why is it ours?

Written by Patrick J Turner Jr

Published on October 7th, 2024

Hello reader. Yes. I see you there. Thanks for taking the time to click through whatever webpage brought you to this post. Whether by curiosity or boredom you have found yourself on my website reading my blog post. So uh, welcome to the experience I guess. We're in this together. Sharing it and all. It's ours.

Now hold on a moment. What does that mean? Why is it ours?

Around halfway through high school my Instagram account was suspended without warning. Never was I given a reason outside of an ominous email stating "your account has violated community guidelines and has been suspended." Real spooky stuff. After trying fruitlessly to restore my account, I gave up and created a new one. This new account needed a name. I tried to use my old name, Patrick4694, but apparently even after an account is suspended the username is not available. Go figure. Absent-mindedly, I typed in Ourboypatrick. I liked it. It had a nice weight to it.

What did it mean that I was "our" boy? Did I fancy myself as some kind of man of the people? Well, not really. If I had to hazard a guess as to what was going on in my pimple encrusted head, I was probably just making a reference to an online communism meme. You know the ones. Bugs bunny, USSR flag overlaid, arms stretched outward saying OUR [insert thing]. I didn’t even know what communism was really. Chances are high I had really only just learned about the Cold War in earnest a few weeks prior and thought it was funny. Hell, most of us band kids or band-adjacent kids (I was firmly in the latter camp, though half my friends were in the former) thought shit like that was funny. Everyone knew some annoying kid who would blast the anthem for the USSR on their phone speaker in the school hallway during those god forsaken early hours of the morning while other kids conversed. For no small part of my time in high school, I was one of those annoying kids. Not an ounce of critical thought in my head. I called my close friends my comrades ironically, though admittedly I did like the sound of it.

Anyways, the name (and communism [the real deal]) kind of stuck. It took on a life of its own as I grew the account from close friends and family, to their friends and family, then to strangers I met online and so forth. Ourboypatrick became my default online name across every platform. It became an avatar through which I interacted with my friends and met new people. Is it silly? Maybe, but it’s mine. Well, ours.

This personal website has existed since I graduated college in December of 2022. I didn't really have any particular reason to make it. One of the last classes I took in my final semester was a web design class. Wanting to put those skills to the test, and to provide a home for my newfound interest in photography, ourboypatrick.neocities.org was born. It simply became a project of mine and I saw it through to completion, without any real plan for what I would post there, aside from the photo gallery.

In the early days, I envisioned it as a sort of collection of all my creative works. An archive for every video and picture I have shared with the world. A library of me, myself, and I. Eventually, I realized I actually didn’t want to preserve most of the things I had done for a wide audience. Actually I realized I had a deep hatred for myself, searing the inner corners of my mind. Every few months I wrote some dumb, half-hearted blog posts only to delete them a few days later, and let the overall site design stagnate. With no idea in the driver’s seat, the site has sat for months; an unchanging, imperfect snippet of a delusional past me.

That brings us to today I guess. A lot has happened in the year and a half since I launched the site. To give you the whole rundown: I got a real job as an IT wizard in a mountain hospital with a boss who I despised. I moved to the big city of Raleigh (the big acorn!). I got a job as an IT warlock in a city hospital with a boss who I liked! I got (effectively) kicked out of a lease by a roommate who I despised. I stopped drowning my inner voice with weed and booze. I moved in with my aunt. I started watching more movies and going to concerts and clubs with friends! I started volunteering at the local mutual aid hub! I got a job as an audio visual network artisan! Through life’s ups and downs, I have grown a lot as a person. I truly am happier now than ever before, due in large part to feeling as though my life’s reins are firmly within my grasp.

In conclusion, this blog is mine, but it is also yours. It is ours. After much refusal to express myself for who I truly am out of some pathetic self hate or nebulous fear of judgment from my peers, I have resolved to simply stop giving a fuck. I am ready to start posting again. My name is Patrick Jason Turner Jr. Also known as Ourboypatrick. I WILL love myself and craft a life worth living. I WILL express myself to you because sharing my thoughts will always be more beneficial than swallowing them. I WILL share myself with the world through this blog because I believe in a World Wide Web free from the influence of big corporate interests. This site was lovingly crafted by my own two hands and was lovingly navigated to by you with your own two hands. We are all brothers and sisters and comrades and we all must share ourselves even when it is hard and even when we hate ourselves because refusal to do so results in atrophy of the mind.

With that, goodnight. Thank you, and Be kind to yourself.

-Patrick