Why I Spent A Whole Day…
Why I spent a whole day redesigning my website when my to-do list was a million miles long:
Because I signed up for a free squarespace trial (again) on a whim a couple of weeks ago, and the trial was about to run out, but I’d gotten some momentum going while I’d been playing around with a new design. Because I was just so tired of my old website, the one that had started as part of an etsy shop that I let go of four years ago. Because I wanted my writing to have a home that was designed just for it, not as a hand-me-down from another project. Because I had a new logo made this summer and I wanted to put it on a fresh, new site. Because that new logo says, right there in it, “creative writer” and I’ve been stalling on using it because I’m always wrestling with the question: is my writing enough to claim the title of writer? Because I want to feel good about claiming the title of writer, which means taking myself seriously as a writer, which means having a website I feel proud of. Because I was supposed to be at my son’s swim meet all weekend, but my other two sons were sick, so we stayed home instead. Because they were sick, I let them have an excessive amount of screen time. Because I could have done the five thousand other things on my to-do list, but I needed to do something for me. Because the laundry could wait one more day to be folded and the bathrooms could wait one more day to be cleaned. Because I felt mom guilt over not being there to watch my son swim (even though my husband sent me a video of every single event) and I wanted to distract myself. Because I would have felt mom guilt if I’d gone and left my sick kids with my (very capable) husband, and sometimes it feels like being a mom is just a series of choices in which all options lead to feeling some level of guilt. Because there was a horrible shooting in our city last week and I needed to do something other than read the news about it, over and over. Because sometimes it feels like I do the same tasks on repeat (fold the laundry, wash the dishes, pack the lunches, check the school folders, sit in the carpool line) and I needed to feel like I accomplished something, something I won’t have to do again the very next day. Because my website is my internet home, and it’s faster to spruce that up than tackle all the projects on my actual home to-do list. Because it’s been on my to-do list for months and knowing that it needs to be done has kept me from doing other creative projects on my to-do list. Because I’ve felt stuck creatively lately and I hoped that a shiny new website might help me get unblocked.
