What's something you've been thinking about for ten years but never done? For me, it's organizing all the articles I've ever published.
I started writing in 2003, and it's been over twenty years. As I physically moved from south to north, my digital self also jumped from one community to another. But these places are like rental apartments—landlords always have an ideal tenant in mind and manage their properties according to that imagination.
Blogger added flashy animation effects while its future remains uncertain, and Medium only caters to English-speaking tenants and decided to add a paywall. As a tenant, I have no power to say no.
So I moved again. This time I finally made up my mind to organize all my articles from Blogger and Medium. Like a physical move, this process was always messy and painful, but when I picked up articles I casually wrote over a decade ago, I hated that immature version of myself while simultaneously envying how carefree he could be.
After a series of packing, organizing, and arranging, I finally finished moving. I decorated it to better match my ideal lifestyle, but unfortunately, it's just another rental. You seemingly control everything, but in reality, "ownership" is just an illusion—it's merely placed on a server somewhere in the cloud that you don't even know where it is.
There's a passage in the manga "Historie" that says:
The freedom everyone longs for is just a courtyard surrounded by fences, only differing in size. Freedom that extends to the horizon does not exist.
Indeed, isn't digital identity the same? Wherever there's society, there are boundaries. We're born pursuing freedom but are always within constraints.
However, welcome to my boundary ⸺ where I write, think, and welcome you to read.
Because it's too much trouble, I've even omitted the comment feature. If you find the articles interesting, feel free to chat with me on twitter.
Articles here are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. You're welcome to share and adapt them. For commercial use, please contact me ([email protected]). For detailed licensing information, please refer to the GitHub repository.