About Me!

A small introduction

Hello! As mentioned on the front page, I have a complicated (well not that complicated really is it, you could easily call it a middling to severe disdain) for the social internet (social media). In December 2024 I got myself a flip phone and started on the slow slow journey of learning to disconnect myself a little more from the online world. One of the things I've found is that I really love having a place for self expression, even if no one is listening, and so this website is my little corner to scream into the void!

As far as personal information goes, I'm Irish and live in the country still. I'm an art students and early school leaver. I'm queer and non-binary (they/them). I'm also multiply disabled. I live with a chronic illness that is physcially disabling and means I am now a wheelchair user, and I'm autistic too. Both of these mean I try my best to make my site accessible, especially to those with sensory disabilities (blind/D/deaf), for whom the internet is often completley inaccessible.

I also align myself very much with the solarpunk movement, both in the political and artistic sense. We are living in a climate emergency and solarpunk helps me to cling to the last slivers of hope and makes me more likely to actually try and get active to push for change rather than choosing to lie down in a ditch. As far as the rest of my politics goes, I take a lot of influences from the left. Social ecology, Ursula K. le Guin, Liberation Theology and Quakerism, it's a real pick and mix over here but you could certainly pin me down as a leftist and anti-capitalist.

Onto something lighter than politics then...

My Interests!

Fibre arts: Knittng especially. I even have a whole section of my blog dedicated to it! I first learnt to knit when I was 13 as part of an effort to avoid fast fashion and learn to make my own clothes. Still to this day I'm just absolutely in love with it. Like many people I find it very theraputic and there really is a great sense of accommplishment in making things for yourself and others.

Mending clothes (and repairing generally!): I'm a big believer that the most sustainable thing you can use is the stuff you already have. I'm lucky to be getting to a point in my life where across the board I have pretty much everything that I need/is of use to me. This also means that I have a lot of items that it is my duty to care for, extending their lives for as long as physically possible until they break down into unusable tiny pieces. This also means I'm a big believe in the 'repair movement' if you wanted to give the philosphy a name. Mending and repairing for myself and other brings me great joy, and like knitting is a very rewarding practice.

Art: As mentioned above, I am an art student. Drawing and painting are things I've done since before I could read (and probably since before I could properly talk). I don't really show my art off on this website because it feels a little too personal to go plastering on the internet, but eventually I'll have to get a website of some kind for the whole professional side of being an artist. For now though I'm happy to have me and my doodles live soley in the real world.

Reading: I was really lucky to be raised by two parents who really valued books and reading. I genuinely can't remember a time where I didn't have a library card. My interests and favourite genres have shifted over the years, as I'm sure they do for a lot of people, but I still try to keep it fairly broad between old and new, fiction and non-fiction. If you're interested in what I read and what I think of it, you can look through my reading log!

Gardening: Because of my physical disability, I don't get to do a lot of gardening. But I do really love it and find it interesting. I tried over the summer to grow some vegtables across a roughly 1 meter by 1 meter square, and I did get some broadbeans and beetroot (although I left the beetroot too long and they went to flower). I'm looking for ways in the coming year that I can participate in gardening, even if it's just planting in flower pots.

Banjo and old-time music (and folk generally):This is another one that doesn't really get any show on this site but I've been playing 5 string banjo since about April 2024! I really love Appalachian music from ballads to dance tunes and as an Irish person it's nice to think of me playing this music as it 'coming home' (carrying new and beautiful influences from black folk music alongside it's scots/irish roots).

Some fun facts:

1. I am an avid Wikipedia user/sometimes editor. This has not made me good at html.
2. I've made or bought secondhand all of my clothes since 2022 with the noteable exceptions of one pair of overalls and a pair of coudory trousers from a sustainible/ethical company, and two t-shirts - one from a small artist bought via a not horrible seller (the company that actually made the shirt does have sustainibility and ethical qualifications, but I probably should have checked those more thoroughly at them time than I did.) and the other from a history museum in rural Brittany.
3. I have chipped my front tooth twice! Once on a revolving door and once on a lolipop (long story)
4. I have succesfully contributed to at least three of my friends recieving an autism diagnosis
5. I am a twin! We're fraternal and different in some ways (my twin is not a dropout, for example) but very similar in others and are very close to one another.

Image/Other Credits

The background for the header comes from Swifty's hq!

The image background for the wider website comes from here on Creative Commons, which is an amazing resource run by Wikipedia of free-to-use images (always check if the owner of the image wants credit though, there's a few kinds of creative commons liscences!)

Webrings!