renovation... the sequel! plus explanation (april 18, 2024)

this'll probably be the first page i officially put back up. i don't see much that needs changing here, except maybe the colors. we shall see.

in the meantime, this here's a blog entry to sorta explain what's going on behind the scenes for anybody who'd like to know! the short version is that i'm renovating the entire site again. the long version is that i'm having a lot of trouble deciding what i want this website to be like. to my mind, the website looks a little plain, but i know this is only because i'm the one who made it. that's just what being a creative is like. y'all get it.

but at the same time, what does it matter if it looks a little plain? the website is, first and foremost, for me. but also at the same time, people can and do see this website, and i care about having my work be presentable when people can see it, and this line of thinking can turn into stressing about it being presentable enough.

it's also affected my writing for muse ariadne, i feel. i've subconciously applied the way i think about school assignments to the writing prompts, and i feel like it's made for not-very-good pieces.

i don't want to waffle on about The Miseries, but i felt like i oughta let people who wanna know know what's been going on backstage. ain't nothing that can't be repaired, so don't worry none. most of the issue is just me worrying too much LOL.

this entry is also just as much for me as is it for all of y'all. this is not a school assignment chavez. relax. get silly with it

i want to create cool stuff (april 5, 2024)

do any of you ever feel the need to just create? like just really make something and be proud of it. i'm under attack by this feeling at the minute.

i don't really know, i just want to make stuff. cool little trinkets. i want to embroider again. i want to figure out how to make pins and give them to my friends as gifts.

it's just been hard because i can't find a good place to focus and work. so i'm just in a constant state of internally flailing my arms around because i really want to create but i can't. it's kinda sucks :[

i'm not sure how coherent this is, but it's honest. been a weird week. been a lot of weird weeks.

spring is springign! (march 21, 2024)

oh boy it's spring! it's mosquitos as hell outside.

i redid the front page a couple weeks ago, and that little spark of work done gave me a bunch of motivation to keep working on the website. so far i've been building new pages that aren't ready yet, and if you've had a peek at them you've seen how not ready they are. but i promise promise promise they'll be real cool when they are ready.

somehow i've gotten six followers on Neocities! it's very cool, but it's also a little nerve-wracking. i've never really liked showing off unfinished work, or showing off my work at all, so having an audience, however small, is very new to me. i'll deal, though. i'm very glad y'all like my webbed site :]

i think i'll focus on getting the gallery page ready to be shown off. i wanna try out still life drawings and that'll be a good place to put 'em.

a very late entry (february 27, 2024)

oooOOAAAGH. i am alive

it's been a bit. my thoughts have been a little all over the place as of late and it's been hard to sit down and sort em out. but i do have some things i do wanna say today.

i've been playing Minecraft recently and having a pretty good time. i forgot how fun it could be! i've spent lots of Minecraft days fishing and it's a good thing to do to clear my head. no thoughts just fish

i've also joined Muse Ariadne! i wasn't sure at first because i haven't properly written anything in a while, but last week i decided "screw it, we ball" and started building my page for it. the css isn't done, but i'm very happy with the graphic i drew for it. i thought it was clever, since the red ball of yarn sort of symbolizes the writing club. why not have the Chavez playing with the ball of yarn? it's perfect.

school's been not very good. i start doing better in one class and go into a tailspin in another. it is what it is, but i'd like for it to be something else.

i've started listening to The Magnus Archives recently as well, about when The Magnus Protocol came out. i'd heard very good things about it, and as it turns out, listening to a podcast is a great way to focus on math work and painting. who'd've thunk it? i really like it so far! i'm about halfway through season two now.

i think that's about all i have today. it feels good to make another post here. i'm still working on that big project i mentioned a couple posts ago, by the way. it's almost done, i'm just nervous about fully publishing it.

void and spooky!!! (february 11, 2024)

we got two new kittens yesterday and their names are void and spooky! they're little hooligans and i love them so much

it's a bit strange being around three-month-old kittens when i've only had the company of senior cats for a while now, but it is an absolute treat watching them jump and play.

it'll probably be a while before our older cats warm up to them though. gizmo in particular is not a fan of them, and she growls whenever they're near her. overall though, they've been good.

shorter entry this week. i keep not having my thoughts in order and that makes it hard to write entries.

the puppetry entry (february 5, 2024)

aw hell has it been another week already? man

sorry this entry was a little late, i haven't gotten into the habit of working on the website when i'm home. completely forgot about making a new post until last night.

but i actually have something to talk about this week! i checked out a book from my high school library last week, and it's basically a collection of quotes from jim henson, his works, and the people he worked with. i blasted through it in about an hour, and i liked it a lot.

i've found myself really liking jim henson stuff, as well as just puppetry stuff as a whole lately. it started when the dhmis tv show released in late 2022, and it lay dormant for a long time until one particular wednesday morning last year when i decided puppetry would be my obsession for the week.

i've been wanting to get back into making youtube videos for a while now, as i was an amateur source filmmaker animator for a little while when i was younger. for as long as i've been wanting to get back into it, i've been wondering what kind of content i'd want to make now that i'm older and more capable. one day i had puppetry on the brain as i was thinking about it, and i had a brain blast: i could make videos with puppets. i was super excited when i had the idea, but i also had to calm down and remind myself that i don't have the time, funds, or space to just start making puppets, let alone puppet videos, so that idea's shelved for now.

but just because i can't do it right now does not stop me from brainstorming about it. at first i wanted to make videos where i would talk about my thoughts with a puppet of my (then) mascot, because before that, i wanted to make videos like that but with an animated version of my mascot. (animation proved to be very frustrating, and my eyes would get watery staring at my computer screen for so long.) and honestly, that's still a good idea. it's not off the table by any means, but i had a better idea.

see, reading the book i got from the library made me think about the lasting legacy i would want to leave. there's a quote in that book somewhere about how someone using their life to make the world a bit better than it was before is a pretty good life, and that resonated with me. so i decided that whatever i make with puppets in the future, whenever it might be, i want to make something honest and nice.

i could make a page on this site about my aspirations and half-formed plans for what i want to make, so i'll probably leave all the talk about it for that. anyhoo, sorry for the late entry. i hope you liked this one.

entry 2: electric boogaloo (january 28, 2024)

i'm munching on some strawberries as i write this. they're very yummy.

this has been a bit of a weird week. it started off real bad for me because i didn't know what to do for the website and combined with some school-related stress, it just wasn't a good time. but it passed and i reformatted the homepage a bit, which i was proud of. i didn't like how it just looked like a document before.

i've also been a very busy beaver working on something else, which i'll be ready to present quite soon, i think. i'd like to get some drawings ready for it as well as have someone proofread it, but once that's done, it'll be ready and i'll put a link to it on the homepage. i'm very excited for that because i've been working on it for weeks.

i've also been socializing a bit more than usual, which is a win for me. i like talking, but i'm not as good at listening. i think i'm getting better about that, though. i hope so, at least.

i also woke up this morning thinking it was monday, but then i realized it wasn't and i was so happy.

entry numero uno (january 23, 2024)

gonna cast aside the professional demeanor here. uhhhh this is the blog! doing an early entry this tuesday in order to get this thing up n running.

i originally (as of yesterday) wanted to wait until i had the layout of the blog perfected before i actually started posting in it, but i realized (as of about an hour ago) that if i kept waiting i'd never get started, so now here's the blog! it is! sure something!

there's a lot of cleanup i need to do on this page, and on the entire website in fact, but i'll get around to it. as of now, i wanna focus on just putting stuff on the website and then polish it.