THE HERPLING BLOGS
Text reports on my life.
Febuary 2026
2026
We could dance if youd let me some spectral memory of childhood. Sitting in small underground classrooms sitting in small windowless rooms they tried to taught me how to be. We pass around games of exquisite corpse and I look out the window and i wonder why i cant play with the other kids. We pass around notes and i wonder why i cant play with the other adults. Dark wet room and a boy loves me for a moment. Small bright halls and a boy loves me for a moment.
Scared there aren't anymore people for me.
Feb 6, 2026 :: Gah, school
Coming to the realization that I really should and slightly need to get a degree. What a horrible life I live. Need to work more on putting my art on the internet beyond that though.
Feb 4, 2026 :: Where to go
Realizing I can't make plans for my future off of where I want to be right now. I don't think I want to be anywhere right now. Making plans based off next-best options that might get me somewhere I want.
How do you really become an artist. At least this way I'll be given the time and resources to find out how. I just wish I felt more like I had a home right now, not an interim space. A time I'll never have again but can't fully appreciate.
January 2026
Jan 22, 2026 :: More Applications.
I'm so frustrated by education and the place I have put myself in regarding it sometimes. What if I've cornered myself? Positioned myself for failure? So far from home and I feel so far behind some of my peers. Tied my horse to the wrong post.
What if I'm not doing enough now? I haven't grown community enough around me, haven't hit some of the milestones I thought I would've by now. I feel weirdly stuck, I have to commit to this path I don't fully understand.
I have to figure out job applications, gallery applications, atelier applications, college applications. I don't know what I'm doing and I just sometimes wish someone would direct me. I don't know what to do to get to the work I want.
January 17, 2026 :: Being Tethered
I called with my dad the other day about what I'm doing in life, what I plan or want to do. Mostly regarding how I will move forward with my education. These days I've been trying to figure out if I want to go to a 4-year university, or maybe an atelier, or try to work without a degree.
He asked about this, asked why I am so focused on becoming “independant” and productive. I want to be independent, to work towards eventually owning a place of my own that I can work peacefully in until presumably I die.I need to be productive so I can afford it all. It's a lot more complex than that, but those are the broad strokes.
I'm struggling to enjoy the time right now, throttling myself forward into becoming a financially stable (hah) member of society, and he was chiding me for trying to tether myself to one place so early. Told me to move around more, figure out what I want more before diving into what I think I need. I think i'm just a bit tired of feeling disconnected to wherever I am and whoever I'm around.
January 14-15, 2026 :: Camping? Trips, relaxation, whatever.
Me and my roommate were thinking about camping over the next few days, but I threw a wrench into a lot of those plans. I don't know, everything wasn't shaping up in my desire for a nice relaxing trip, and then I finally found a probable workaround and was just filled with such an intense dread that I called it off.
I want to relax, I would like to be out of the house for an evening,be somewhere else that is nice and comforting and outside. I don't know what has me so stressed about the idea. It should be good.
It was completely illogical, but probably a good enough mood. I'm currently outside painting and listening to my favorite album. Tomorrow we might swim. This weekend we're going to hike by the ocean. I feel better.
January 13, 2026 :: What I've been up to, regarding Uli-Ulle
About that worldbuilding, I have been doing pretty decently with it recently. Mostly overhalling a lot of my characters, re-exploring some concepts and fleshing them out. Lots of vis-dev stuff, but also understanding meaning and practical applications in little ways.
A big parts has been tattoos, how they look, what they mean, what they do, all that. Integrating them into more characters, helping define a closer connection to the temple, or hint at it with characters whose lives and histories are more ambiguous. I also just love patterns. Yay patterns.
Something bugging me that I want to figure out more is subbing out different language when referring to “The Temple” or “The Beast” of Uli-Ulle. I don't know, something in the presentation of it seems a little juvenile. Pisses me off.
January 12, 2026 :: Site reworking, etc
Did a lot of the bones of reworking the site today and feeling good about it. Everything is overall lighter and easier for me to work with, easier to build on. Oddly enough, a lot of that comes from removing the immediate need to put a bunch of my digital art up. It always felt hard and clunky. Looking forward to in the future implementing my art across the board instead of all shoved on one page. Part of this is showing off more paintings, maybe more practice or school work. Those are more in-depth, and even though I can't recreate the feeling of seeing it in person, I can center them a lot and actually write about them. I treasure them more then a lot of my digital work, see them more meaningful, valuable, present, tangible, whatever.
Maybe when I make a book digitally again I'll feel different about the medium, but right now I am a bit detached to it and its permanence. I will probably forever do some of it, it's fun, good practice, and I can explore my characters, worldbuilding, and concepts easily and in a way that I feel like I could publish. I just need to gather a little more steam to hop back into passively worldbuilding, and in a few months/years I can transfer that into a better, more published work.
I want to do blog posts more, and more often. I wish there was an easier way for me to upload them that wasn't google docs->VSCode->Neocities because that makes their integration more annoying but oh well. Maybe I will only update my blog page on Neo, neglecting it in VSC. Sometimes I want to write these blog posts out physically before too, so that's another annoying level. Argh. Need to hire me a scribe.
January 11, 2026
Archived my old blog and started this one. The old one was poorly designed and i didn't want to rework all of it.