Pen to Paper or Keys to Site? - Chrispy's Corner

March 2026

Hello and thank you for reading what will be my first post blog to my website. Within the past 6 months I've seen two separate YouTube videos from different creators talking about their journey learning HTML and creating their own websites on the indie web.

I was lucky enough to grow up during a time in which surfing the web was something that you actively did, looking for different sites to occupy your time, and back then each website would entertain in different ways. While I think I was too young to enjoy some of the golden age of the internet, I definitely was there to experience some of it.

Over the past 15 or so years I've spent a majority of my time on a growing minority of websites. Of course, I mentioned YouTube in my previous paragraph, and that has definitely been one of the largest time-sinks of my life. Regardless, that one may actually be mostly positive; it brought me here after all. The same can't be said for the majority of others.

I don't think I can call some of my earliest days surfing the web "useful", though they taught me one thing important. How to find things I didn't even know I was looking for. Usually I'm never in need of new music to listen to, new books to read, new games to play, as I know how to find all that by not looking. Of course, effort does go into it, but like the days of yore I'm not working to solve an end goal. I'll never reach the end of all music or read every book ever written.

I don't think I really have an end goal here either.I think mostly it may be something I pick up and spend a little time with and then move on from. Left waiting to be stumbled across, like the ruins of an ancient civilization. The one thing I'm sure of is that it is a stepping stone towards what is next!