A Longing for Landlines

2026-04-07

blog, journal

Reminder to myself: *this can be informal word vomit, I don't have to cater to anyone but myself.* Now scroll up and read this as your self-doubt crops up and tells you to delete everything or to whittle it down to nothing.

I'm sitting here at work, a half day for the Good Friday holiday, typing away on my FAVORITE keyboard ever! I recently bought my first "real" keyboard, a Yunzii C75 with the candy switches. The clicky-clack that sounds like popping corn, which, at first, made me super self conscious. The noise emanates throughout the otherwise silent office. But it feels amazing and it brightens this grey-beige landscape. I am filling my office with bright pinks, yellows, and blues, tiny trinkets piled up around my desk. Tiny stacks of books here and there, one of them propping up my rescued aloe plant, the other my Bob Ross chia pet.

Firstly, I want to briefly introduce myself and this modest Neocities realm I've built with my own two HUMAN hands (this *is* a dig at ai bullshit slop)!

I embarked on this project in December 2025 after watching a struthless video titled, "The Brainrot Apocalypse (a DIY survival guide)". In it, he introduces Neocities as a quaint replacement to social media, one without ads and algorithms. It really grabbed my attention, because I've loved tinkering around on computers since I was a kid. In middle school I taught myself a tiny bit of HTML and I was amazed with the possibilities of coding. Around ages 11-14 I had blogspot and wordpress blogs dedicated to Club Penguin (a lifelong love of mine). The prospect of reengaging with my old hobbies and passions through Neocities was an instant sell. Truthfully, the learning curve has been long and tedious, but I wouldn't have it any other way. The joy is in the journey, not the destination. You know, it's nothing magnificent or intricate, but it is *all mine*, and *I* like it. Nobody else has to. Learning a new skill outside of sports or school feels euphoric. It's a feeling I've been disconnected from for so long. I'm mourning that lost time, but Neocities gives me a purpose to create again.

Next, I want to speak to the broader feelings of yearning I have for an era I barely experienced. I was born in 1999. My childhood as it relates to technology was that of an awkward in-betweener, where our chunky desktop PC with a roller ball mouse was replaced by a laptop, VHS tapes turned into DVDs, flip phones into touch screen smart phones. All within a decade. The era, as I recall, was actually filled with technological optimism. These advancements were exciting and amazing, and we could see a bright future full of possibilities. I got my first phone when I was about 10 or 11 (5th grade). It was a little green LG Firefly with two Shrek ear antennas. It had buttons 1, 2, 3, and 4, which were speed-dials for numbers you loaded into it, then an emergency button for 911. Honestly, it was glorious. My first iPhone replaced that beauty when I was in seventh grade. This was around the time Instagram started. The modern app is almost completely unrecognizable from it's 2012 predecessor.

I was a kid who loved playing. I spent a lot of my playtime with my favorite toys: Littlest Pet Shop, Rescue Heroes, My Little Pony, and the hoard of little random figures and trinkets I had collected over the years. As I entered middle school, *I* still liked playing with toys, but I felt a conflicting pressure from my peers who seemed to have grown out of that, and replaced their time with their smartphones. Though I secretly held on to my childhood playfulness as long as I could, slowly I gave in. By high school, I frequently on my phone, particularly in school. I was not as "bad" as many of my peers, but it *was* a constant distraction. I hate to admit it, but I know it ruined my education. Laptops were also school issued, and a big distraction during work-time. This persisted throughout college.

As a 26 year old adult, I am mourning a time I barely experienced. The 80s and 90s, for all of their faults, seem to have had the *right* amount of modernity. I've even found myself gravitating towards that era's style of clothing. I started watching the 90s sitcom "Tool Time" with my dad -- a show he frequently had on in the background when I was growing up -- and it felt like I was traveling back in time. The clothes, the furniture, the landline phone on the wall in their kitchen, everything about the set and character design felt like home.

Home. That's the feeling I'm chasing. My life from 1999-2007. Things got more complicated after that, for reasons both personal and pertaining to the changing world around us. Although I can't do much to change the world, I do have the agency in my life to change my habits and the technology I choose to engage with. For me, replacing screen time with my hobbies, going to the library for books and dvds, participating in community events, these have all made a tremendous positive impact on my quality of life. It feels closer to home.

Until next time,
-HR

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