Why am I making this website?

Good question. If you read yesterday's entry, then you know it was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision. I hadn't considered doing this at all before yesterday. Then the idea came across my YouTube feed, and I thought, "Why not?" and dived right in.

Now that I'm doing it, I'm having a lot of fun! There's something gratifying about activities that lead to immediate visible results. When I type a few things into this document and hit "save," I can refresh my site and see the changes. It's like magic! So I suppose that is the first and biggest of my goals for this website: have fun making it.

Another goal is to practice putting myself out there. Truthfully, I'm a bit of a coward. I don't even have the excuse of being discouraged in childhood; my parents were very kind and thought the world of me, and I don't remember a single instance of being picked on in school. In fact, I always did especially well there. So why am I still so painfully insecure? Perhaps it's a fear of losing control of how I'm perceived. There's vulnerability in making something--or even in speaking at all--because you're forced to show something of yourself in the process. I guess that, in an effort to put my best foot forward, I've become such a perfectionist that I never allow anyone to see anything from me at all.

With this in mind, making a website is a big deal for me. I know that's rich coming from someone using the name of the Narnian morning star as a pseudonym, but even posting anonymously has always intimidated me. Here, no one is really watching. Maybe this can help me to ease into feeling more confident?

And finally, because I feel like there should be three goals to make this list nice and tidy, I'm going to try to learn new skills. My husband is a computer programmer, so I largely consider computers to be "his thing." I'm more of the romantic, curl-up-with-a-good-novel sort of person. But I suppose that, just because I've never thought of myself as "technically minded," that doesn't mean I should never try to learn outside of my comfort zone. Why not explore an entirely foreign field? Besides, I'm having a lot of fun with it so far! So I'm going to try to learn a bit about HTML and CSS and webdesign in general while I play around with Neocities.

I'm not sure how you came to be reading this--maybe you're exploring web revival sites and just happened across mine--but thank you for being here! I hope you have success in whatever goals you have for your time online, too.