Sometimes, a bad memory can tear open an old wound that you thought had long healed. You wonder to yourself whether things could have been different, if you had made better decisions. Your mind teases you of what could have been, as your morosely gaze into a deep abyss of failure.
You think about what it would take to be reborn and start again, but your head is clouded, and your body weak. The dream lives on in you, but fear and sorrow just keep you down. To move a finger is to lift a mountain.
@deadsuperhero Diaspora was not only the first time me and many other users got an idea what a decentralized social network can be. They also got the chance to try this out. And that's a lot.
I can’t shake the feeling that my involvement with #Diaspora ended in failure. I know that it was forever ago, when the tools and technology were much more limited. Seeing the state of the project over the past eight years breaks my heart.
I was young, dumb, and sure of myself. I thought I could see the future, but I had no idea what it looked like. Most servers are a ghost town, and the project is a sad bloated husk where bitter men go to shave their yaks.
I just wasn’t who the project needed to put it in the right direction.
Sometimes, I think about downloading a copy, setting up a test environment, trying to fix all the things that are wrong with it. I’m a shit programmer, though. People tell me I’m smart, but I just talk smart. I’m really just an idiot.
Even so, I’m not sure my patches would be accepted at this point, if I could make them. I think some of those bridges are far too burned to be crossed again, and the people running it have no interest in being dragged kicking and screaming into the rest of the Fediverse.
It just hurts. I dream about starting my own project, but I don’t think I’m smart enough.
@deadsuperhero I believe that Diaspora was a necessary stepping stone, a large-scale proof of concept of social media decentralization. It should always be remembered as an important milestone, even if their current philosophical and technical direction doesn't make them part of the now most popular decentralized social media network anymore.
In that sense, your (and anybody else's) work on it wasn't wasted on it back in the day, I believe it was important to show it was possible, and anyone who isn't into the current direction has rightfully jumped ship since.
Maybe I’m just being pessimistic. My antidepressants don’t always seem to work, though they make a lot of things better.
I have a lot of ideas, some of them good. It’s just easy to get caught up in your own head, and let fear prevent you from doing some of the things you really want to do.
When I die, I just want to know that my life was worth something, that I did something great and was part of something beautiful. I think I’m on my way with some of my efforts, but I’m not sure how to get past this blocker. My biggest fear is that nothing I do actually matters.
@deadsuperhero I remember being very excited to support #Diaspora’s crowdfund, and I still have my t-shirt here somewhere. 😂 But when everything was said and done, I did not have the technical know how to run my own server.
YOU, however, sound miles ahead of me, and therefore plenty knowledgeable enough to start good things, if you really want to.
Add comment