Phaysis.com is the personal site of yours truly, Shawn Thomas. (What Phaysis is not.)
Some people call this a “blog”.
I call it a “journal”.
Nobody calls it “good”.
I started this site in April of 2000, the height of the dotcom boom, as a playground for HTML and Javascript stuff and to learn server-side scripting. After a few months, I moved to Austin and decided my site served another function of keeping my friends back home informed as to my state of being and take them along with me on the ride that is starting over in a new place. Well, over time, friends come and go, some make bookmarks, others completely forget my domain (you know the old saying, “out of site, out of mind”), but Phaysis remains.
“So Shawn,” you ask, “what does ‘phaysis’ mean?”
Phaysis is a nonword that came to me under more than usual circumstances. See, when I was dreaming up a domain name in that spring of 2000, I made a grocery list of possible names and went through them to find their availability. Some I had strong hopes for, others not so much. I wanted a domain that sounded like a medical condition, like “apraxia”, or some state of mind, like “psychosis”. One by one, the number of ideas approached zero.
So after a session of trying names, I took a break and went to shower. No sooner did I step into the shower and get soaked, there it was, a word, floating in front of me in the steam. “PHAYSIS”. And me without my pen. I stepped out of the shower and scribbled the word on the fogged mirror, finished my shower, and ran to my room. Phaysis.com was available!
Nonword becomes domain.
During the course of the year, “phaysis”, a nonword with no meaning, came to define itself. It came to mean a state of change that’s not changing. Almost like a zen koan. It’s a moment where everything is happening but nothing is happening at all. “Stasis Impending Phases…Phases Impending Stasis”.
Nonword becomes defined.
Nothing explains “phaysis” more than the history of the growth of this site. I’ve been in a constant state of development on this site (and I don’t intend to stop), but from the outside it looks as if nothing is happening at all. For most of that time, I’ve actually been working furiously, at the peril of my own lifestyle, on developing my own software to drive this site. And lately, I’ve come to grips with the idea that I’ll never start an idea and finish it in any length of time. So I’ve given up on my CMS and now Phaysis is powered by WordPress. Not too proud of it, but there it is. Now I can actually make changes, start other projects, be productive with my time, and maybe some of that will reflect on this site.
Stasis becomes phases.
Thanks for reading.
-Shawn