Guess I have a website now
I know nothing about web design.
Luckily, the internet is in its dumbed down, user friendly era, and I don’t need to learn HTML to make an angelfire website like its the bygone year of 1998.
Idiot proof design tools notwithstanding, I’m still grappling with what I want my personal corner of the internet to look like.
Even now while you’re reading this, I promise you I’m going back and forth wondering if I hit that quarky-cool tone I was going for, or if I sound like a hopeless try-hard. At the end of the day, the pragmatic side of me is telling the rest of me that it doesn’t matter, that realistically the only folk that will dig this deep into the website are one or two publishing agents with too much free time (if such people even exists). And, if by some miracle a book of mine does get published, maybe someone will go to google looking for a sequel, stumble upon the website, and maybe -just maybe- bother to check the blog section.
So I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I strike that balance of tone I’m hoping for. No one is really listening, and I can say whatever I want.
But I’ve never been very good at taking my own advice, so I’ll be in my head for a little while longer.
And while I’m there, I think I’ve found the root of my issue.
This website is my corner of the internet, its here to reflect a little corner of me in the hopes that someone gets interested enough to dig into the stories I’ve written. This place is supposed to be genuine. It’s supposed to be an invitation, but also an advertisement.
And therein lies the sticking point. Like it or not, my stories are a product. But I’m not much of a salesmen.
So here I am, crafting my online persona - in much the same way I would craft a character in a story. But where those are fictional people in worlds of fancy, this website, this blog, the about me page, are all supposed to be me. This website is about persona crafting, and it’s about being genuine.
In some ways that is an impossible needle to thread. In others, it gives me an odd sense of freedom.
To whoever is reading this, I am a series of pixels on a screen. I can write whatever I please on this site, craft whatever tone I want, and curate my own persona down to the letter. There are no real restraints, no expectations for me to run counter to.
I know nothing about web design. But I know a thing or two about spinning a story and crafting a character, and a personalized corner of the internet gives me a strange place where I’m the character and I can write whatever story I want.
