Joel’s Improved Personal Website
Within the past week, I created a book-style index of everything I’ve ever written on my website, going back to 1999. I’ve been thinking about doing it for so long (years), that when I finally decided to do it it took about an hour.
The project had the unintended consequence of relighting in me a fire to write for this website1 again, mainly from having been re-exposed to all my old writing styles and voices for the first time in years. I may have been experimenting and striving for originality, but most of what I wrote now sounds stuffy and constipated, and there is much of it (the opinion pieces especially) that I either don’t agree with anymore, or don’t think was worth saying. I can’t afford to keep that up anymore, so I’ve decided I won’t.
I like the index because it allows you to re-explore things after they drop off the front page. It keeps things from disappearing forever. And I’ve never seen anyone else do something quite like it before. But also, it acts as a low-focus source of ideas; a way to connect random things and concepts without having a preconceived idea of what you’re connecting with – a little spawning-ground of serendipity.
As I tinkered and coded and watched it take shape, I thought, I want to participate in the conversation again. Not the conversation between me on a soapbox and all creation, but the conversation between me and my muse that we held in the darkness when I still knew that no one was listening but myself. Because there is nothing quite like knowing anyone could be reading the things you wrote when no one was watching.
1 Can I just call it a blog now?