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hello world, this is …

february 20, 2026

My first blog post!

This first part will be quick. I'm going to talk a bit more about myself and what I want to do with this site. (Take this as an extended version of the home page.)

Hello! I'm Zack on the internet, Ben IRL, and Ant whenever I feel like it.

I'm a jack (zack?) of all trades and master of one at most. I'm a science student aiming to be a psychology researcher, but my deepest passion has always been art. I love it in various forms: drawing, graphic design, writing, music, dance, theatre.

If things go as planned this website should be up on my 18th birthday (February 19)! Inspired by the other awesome sites on Neocities, I've been wanting to start my own for years, so I decided to finally give myself a deadline … I might as well make it a meaningful one too.

(Update: I got busy. But I'm not too far from the target date!)

I'm starting this blog as writing practice. Specifically, I wanted to practice writing about myself in a way that isn't super teen-angsty. Each of my poems (which you can also find here) was written in emotional turbulence; some of them may not be bad, but they're all kind of pathetic to think about. I'm entering adulthood, and life is going to be so much bigger, so I don't want to keep fixating on the miserable parts.

I figure this will also be a good way to really live in my life. I feel like sometimes I just float through every day like a ghost. This is my attempt to reflect on my own experiences and emotions more.

So! This blog will be a (hopefully) regular log of my feelings, projects I'm working on, things I'm looking forward to, cool things I'm enjoying at the moment. (Especially things I'm enjoying at the moment—I really like documenting those.)

edge of seventeen

One of my best friends was born just a day before I was, so we just celebrate our birthdays together. On February 18, we had a little party with our friends. Our group likes to do big projects for each others' birthdays: zines, scrapbooks, gift boxes. Celebrations of who our friends are as people. (I do feel bad, though, because this month the group has twice the birthday projects to work on … but I really do appreciate the love and effort they put into these.)

Over the past year, I realized my love language really is gift-giving. I have fun making gifts, I have fun giving them, and I have fun receiving them. And so I try to make personal gifts for my friends every occasion because the effort is how I show my love. Even if it does mean I have to figure out ways to one-up myself every year … (I kid.)

We planned an 11-minute, 18-song medley for my friend. Each song was K-pop (or K-pop-adjacent) because of how she and I fell down the rabbit hole in August last year. Did it turn out good? Absolutely not. It went badly. Comically so. We were all too busy to find time to practice so we just kind of stumbled through the performance. But like I said: we may have crammed this but by god, we crammed it with love. It was fun and silly and it made our friend smile and I think that's what matters.

After that, my friends showed what they made for me: a video (also lasting 11 minutes, coincidentally) of memories and messages from other friends and teachers. (Special mention to my current English teacher who drew me because he noticed I tend to doodle in class! It's so cute. I'm also glad he doesn't see it as a bad thing.)

I like to think I'm someone who moves through each school year without leaving much of an impression. It was a pleasant surprise to receive meaningful messages despite that. Especially from my teachers! I still have a lot of self-doubt about facing adulthood, so it means a lot when important adults in my life say they believe in me.

To end this section on a sillier note, we also got cardboard cutouts of my and my friends' favorite idols … so my friend and I celebrated our birthdays with our group, but also with Yeonjun of Tomorrow X Together and Haru of XLOV (whose birthday is also on February 18!). The funny thing is that they turned out shorter than expected when they were printed—Yeonjun went from 5'11" to 5'4". (We joked that they were adjusted to Filipino size.) My friend brought cardboard YJ home, but cardboard Haru is currently sitting folded in a locker because I have nowhere to put them at my place. I'll find a spot for them soon!

(bear with me, i'm not a music critic)

My friend (my birthday almost-twin) and I are seeing TXT next month! It's going to be our first time seeing them and I'm super excited for it. I'm planning on making fake tickets themed around their previous releases to give to people I meet there; hopefully I can get started on those after my exams.

Being a music fan is so hard because it's like there's always an event somewhere … Cavetown was supposed to perform here this week (unfortunately that was canceled due to venue issues </3) and XLOV are coming here in April. To be fair, I feel like I only have enough to see one concert this year, and I think TXT were the best choice because I was sure I'd have someone to see them with.

I've been deep into K-pop the past six months—given my previous listening habits, it genuinely surprises me how some K-pop artists have managed to stay in my rotation for all that time. (XLOV, TXT …) Recently, however, I've been trying to branch back out.

I relistened to English Teacher's This Could Be Texas and Hop Along's Freshman Year, two albums I really enjoyed in the past. They both have sounds and lyrics that are hard to get bored of (favorites from each are "Nearly Daffodils" and "The Goose & the Wren," respectively). I also found out English Teacher released an album of This Could Be Texas remixes (amusingly titled This Could Be A Remix Album)—my personal favorite is Matt Maltese's rework of "Nearly Daffodils."

I also relistened to Jude York's EP HEARTSTRINGS. I don't think I appreciated it enough last year but now I absolutely love it. Just a delightful and devastating summer fling of a release . If the heartrending cover of "Slipping Through My Fingers" featuring his mother Liza Beamish wasn't enough to let you know that Jude York is an ABBA fan, you'd definitely hear it in the rest of the EP.

I recently went through Ashnikko's discography. A clip of a recent performance showed up on my feed and I remember I really enjoyed "Slumber Party" and "Daisy" (and also—that's birthday twin!), so I decided to listen to more of their songs. Her latest album Smoochies is so fun. So catchy. So gay. I don't know how I haven't tapped in sooner. (Side note: I ended up looping "I Want My Boyfriends to Kiss" for two hours working on a paper.)

Speaking of so gay, I want to end this section by talking about Déyyess' release Would You Go Down On A Girl? (Deluxe). I came across this through a misclick on Spotify, actually. I didn't listen to it then, but I'm so glad I decided to check it out a few days later because this EP is peak lesbian yearning wrapped in layers of atmosphere. "Lights Off" and the title track are personal favorites of mine. I especially love the storytelling of the former.

Overall, super gay list of music. Not that I'm ever not listening to gay music.

what's next?

Realistically, I don't think anyone's going to be reading this, save for a few friends I might send this site to. But if anyone does see this, I hope they'll get something good out of it. Maybe a sentiment to relate to or an album to check out.

I also want to try writing more essay-style pieces here, maybe in a separate section of the website. I sometimes think of being a video essayist, but I simply do not have the energy for video creation, so … just essayist it is.

So far I have two ideas: The first is a piece about queerness (and more specifically transness) in K-pop and adjacent spaces. Absolutely inspired by groups XLOV and XG having trans and gender-nonconforming members.

The second is more personal—I want to write about my struggle to figure out my identity when the lines between gender envy and attraction blur. I gave a five-minute speech about that for English a few weeks ago and it went … alright? But I really think it could have been better. It feels like there's just too much nuance to neatly pack into one short speech.

Anyways … I'm excited to start this blog and even more excited to keep it going. Hope to see you stick around for whatever comes next?

- ZACK