

There's something about the indifference of nature that keeps me grounded. The bird's chirp the same way regardless of if I had the best day or the worst day of my life; the rustling of the leaves and the beautiful shadows move gently across the ground both whether I'm wearing rose-tinted glasses or drape everything in grays. It is a constant reminder that things are as they are, and it's comforting in seasons of depression and humbling in seasons of overconfidence.

One thing I find both fascinating and horrible is the juxtaposition of nature both being beautiful (calming, birdsong, beautiful, the sound of rain, companionship between dogs and humans, symbiotic behavior between animals, animals showing emotions) and horrifying (parasites that take control of other animals; life itself being designed to kill other lives to live; the cold, mechanical ways some animals hunt and tear open their prey).

This property of mine really extends to a lot of stuff.

• I like to decorate/make pretty rooms and spaces, both in real life and in videogames (My own room; Animal Crossing: New Horizons; Terraria; Minecraft)
• I like making art (Like the pixel- or splash art for this website; custom album covers; sketching in my sketch pad). Light foci on this include UI design and pixel art.
• I like making photos with pleasing composition/colors/motives (In IRL; The Hyrule Compendium in TLoZ: BoTW & TotK; Game screenshots)
• I often over-designed my PowerPoint presentations for school (at one point I believe we got an A+ just because of how flashed the teacher was of how it looked).
• Uncommonly I just get happy / am in awe because of how pretty the world around me can be (The sun, lighting up and shining through semi-translucent leaves of trees; rain with it's reflections, especially at night time).
• One way it's reflected on the website is that I like using buttons or icons for pages with large swathes of links (Like the Links or Music Library section), sometimes even going out of my way to make my own icons or fix errors in the graphics of others to make it as visually pleasant as possible.

It feels nice when I feel like I've hit the nail on the head with a sentence or paragraph, although I'm somewhat slightly worried about people finding I sound pretentious or dry.

I also adopted this to the way I speak:

• When people ask me something, I often preface my answer with "I think..." because I'm unsure if it really is the right answer. I don't want to tell anyone anything that might be false since I often feel a bit bad for it.

• Thinking about fictional worlds & the stories and mysteries of people and locations
• Thinking about game concepts, game design and code snippets / algorithms for implementing these ideas.
• Building stuff in games like Minecraft and Terraria, both primarily visual builds and more technical stuff using redstone and wiring (although in both categories on the milder side: Most things I build aren't visually big and too detailed nor technically too complicated).

Sometimes I like coding stuff. When I know how the basics work, have a plan of what I want to achieve and generally have ideas on how to get there, it's genuinely fun & rewarding slowly growing the codebase and seeing it function more and more until it does the thing I want to! This is generally the case with the JavaScript I've written for this website and just generally small and easy scripts that don't take too much effort.

With stuff that's a bit more complicated, I often am emotionally childish and just feel aggrevated at why stuff isn't working or thinking "how the hell does this codebase work?!" (often the case with modding games with object-oriented programming languages like Minecraft or Terraria or just trying to understand OOP in general).

There's this theory about how there are five love languages, and I'm pretty sure physical affection is the one my body loves to talk in. I have a bunch of stuffed animals, and on bad days where I feel like cuddling, I can just blanket myself with soft fur, reflected warmth and something wrapped around my arms. (When I'm feeling a little dapper, I don't want to cuddle as much and just throw 'em off the bed or just lay them on top of me when sleeping, sort of like a blanket).

As a child, I gave every stuffed animal a name and wished them mentally/telepathically good night whenever I went to sleep. I can only remember the names of a few now, but have given out new names to some of the newer arrivals to the family. I'm also fond of the idea of having a wide variety of stuffed animals, sort of like a zoo that showcases a lot of different animals (which I imagine could be fun for my nephews), but I haven't been buying any recently.

It's quite hit or miss depending on a lot of factors, but most of the time, I feel a bit anxious and tight around other people. It's always computationally expensive for me to think about what I should say next, and I often never feel at ease around others and that I often can't say what I'm thinking since...

• ...it might link to one of my many insecurities and weak spots that they could then point out and make me accountable of (i.e. sound stupid or am pre-opinionated, arrogant, annoying)
• ...it might sound stupid to them, or annoying, arrogant, pre-opinionated or like I'm too attached to them, or mentally unstable. I fear that anything I could say could end the friendships I want to build.
• The only solution to this problem seems to be seeking out all the thought patterns that make me feel like they might seems overly obsessive, creepy, arrogant, annoying, mentally unstable etc. and see if the thought patterns really are that way or can be tweaked just a bit to sound more sound. Mental housekeeping, basically.

Once all those worries fade away, however, I can enjoy the company and ease up a bit. I still think too much and don't want to say anything wrong, leading me to not say anything a lot of the time (especially in group situations), but at least I won't feel a constant minimal sense of tension. Some situations I like:

• I often like to help people I like, like teaching some classmates a certain math concept.
• I'm fond of memories where I'm quiet amongst a group of friends, listening in on what they're talking about while calmly walking somewhere.
• There are rare times when the conversation with someone flows and my interest in the person and the topic allow for really neat conversations, almost like an elegant dance of being intrigued, knowing what to say and the constant dopamine of learning more about a person or the topic we're talking about.