This time it's personal

When I first created sadgrl.online, I focused on creating tutorials, templates, and essays about the internet. These things were useful, concrete, and not especially personal. I’ve always been more comfortable pointing the spotlight away from myself and towards anything else.

I have people-pleasing tendencies - a habit of prioritizing others’ needs and expectations, often at the expense of my own wellbeing, authenticity, and boundaries. People pleasers tend to be extremely kind and compassionate people, but they also tend to be avoidant of conflict, are reluctant to say “no”, and make a habit of overextending themselves again and again.

That’s where this website comes in. It was a space where I could be helpful without being too exposed. Creating resources felt safe; it gave me purpose without forcing me to reveal too much of myself. Looking back, I realize that this site wasn’t just a creative project, it was also a coping strategy. It allowed me to channel my people-pleasing tendencies into something socially rewarding, like being helpful. Every bit of praise felt like confirmation that I was doing the right thing. I was earning my worth by being needed. This website gave me a socially acceptable, emotionally satisfying outlet for a deeper urge to be validated by others.

What felt, at the time, like healing was also reinforcing a fragile dependency. My sense of self was tied too tightly to how others responded to me. As you can probably imagine, this became a toxic perspective. The darker side of people-pleasing is the belief that if others don’t like me, it must mean something is fundamentally wrong with me, that I’m undeserving, unlikeable, or worthless.

I know, on an intellectual level, that these correlations aren’t true. The success and popularity of my website does not reflect my value as a human being. I wouldn’t expect that of anyone else, so it doesn’t make sense to believe that about myself. But people-pleasing tendencies often stem from trauma and are guided by a web of internalized, invisible rules and justifications that defy rational logic that feel devastatingly real. Living this way had consequences I couldn’t fully see until later.

Over time, these tendencies blurred the lines of who I actually was. I wasn’t sure where my preferences ended and other people’s expectations began. My identity had become reactive, shaped more by the desire to be accepted and liked than by any internal sense of self. That’s also why this website has never truly felt personal to me. It’s kind of ironic, in a not-so-funny way, that I built a site about encouraging others’ self-expression while being too afraid to express myself.

Part of what complicated all of this was the site’s unexpected popularity, which is something that feels uncomfortable to bring up, but necessary to acknowledge. Visibility didn’t just magnify my work; it also magnified the pressure to maintain a version of myself that felt increasingly disconnected from who I was. It made my time here more difficult, alienating, and at times dehumanizing. I’ve experienced parasocial dynamics like entitlement, unsolicited judgment and harassment, things I wasn’t prepared for and that I was especially sensitive to. I coped by becoming avoidant, which made me seem cold or unapproachable, like I’d become “too important” to respond to people’s messages. In reality, I just couldn’t deal with bracing for impact and expecting every social interaction to turn sour.

My goal this time around is to do what I couldn’t before: utilize this space as my own, one that aligns with my interests and allows me to continue moving toward a closer understanding of myself. Part of that process means showing up more fully, even if that means standing out. I’ve found that the personal web, for all its creativity, often feels surprisingly homogenous. There are certain aesthetics, narratives, and tastes that tend to dominate, while other perspectives feel underrepresented. It’s rare that I see myself reflected in the sites I come across, and that has made it clear how important it is that I contribute authentically.

I’m still learning how to create without seeking approval, to share without shrinking, and to be seen without losing myself. Rebuilding this site is part of that process, an attempt to step out of the role I thought I had to play and into something more honest, more sustainable, and more mine. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not trying to be a voice of authority. I just want to show up as a whole person, not a projection of usefulness or perfection. If this space can someday reflect that (even imperfectly) then I think it is finally becoming what it was always meant to be.