Two Years of Nenrikido
March 13, 2025
It occured to me as I pushed some JournalRing updates at 2AM that today is the two year anniversary of Nenrikido. This blog post probably won’t be published until a few days 3 months in the future, but I wanted to at least start a post on the subject. One of my blog posts that generated more discussion than I’d expected was my two month Neocities reflection, and re-reading it, well, I do still agree with the central premises.
The only big caveat I’d make now is that I think I was too hard on people who are possessive of their code. It is entirely unenforceable to prevent people from taking it, which makes it seem a bit futile to me, but if you set a boundary and someone crosses it, you are certainly well within your rights to be upset about it. Besides, although the old internet did feature a lot of collaborative code, there have always been people who don’t like to share. And that’s fair enough.
But putting aside the critical lens of my initial post, I guess I wanted this post to reflect more on the things I like about Neocities, and about having my own website. For example, I love webrings! This is probably my favorite aspect of what is generally dubbed the “smallweb.” Managing JournalRing has exposed me to a lot of websites I probably would have never seen otherwise, and I do like the idea of loosely organizing around common interests and hobbies. I am always telling myself I should start another, but given how often I get behind on updating JournalRing, I might hold off awhile…
At this point in my website’s lifespan, I’m mostly trying to make peace with the fact that I can’t tend to it as attentively as I used to. When I started Nenrikido, I was aimlessly unemployed and completely at a loss of what to do with my life. I was two and half years out from my graduation from college and felt very trapped in my life. I had all the time in the world to pour into my website.
My life looks completely different now–I’ve moved three times since then (in fact, I just got done moving again two weeks ago!), am in the middle of applying to master’s programs, started working again and am on schedule for a promotion this month, and have made many real life friends. I often feel frustrated that this hobby has fallen to a distant backburner because I have so much cued up in my head, but at the same time, I think there is something comforting about having this website here. It has seen me through a lot. The pressure to update and “complete” it is mostly self-inflicted. In reality, this website has asked nothing of me.
I still do want to do more with this site–a lot more! But I have come to accept that it might take awhile, and it probably won’t be as linear and clean as I want it to be. To anyone who has followed this website’s growth over the years, thank you. I intend to keep Nenrikido alive for many years to come.
