The Journey: The Sixth Year
November 1, 2001

Crazy year. From the supreme election of a president to the California energy crisis to the ecom implosion to September 11th to the bombing of Afghanistan. And now there's Anthrax.

Even fastening my seatbelt didn't help much this year as evidenced by my own bumpy ride:

• The layoff
• The vaguely alluded to personal setback
• The death of a friend
• The death of a hoax
• The finding of temporary perch when the unemployment ran out
• The shock of the WTC disaster

Time: The best thing about being laid-off
After

• filing for unemployment
• updating my online portfolio
• learning how to make a physical portfolio
• redesigning my business card
• recording a day in the life of an unemployed web designer
• redesigning two authors' website
• and creating a small website for a sculptor

I still had a nice chunk of Time to devote to redesigning these webpages:

• fem•mass (from this to that)
• Heartless's Holey Haven (from this to that)
• Inflatable Sheep (from this to that)
• Michelles of the Web (from this to that)
• Home (from this to that)
• Homepages entrance (from this to that)

I even had enough time to squeeze out a rough companion piece to my D&D game.

Heartless Struggle
This year was a moving experience with my dear Heartless. She didn't make a good impression on potential employers (but did we really want to work with *those* kind of people) or webhosts. And the problems inherent to running an adult humor site (I.e., too much traffic, unscrupulous webmasters, porn spam, copyright violations) took me down time-consuming roads I didn't want to go.

I took Heartless down in February, but found that she began leaking into Sheep making it more Smutty Sheep than Web Designer Sheep. In May I gave Heartless her own holey domain, and in October I moved her and Makes Grown Men Cry over to an adult webhost so that she wouldn't be shut down for her 'pornographic content'. Heartless seems to be satisfied for the moment.

Shakey Puddin
It's been a year that has shaken me up, down, and sidewise. But left intact is my hope, my belief that it's the journey not the destination that counts, and my love for making webpages. Maybe the spores from the many many many files I have filed lately has gone to my head, but there remains the crystal-clear fact that my life would be something less without these imperfect pages.

After the changes, the losses, the stripping away of *things* this year, I feel blessed to be able to find shelter within these pages. I feel blessed for the support of friends and family. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to discuss and share and learn from people I've never even met.

I can't even imagine what Year Seven will be like, but I have my nerf gun locked and loaded and am ready to rumble. 2002, you want a piece of me? Bring it on, baby.

1995 - 2000 >

Nov 2000
fem•mass (2)

March 2001
A Day in the Life of an Unemployed Web Designer

May 2001
Heartless's Holey Haven (3)
Inflatable Sheep-XHTML Tableless CSS (2)
Michelles of the Web (4)
Homepage (2)

June 2001
D&D: Muirgadt 881

August 2001
Makes Grown Men Cry (3)