Hello #Fediverse and Happy New Year!

I'd like to mark the start of 2025 with the first message from my self-hosted instance. You may already know me as @_elena@mastodon.social. Well, now I also run my own #ActivityPub microblogging server, thanks to the magic of #YunoHost and #GoToSocial (and #Phanpy, which I'm using to compose this).

I registered this domain – aseachange.com – a looooong time ago but never did anything with it. It was the very first domain name I ever bought, even before securing elenarossini.com (!!!). It was so long ago, but I remember I was inspired by Beck's album Sea Change. seachange[dot]com was taken, so I grabbed Aseachange.

I absolutely love its meaning of profound transformation and I think it's PERFECT for my self-hosted #Fediverse instance and what it represents: independence, empowerment and digital sovereignty.

Ever since setting it up, I've been feeling joyful and hopeful. Everytime I look at myself in the mirror, I think: I'm in control of my own social media platform. And it feels SOOO GOOD.

What do I have in store for 2025? I plan to use this account to post messages about #selfhosting, learning #Linux, privacy and digital sovereignty.

I will also keep posting from my Mastodon account because you don't give a Lamborghini to someone who just passed their driver's license. I barely know what I'm doing here, so I feel a lot safer (for now) keeping my mastodon.social account as well... In case anything goes wrong here. Better safe than sorry!

So, this is my #Introduction and if you've read as far as here I just want to thank the Fediverse for being so amazing and allowing me to connect with people on my own terms. And thank you Fedi people for being so generous and supportive with your superb advice and kind words.

This is a really magical, special place.

Happy New Year, everyone!