Naepalm

It's no surprise that I deal with a lot of social media.  I mean, considering that I work in a place completely devoted to the web and all the uses of... social media is something that I'm bound to have fallen into at some point.  Just look at my footer.  As big as social media is, social marketing is just as big right now.  I have a fair few SEO people who follow me on twitter, I've signed up (a bit regretfully) for biznik, and even Facebook is engulfed in a social marketing phenomenon.  I get it, I really do, but that doesn't mean that I actually get into it, and I often really feel lost in the crowd.

On twitter, I follow a lot of local people.  I like to see what the locals are tweeting, get to know who they are, and even keep in touch with what some of the local businesses are doing or... local events like the Bellingham Farmers Market.  Lately, though, I've felt like the tweets I see are very bogged down by networking for the sake of marketing.  Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I can't say that it's really my thing.  I like to network not for the sake of networking, for the sake of marketing, or for anything like that - I like to network for the sake of knowing people, and for the sake of allowing people to know me.

I've been deep into the realm of the web since I was about 16.  If you count the amount of boyfriends I had before I met and married my wonderful husband, Nick, the majority of them were online relationships with boys that I had met who lived in other cities or who I had never met at all.  I played an online free-form roleplaying game and made many friends there - a few of whom I now retain 10 years later.  I play World of Warcraft with a wonderful group of people through yet another social media - Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs (Or MMOs) and I've known some of them for almost 5 years now and consider them to be very, very close friends.

I'm finding it very difficult to filter through all the twitter posts lately with links to business things or with things that are just for the sake of saying "Hey, I'm out here!  See me!  See my business!".  I want to be known, personally known, and I want to know other people, the people I follow personally.

I don't really want to go through my twitter follow list, but I have a feeling that the axe will be coming down soon.  I want to genuinely meet and discuss with people, not feel like I'm filtering through a bunch of unimportant shit to see who everyone is, and it's inevitable that people out there are not going to want the same things I do - being different is what makes us unique after all.  But I think I may need to start looking for the people who do want the same thing I do, good friends.

I must admit, I'm not a fan of soft openings.  I always think you should dive in headfirst and either be finished or be satisfied with the fact that you'll never be finished.  I tend to lean towards the latter statement.  As an artist, being finished is a rare treat indeed.  Whether I'm working on a drawing, erasing, fixing sketch lines, adding a bit of color here, a thicker ink-line there... or working on a website where I'm adjusting the grid a little bit, adding rounded corners to something that didn't have it before, playing with my font... one way or another, I never feel that anything is ever finished.

Which, might I mention, is bad for those of us who can be a bit anal-retentive when it comes to making our site perfect.  And I do mean perfect.

That said, Naepalm isn't finished.  I'm not sure that it will be finished now or in the future.  There's a lot of things that still need to be tweaked, a lot of things that I'll probably want to change in coming days.  One can only improve, right?

So, I'd like to say that despite the fact that the gallery has a fair few bugs that I'm begging for help with, and the blog probably still has some hidden pages that need to be styled, aaaand the lightbox needs a bit of tweaking to make it function as I've intended... the list could go on, but... here she is!  A little place on the net that I intend to call home for a farther future than other endeavors, and hopefully a spot that I feel more comfortable talking about me, and the things I love like art and design and my cats.

I usually end on a cheesy note like "So, welcome to Naepalm, be ready to get set on fire!" but let's be honest: you're only going to think I'm ridiculous.  Okay, I am ridiculous, so what does it matter?

Welcome to Naepalm, it's open for... something!