it’s hard to go back and read my writing. like gurl, why you gotta be so, so, so! oof! I didn’t know what I was doing! I don’t know what I’m doing now, either, but I have a better sense of the direction I’m heading. I will bring your gracious benefit of the doubt to myself: a year ago this was new, and different, and vulnerable, and as a tiny seedling my perspective was different than my current perspective as a slightly taller sapling.

Well and I feel like you’re hiding less of your tiddlers now? Or is that you’re crafting more public ones? Just like I have /all, you have your layers, too, I guess.

I’m grateful that our early interactions led to me adding a more private layer - but I’m also glad for those messages between us simply because I got to know you better. Takes a lot of foot-mouth-putting and shredded past-talking notes to get there - with anyone. Your voice has become a lot more familiar to me over time - it is a voice that sounds colorfully creative but with a sensitive longing.

I was definitely worried about you disappearing at one point. But now I just see that you were in a phase of building your wiki. Seeing that I fall into those phases, too, I think we’re alike in that way. So I just feel a kinship now.

I don’t think there’s anyone who I’m more interested to hear their ideas or impressions about Fraidycat than you. I think your organizational and visual improvements to Tiddlywiki are second to none. But I also think it will take time to understand organizing at the Fraidycat meta-level. I would pay a lot of dollars to see what a Sphygmus remix would look like tho.

Perhaps these words would be different if I had drafted them in private — I don’t think I can say for sure, this time. I’ve wobbled back and forth as the deadline of my publish script approaches — will I take the private tag off and let it roll through, tonight? Or will I keep it tucked away just a little longer?

While I realize that what ends up at sphygm.us is somehow trimmed, I didn’t know how - and was about to ask you, when I realized that pearl/publish and pearl/crontab are right there! It’s lovely that I can use your wiki to research you in this way. (Your publish script removes tiddlers tagged private and goes off at 8:20 GMT — the sphygm.us last-modified header right now says 8:25. So you write against a deadline each day - although I doubt you race to meet it - as you say: keep it tucked away, anticipation rather than haste.)

It’s so cool that you have a self-designed publishing system setup for yourself. I wonder what it’d be like if a podcast or a video blog ran in this way. The thought is kind of cool - of a wiki of audio files, some in ‘draft’ form or comprised of disparate fragments.

Give me the OG Godslayer & Return of the Fallen, plus Realms Unraveled (with the multi-factions) and I’d be perfectly happy!

Don’t know why the OG doesn’t grab me. I’ll try again. I think I thought Mechana was too strong there. I feel like you have to go Mechana or you’re lost. And I like to go Void.

I’m with you on multi-factions. I love the flip cards, too. And the weird stuff: like the one demon that lets you bring other demons into your deck and use them as power.

As for the rest — I’m afraid I don’t know how to mock you — neither can I replicate the kind jesting you and Ivan gift to h0p3.

I have a unibrow - so that’s an easy target. I also conceal my feelings too much and come off as aloof or condescending. So it helps when people trim me down - I have a sister who just always tells me to fuck off and sometimes slaps me in the face to get me to come down. (She is the best, she’s able to full-on slap me when the time for it is ripe.) Anyone in the room will tell you it’s absolutely necessary.

I also touch people too much in the pool. I don’t know - my inhibitions come down and I start grabbing people too much. This isn’t as much of a problem between you and I right now - but if we end up in a Roblox virtual spa one of these days - hopefully not, but just be aware.

I also have these terribly graphic and deplorable dreams that could only have been concocted by the worst kind of debased mental state. This isn’t the worst of them: but I once had a dream that I was murdering people, just going house-to-house stabbing people in their homes and throwing the knives in trashcans when I was done with them. The next day when I went to work, someone said to me, “Hey, I had this crazy dream last night where you were going around murdering people!” This chilled me to the bone! What’s that supposed to mean??

I’m often drawn into the trap of wishing my online correspondence would manifest itself offline; I fancifully dream of us sitting together on couches in a comfortably lit room, drinks of choice in hand, full bandwidth engaged.

I have no doubt that I would love to meet you. And the others, too. There was once a guy online who asked me in IRC where I lived and I told him. So he drove out here and we met at a bowling alley and ate at the diner attached to it. It was very unexpected, but a very fond memory. I think he had a habit of roving around to drop in on people.

However, I’ve also had some negative experiences - not anything too invasive, just unwanted attention - and so I resolved to lay lower, just keep online things separate. But it might just be that the uptight side of me needs a slap in the face again.

what’s left? I think this is left, this being-together-in-quietness, the park bench, and here is where the conversation might pause for a while and pick right back up in a month or a year. (well, also, it feels a little silly to chat about things that are just chilling in my wiki. it’s both a blessing and a curse — idk, blargle!)

Oh, my mom always played that song when I was a kid. She kind of had a mocking way about it - like the old friends were just way too cute about it. She would sing it when people were too cute about being BFFs. But I still think it’s great - I have an old friend coming in a week and we’ll take a walk for hours next to the train tracks - it’ll be too cute just like that. I’ll have to sing that when we’re walking just to ruin the mood.

I’ll have to think more about video. Right now I’m feeling like it’s a crutch and I shouldn’t betray hypertext in that way. But then, I’ve written too long again and now wish I could experience a video of your thoughts and meanderings - wish I could see you do the ‘warm space’ website thing and tour us through your stuff…

So I know what it means to want more info - completely natural.