asuh.com

Being back at asuh.com is satisfying. I’ve started new again, renewing a passion I once had, and I’m excited for things to come.

Before I knew it was probably my career, creating on the Internet (capital ‘I’ at the time) became a new puzzle I enjoyed solving. I spent the late 1990s and early 2000s learning to how to utilize all things digital. I was inspired by friends and industry professionals, seeing how websites gave people freedom and platforms of their own.

I was able to register this domain in 2002 after it was released by someone else who previously purchased it. This is my prized domain name since I feel a connection to the term “asuh” since the early 1990s. For the next few years, it was my digital home and where I expressed myself to broadcast to others, interested to keep up with even a small part of my life.

Things slowly changed in the MySpace days starting around 2007. I posted less here and more there, where the eyeballs and activity were focused. That participation moved over to Facebook in the late 2000s and has more or less stayed there since this year.

2012 was the year my website’s pulse stopped. One last post about my move and life change and I stopped writing. I didn’t have the desire or interest that I used to have since the online collective, all of us who go on the internet (lowercase ‘i’), was locked into social platforms. How could I find motivation to post here anymore when everyone had migrated into the various apps and sites?

Now at the end of 2018, I’m social-media-burnt-out. I’ve all but stopped posting on Facebook and Twitter except now when I post here first. I don’t enjoy the social media participation like I used to and don’t get the same feeling of enjoyment. I lost trust in most of these platforms.

For the last few years, as I’m listening to This Week in Google, I kept hearing of a movement called Indieweb about owning your data and content: taking back the control from the various “silos”. It was appealing, my ears perked up every time I heard it. So in 2017, I finally made an effort to learn more and participate. I finished a first phase of a website redesign on this site, updated existing content, added new pages and content, and now have renewed motivation.

Controlling what I do online is once again my priority. I hope to set an example here and elsewhere showing how to take back control of my online presence. By creating posts like this freely on my website, I once again give back to an open web, one which starts with me and isn’t controlled by other sites or apps.

Maybe this is just a rose-tinted view I get from my own digital bubble, but being back on here gives me an excitement I missed.