12:29 AM (of Monday, December 9th, 2024)
Today is Sunday, December 8th, 2024 and I flew back to Puerto Rico today. I had only 3 hours of sleep last night, and I don't know how I do it, but I function pretty well throughout the day getting only this much sleep. Yesterday too, I only had 3 hours of sleep. So this has been 2 nights in a row where I only had 3 hours of sleep. It's not great, I don't like doing it, but it just happens and I put up with it.
I slept at around 2 AM last night, and I woke up at 5 AM this morning to get ready to go to the airport. My flight was at 8:30 AM, but I wanted to get there at around 6 AM. I like being 2-3 hours early just in case the line through security is really long and takes forever. This morning, there was basically no security line, it took maybe a minute or less. Also, even though now I like being early to the airport, back then that wasn't the case.
On the airplane flight, I listened to podcasts and music. I pondered about how some podcasts and songs have had a profound impact on my life, and the creators of that content have no idea. They don't even know that I know their song or podcast, they don't even know who I am, and yet the content they created, has impacted me in a meaningful way.
I have made stuff before, like videos, images, games, apps, programs, websites, and released them. I used to have a couple of websites that received more than 100,000 unique visitors per month, they used to be one of the top websites on the entire Internet, I made them back in high school and college. In middle school, I've had YouTube videos that received hundreds of thousands of views too, this was in 2006 when YouTube was pretty much brand new. Just look up the name "Pwnwner", look at the account creation date, look at when the videos were uploaded (18 years ago), that's me on YouTube
Reading through some comments on the videos today, some people come back years later to post about how they remember this video and how it impacted them. It's the same with the websites I created, there are some Reddit posts about "whatever happened to x website? It used to be my favorite" or some comment like that, and people would theorize. Yeah the ripple effects of some content I created, maybe I'm just seeing patterns where none exist, but for example, a creepypasta I improved/published, was turned into a movie. That creepypasta brought the most traffic, sometimes more than 1 million visitors during Halloween, if I recall correctly.
I'll just go out with it and stop being vague. That CreepyPasta is "The Midnight Man Game," someone wrote that story on 4chan, and it was on no other website. This was actually even before the word "creepypasta" was ever used, I think. This was in 2009/2010, it feels recent to me, and I still have memories of those days, but that was ages ago.
Anyway, I found this original creepypasta someone wrote, an anonymous, I copied it, and improved it, and published it on my website, and it became a hit somehow. I don't know how, but it started attracting millions of people. It was even turned into a movie. It's the same with some other content on the sites. I don't know how they became so viral or anything, but they had so many people visiting. There are memes from some of the content I posted and made popular, that's how I know they made an impact. I've seen people on this site, AYearAgo.Today, mention niche stuff I have had a tiny hand in making popular, and it's very likely they've visited one of my old sites, or they visited sites influenced by those sites.
It's weird to come across a reference you had a hand in. "Oh yeah, I was part of that in some way," but I don't really tell anyone that. No one knows what I've been a part of. No one knows what anyone has been a part of. We could be at a party, and the director of the movie Wicked or Joker could be there, and we wouldn't even know who they are. They would just blend in with the rest of the crowd.
These websites are all archived on Archive.org, so they can be visited and explored in that way, but I'm not going to mention what sites they are. One of my websites I made back in elementary school, 2003 or so, is "CoolMegg.tk", and it is archived on archive.org. It's interesting that a 3rd grader has a website archived on archive.org, I was 9 years old. The Internet was basically brand new, smartphones didn't exist, no one I knew made any websites back then, yet I somehow was making websites at 9. That is fascinating. And what do I have to show for it?
I looked up one of my old teachers from high school, Mr. Vagts. I just searched his name on a search engine, not on social media or anything, and he's now a professor. I looked him up because I am now his age today when I was his student back then. I was 14, he was 31 or so. He was married and had a house, had a kid too. He was a very charismatic teacher, and really left an impact on me. The first link that comes up is RateMyProfessor, and I"m surprised he had a bunch of 1 star ratings. This is one of the most impactful teachers I've had, and he's rated low.
Anyway, I wondered too if the teachers know how they impacted their students? Mrs. Koeninger is the teacher that impacted me the most, she was my IT teacher. Then Ms. or Mrs. Abdelrazaq, who was my English teacher, and the one who got me to start journaling. She made her entire class start journaling, but I wonder how many kept it up after all these years? I remember Ms. Lukas, Ms. Hapsworth, Mrs. Robinson, Mr. Rogers, Ms. Lee, Mr. Ward, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Carter, Ms. White, Mrs. Love. I also had a teacher who was vegan, he was vegetarian since birth, I don't remember his name now though. Then there was the hottest teacher of all, I keep forgetting her name because she got married and her name changed, she's the one who gave me an A- in English, the most attractive teacher I've ever had, she was 24 when she taught our class and that was her first year teaching. I remember her new married name, but her previous name is what I called her by, which I don't remember now.
All these teachers impacted my life in some way. I doubt they know that though. I don't even know if they remember me at all. Probably not.
Also, no one knew I had a YouTube or websites getting millions of visitors. No one cared, not even my closest friends, not even my parents, absolutely no one. They were just things I was working on after school. I wrote original tales and fiction too, wrote some short stories. I was extremely creative back then. I wonder what happened? Adulting? Also the improvements I made to The Midnight Man Game were significant, I don't think they would have gone viral without the improvements. Maybe I am also just imagining this, but maybe I rewrote the whole thing too, but honestly everything from 15 years ago is a blur, so who knows.
Lately I haven't really been making anything creative. The past few years I've just been posting on X / Twitter, and got probably tens of millions of views, tens of thousands of likes, mostly vegan activism posts. Who knows if they've made any impact though? It's hard to measure. A single view can mean an entire life changed. I've traveled a lot, probably more than 10 countries in the past two or so years alone. Can't say that's impacted anything. I've published some AI songs, although that feels like cheating.
I'm pretty tired. I got back to Puerto Rico today, and I went out to Terrestre Cocina Compassion, and ordered some Asian vegan foods. They asked if I wanted any chopsticks, I told them I already have some. I ate my meals with chopsticks today even though I normally don't. I think it's really cool to eat with chopsticks, especially since I'm Asian and just fit a chopstick using character so well.
I'm very sleepy. There's so much I want to do in life, and I want a partner to do it with.
Anyway, that was my day today.
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