WHO AM I?

i go by roach. i'm polish, living in germany, and currently doing an apprentice as a sysadmin. most of my days are spent fighting PCs, configs, and whatever else i decide to break lol. outside of that, i spend a lot of time online, collecting cds... archiving shit. the likes. i got into tech through games and computers as a kid, as... probably everyone has. honestly, i only really started taking computer stuff seriously like three of four years ago. thats when i fell ass-first into arch linux, retro pcs, and actually wanting to learn how things work. (modern windows can kiss my ass)

growing up online, unsupervised, in the early 2010s, most likely is what gave me that permanent soft spot for early internet culture and all that stuff. this site is partly me trying to hold onto that. what else... uh. im an artist. i love music; i listen to a lot of heavy and noisy stuff. mainly metal.. grindcore. whatever. the more intense, the better. helps me think. i collect physical media. cds, dvds, random old stuff i find and refuse to throw away. i like actually owning things instead of everything being stuck in some app. same with tech; im big on console modding, retro hardware, and weird devices. i own a keitai. yes, on purpose. big on tinkering and fixing things that do NOT need fixing.

... i speak polish, english, and german fluently. been learning japanese for ages too. i set a goal to work toward the jlpt this year, so... i guess we'll see how that goes lol. DEEPLY in love with ps1-era horror games, and psychological horror vn's. something about the weirdness just sticks? basically; if its eerie, intense, old, or kind of broken, its probably my thing.

WHY NEOCITIES?

ive always struggled with social media. not in the "it destroyed my mental health" way (my brain takes care of that all on its own, luckily. ha-ha.) but in the "my attention span is a wet paper bag" way. id post for like three days straight, disappear for eight months, then repeat; kinda like the annual two-week minecraft phase. nothing ever stuck. i guess the whole algorithm/approval cycle never quite felt right. still, the fact i kept trying probably says something. i mean, ive always wanted to exist on the internet. and to leave a mark. even those tiny bursts of posting were probably me trying to be seen. even if the platforms themselves never fit me. i think everyone wants that, in one way or another.

and thats part of why im here. i love the old web. its unpolished, personal, just plain weird at times... maybe its because i missed out on it, but it feels in retrospect like people were making things purely because they felt like it. neocities feels closer to that than anything else we've got right now. so.... this is my place to return to. my attempt at making that space for me to exist. and for others to witness me. as i am.