Public

A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both constrains and makes possible what goes within it. This is, I think, one of the primary justifications for having your own website. Not just so you can own your stuff (for some meaning of “ownership,” in a culture in which any billionaire can scrape your work without permission and copyright only protects the rich). Not just so you have a home base among the shifting winds of the various platforms, which rise and fall like brush before the fire. Not just so you can avoid setting up camp in a Nazi bar. But also so that you can shape the work—so that you can give shape to it, and in that shaping make possible work that couldn’t arise elsewhere.

Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odds with the work, which requires resistance and tension in order to come into being.

THIS IS, OBJECTIVELY, a difficult way to publish. There’s a great deal of friction between an idea or phrase coming to mind and the words making it out into the world. And I don’t mean the writing itself (which, as every writer will tell you, is dreadful), but the actual mechanics of sharing that writing. I mean, I am the fool who opens their damn terminal every time they want to publish; in recent weeks, I have spent a not insignificant number of hours writing some absolutely criminal CSS. I cannot, in good conscience, advise this path for anyone with sense. But the choice to do so suits my own proclivities: a desire to tinker not only with the words but with the strata underneath them, and a long-running interest in the material reality of publishing. And more often than not, I find that what I need is some friction, some labor, the effort to work things out.

The great power of a middle-aged woman is that she knows where to give her fucks.

I think my website should archive everything; every website I’ve ever made, every weirdo CSS demo, every little thing.

I want to earnestly look back on what I’ve made — the stuff that I think is cool and punk rock as well as the stuff that was half-baked, inexperienced, or headed in the wrong direction from the start.

Personal websites are the backbone of the independent Web of creators. Even after all those years, they remain a vital part of what makes the web the most remarkable and open medium to date. We shouldn’t take this for granted, though. If we don’t pay enough attention and care about the open web enough, we might lose this valuable asset. So let us protect the Web as a source of inspiration, diversity, creativity, and community. Let us maintain what we have and work together to make this little part of the magic of the Web sparkle even brighter. Let us help new members of the community to start their journey. Let us build, prototype, publish, and connect.