Aksat Upadhyay.

Making Things No One Sees

Do people only make things, by things I mean projects, crafts, and art, only to show it to others? No, right? That is quite a grim way to see things, but I believe that, may it only be subconsciously, one sees a lot of the work they do in this way. Do not get me wrong, I am not talking about work you do for a living or that which you do on someone else's request/command, I speak of artistic work, hobby work.

This thought occurred to me when as a weekend project I excitedly transferred some of my saved funds to a domain registrar, and got hold of a .com domain in my name; not the most exciting thing for some, I know; but for me, it was one of those thoughts that occur time to time, those little, I don't want to call it 'dreams', that is too powerful a word, let us say, long term checklist items that I wanted, I always wanted to have an email address that did not end with the usual; "gmail.com", "rediffmail.com", "protonmail.com" et cetera; I just craved the novelty of linking to a basic, but personal, website in any bio on the internet, or even more niche things, like being able to host a server and have it have a proper domain instead of an ugly IP address.

T: Shut up man! Get on with it. I do not want to know about your opinions on email addresses or whatever, I'll stop reading if you keep getting lost all the time.

Wow, you are right. I got totally lost in the previous paragraph, I was just meant to say I purchased a domain and started chugging along happily trying to put a website on it. Unfortunately, my funny talk does not make up for my lack of coding skills, I do not even know how to say "hello world" in an HTML file let alone how to go about making a website. Now I could take the route of 'modernity' and embrace the 'Miracle of AI'; go to one of the many websites littered across the world wide web that promise to make a professional, well animated landing page for me, with only one request to some 'all knowing' large language model; all for free of course. But that would leave me bland page with no soul. Just on of those clean, modern web pages with the fancy blur and other things, you know what I am talking about right?

T: Yes, I get it, those standard company websites.

Exactly, and AI is making this bland, soulless design more and more prevalent, it has its merits, AI I mean, not the soulless pages, but most of its advertised usage either sucks the creativity out of something, or just produces garbage that makes the internet feel rotten, and for doing all this, our government offers to these AI companies’ tax brea-

T: NO. I will stop reading now. How is this related to the title in any way? I do not care for your rants and opinions on AI, that is not what I signed up for, you cannot write anything in the name of 'creativity'. You get going with the story or I will beat you up with my sandals.

Ok. Ok. I am sorry. I promise, to be better. I just find it so hard to focus you know, I believe it because of-

T: SEE! THIS. EXACTLY. ONE SECOND. YOU ARE STRAYING AGAIN.

No! No! Where was I? ... Yes! I cannot code.

T: You cannot code.

T: But still want to make a website, and for some reason did not think of this before paying cash money to buy up a domain, maybe your focus problems are not limited to writing...

Stop being so reasonable all the time man! You need to do some things unplanned, where is the fun then; also, isn’t it you who is going on an unrelated tangent now? 'Mr Reasonable'.

T: ...

Basically, I would rather make something that is bad than something that is soulless.

On my pursuit for something unique, I stumbled upon a webpage making software that had AI features (like literally everything as of late) but still had at its core, a pretty user-friendly graphical interface which I could use to make a website like one makes a keynote, with drags and drops, and that is exactly what I did.

I sat down with my morning coffee, my plan was to spend an hour and a half making some 1 or 2 versions of the site, and then put it on the internet, but things escalated much more than I anticipated, it was now lunchtime and I was having lunch with one hand and was frantically refreshing the website on my phone with the other hand as if I were some gambling addict glued to the casino website, all just to make sure it rendered on mobile devices, and here is where a thought occurred to me.

T: Only took 5 paragraphs to finally get to the point, good golly.

I will never use that site on a mobile device. I only will ever access it on a PC, why do I care about mobile devices, I know what you will say: "It is so people who use mobile phones can access it", but my friend, nobody will be using the site, other than me. Just me. I am the sole user of the site of my name. I do not have any social media accounts to put links to the site anywhere, I do not have any regular people who converse over mail for it to be noticed through the address or the watermark I add in the signature, but I design the site as if someone is looking at it, as if someone would scrutinize it, I try to add little user friendly things to help people who cannot navigate the site, I hide little easter eggs all over it, what for? No one knows about it, no one visits it, and even if someone ends up here somehow, who is interested in a 2001 looking personal website of an inexperienced student who thinks having a website is cool? No one.

T: Wow this took a dark turn, are you lonely? Do you need support?

No! Stop interrupting my chain of thought, and also no, I am not lonely, what makes you think that?

T: The whole last paragraph sounds like a trauma dump.

That is for... Artistic Effect! You see! Now let me continue.

T: Huh... Sure.

Then I started to notice that this was not just the case for this website, I would do something that is personal, say writing a journal, but I would then omit some things, with the thought; "What would someone think if they read this?". It is a journal, a private place for the unrestricted flow of thoughts, and yet my very own mind cannot help itself from restricting the free flow of thoughts in the eye of some imaginary 'social scrutiny'. And it is not only subconscious action, because I hear it form into actual thoughts, and sometimes, self-talk. I will add some new decoration to my room and then think about how I will introduce it someone; what the story behind it is, my perspectives on its existence et cetera; Why? It is close to never I invite someone to visit me at home, and even then, I never let anyone enter my room, but when I do anything in my room, or in my life, I treat it as something I shall be presenting to someone one day, even though it has never happened to be the case, what is this?

T: You titled this as 'Making Things No One Sees' but to me this sounds more like, 'Making things to show to people, but no one shows up'.

Ay! That sounds like an insult!

T: It is not an insult, it is a show of concern, I ask you as a friend, are you lonely? Can I help?

What is with you? I am here trying to write this essay and first you become a common-sense coach, and now a psychiatrist? This is not about loneliness, it is not like nobody would actually see those things If I ask, but those things are made by me to be private, and I still treat them as if they are being scrutinized, that is the topic, you talk much smarter than you actually are.

T: Who is it with the insults now? I still have my Sandals with me, and I am ready to dip them in water to make them heavier if push comes to shove, go on with your damned essay.

Is it masked perfectionism? Perhaps one pretends that someone is watching their every move to ensure that they not cut corners in the things they care for. Perhaps I am so worried about how the Nerf Gun I wasted all my money on (to never use again) will look when hung on the wall that I pretend that there will be a group of people I will be giving a detailed description about my thought process during the purchase and subsequent installation of the Nerf Gun upon my wall to, and explain to them how it's unique colours shall complement the space on my wall that had been empty for so long.

T: I am not sure what is more unrealistic; the fact that the people would listen to this whole explanation, or that group of people would care to visit your room.

Seriously, masked perfectionism could be an answer. It is a terrific mechanism if applied in the right places, perhaps if I could believe that my conversation with myself were scrutinized by the people who do not inhabit my body, I could act better as a person, not tell lies to myself when it came to completing work that needs to be completed, practice good behaviour in private, and as Aristotle says, good behaviour is not some inherent skill that one is born with, it is cultivated with habit; so if I could use this method of imagined judgement to nudge myself to practice the behaviour that would be of long term benefit to me, well then...

T: It would be great (for me especially)!

Yes. But let us not jump to a conclusion as it is very easy to justify any idea if you are the one who has come up with it, bias of the self. Perhaps in this flow of writing, I have tricked myself with my own words to come up with a fantasy. To add least add a trace of realism to this fever dream like text, let us imagine some other reasons.

What if it is the internet? Yes. The Internet.

T: Not another tangent no, please no. The Internet has nothing to do with this; we are almost 2000 words in just wrap it up man I cannot torment myself and hear another ramble please.

This is not a tangent, this might be a better solution, think about it! What is one thing you cannot expect to get on the internet?

T: True Social Connection?

Well yes, but not that, another thing.

T: Companies not harvesting your data?

Exactly! Privacy! You must assume anything you do online is stored in a permanent record, no matter how much you delete, it will always still be stored in the archival drives of some data centre, especially so now, as the value of data has jumped exponentially after the introduction of programs that rely on it for their improvement. My generation has grown up with the internet. It uses it daily, it knows of the horrors of non-existent privacy (at least I hope they do), and I am one of them. I use the internet, I assume, more than the normal person, which over many years has led to this belief that every action I take is being recorded, to leak into the real world, which continues to slowly and steadily merge with the virtual world, it is this leakage of the online behaviour into the offline that I may be the victim of, my minds neural pathways lasered and trained to treat action as recorded I have lost my belief in privacy, thinking that the pages of my journal shall be read by critics, my room scrutinized by interior designers and questionable practices recorded by cameramen, I am not some perfectionist hunting for Eudemonia, I am a victim of the internet and the death of privacy.

T: Not the Internet, you are a victim of your own stupidity, just coming up with frantic nonsense to make yourself feel smarter than you actually are.

No, you do not get it my friend, the latter of my arguments make much more the sense, read it once read it twice, it is real.

T: You are just disillusioned, what you actually need to do is step out of your musty house, and take a walk in the crisp hours of dawn, even if your 'Reality merging' nonsense is true, the Winds of the Pink Horizons of dawn will definitely help with that too. Just take a walk man.

Well, you do speak some sense here.

T: I always speak sense; you just seem to not want to listen to me. Are you not going to be putting this whole piece of writing on that deserted website of yours too, which you spent half the essay rambling about?

Yes...

T: And again, no one will read it?

No...

T: Wow. Another bout of effort put into doing something no one shall see, and how comical that it is exactly about finding out why you make things and act in certain ways even though no one sees them, this whole work is a contradiction!

Maybe no one needs to see it. Maybe it is all done for satisfying the fire of creativity. Maybe doing what the Buddhists of Tibet do, spending months making a Mandala only to destroy it; Maybe just realising that the thing you made was never the point, you did not make it for others to scrutinize, but still built it up to resist scrutiny because the process of putting effort into something is from the where meaning is derived; is the answer to my question. It would be a bummer if all this was put on paper and then the paper burned. But the meaning would not burn, the satisfaction would not burn, those were never in the paper, they were in the act of writing, debating with oneself and dreaming.

...

...

...

T: Well that just tells me you like wasting paper.

Wha-, What is wrong with you? Ruining my moment? Why have you been tormenting my writing for so long? What does the 'T' even stand for?

T: Well, how am I supposed to know?! it is not like you just willed me into existence.

Wait.

T: Wait.

T: Did you just not Will me into existence?

Yes. I might have. For what though?

T: To Judge your work.

Oh no.

T: I am the critic that has been living in your head! I have manifested into the essay itself by my sheer strength of character!

...

T: It is I, whom this work was made to discover. Funny, how I was the one providing it critique.

This is confusing me, it is distressing, what else do you have to say?

T: What else can I say now?

...

T: Is the answer to the question of this text, the solution to this whole problem you spend 5 pages analysing, that you have split personality disorder?

OH NO.

~

Bad Writing by Aksat Upadhyay.



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