An 8 year old just T-posed on me and stole my apple juice
I made a website to show gratitude to the most impactful people in my life
I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, but I do set goals and like to change things about my life for the better often. Recently, I’ve found myself in a place where I actually really love the people I’m around now and feel loved by them. Which has not been the case for most of my life just by virtue of moving schools a lot, having an overactive mind, and not feeling understood by most of my peer group in high school. 2023 was the best year of my life, the first time I finally felt like I was doing some major stuff right, and I started off 2024 finally feeling like I’m in the right place rather than yearning to go somewhere, and a big part of that stems from the relationships I have.
So previously where my goals may have been something like “make X new friends”, “go do X new thing”, and generally, “be more social”, my big thing now is to be good to the people around me and be with them fully.
In pursuit of that, I have added an “Acknowledgements” page to my website.
As in, these are the people I’d like to acknowledge for what they’ve done to make me who I am today, and what they’ve done that I’d like to thank them for. You can view it here: acknowledgements.aadilali.com
A few notes on why I did this:
A lot of people may not realize how much they’ve impacted me, and those around them, simply by just being them. Who I am is made up of tiny pieces of everyone I’ve ever met and everyone I’ve ever interacted with, but some people just make up so much of me and what I’ve encountered via a domino effect of meeting them that it just feels wrong that they don’t know how much they’ve changed me just by doing some seemingly small thing.
I did this publicly because I’d hope that this inspires at least 1 person seeing this to tell someone else how much they mean to them. Because domino effects and all, that one compliment could mean the world to that person, and they could be so uplifted they end up curing cancer. Who knows? Just tell the people you love you love them, it’s quick and easy and in a world where expressing your real feelings is so tough, everyone needs love more than we think we do.
People like hearing nice things about themselves, and I like making people feel good. I also wanted to remind myself to be grateful for the people in my life. The site is for me more than anyone else.
Now a few notes for anyone who reads the site:
I’ve written these as if I was writing an actual letter to the person I’m appreciating, except more vague and more poetic without many specific details, ideally so me and only the person it’s to can understand it, and I thought it would make for a cool artifact.
If you’re not on there but you know we’re close friends and feel a little bit hurt, please don’t be. There’s many wonderful things about you I’d love to list if you asked me, it’s just that this is for people who’ve fundamentally changed my life in a way I could remember while writing this. So if you’re not on there, but think you should be or wish you were, it’s probably because:
I’m a stubborn bastard and don’t change easily
we haven’t known each other long enough (that doesn’t change our closeness)
I forgor
If you want to make one of these pages yourself, the code is here: https://github.com/aadillpickle/acknowledgements/. Please let me know if you do end up publishing one. I’d love to learn more about the lovely people in your li
fe.
In the interest of appreciating more people, a couple people helped make this project come together for me:
Kelly made some amazing Figma Christmas cards and I just had to copy the animation
On her old website, Anson had a section for “who I owe a lot to”, and that kind of embedded itself into my mind
Aileen gave me some insanely good design critique, the site would be pretty ugly without her
Not just slay but the entire slaughterhouse
adorable mf