My Three Sites…

All I wanted from Yola, Wix, or WordPress was a simple blog. So how did I wind up designing three websites?

Yola was the easiest to design with, and I would’ve loved to stick with it, but when I published my first site on Yola, the domain name turned out to be a bunch of random letters.

I wanted to be able to pick a domain name or to at least be assigned a subdomain that made sense. But Yola requires users to either pay for their sites or to make do with a subdomain that’s generated randomly.

But no one can remember a bunch of random letters when thinking of web addresses, so I actually deleted my Yola site’s original version before trying Wix.

Wix was super easy to use, but again, unless you pay for a full domain, Wix assigns one to you, only allowing you to pick a modifier at the end. So I tried WordPress, and although WordPress does allow you to pick a name, the design interface can be frustrating. So I remembered a line from my upcoming novel, If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’, and decided to use a WordPress site as an easy-to-remember homepage, providing links to external sites that were easier to design. Then I remembered what my novel was about: understanding perspectives. And decided to take advantage of all three sites by considering their content from the three perspectives used to create my novel’s characters: id, ego, and superego.

Wix is the ego site, which in this context has nothing to do with the concept of egotism but is instead concentrated on the part of the psyche that serves as a conscious mediator between the differing perspectives of internal and external motivation.

In other words, content in this site's blog is meant to bridge the gap between the fantasy world of self and the real world of other.

My first exploration is self-serving in that it's an attempt to help other people understand how I make art (but there's a difference between being self-serving and being self-centered). Then there's a shock to my own sense of self when I'm forced to recognize that other people see things differently, which opens a door to deconstructive critique, followed by self-criticism, followed by a natural sense of confusion as I try to become aware of the strange motivations of minds organized and prioritized alternatively from my own. And finally there's the great experiment in empathy, beginning with an attempt to understand and honor someone I readily empathize with, which ultimately opens a door to being sincerely interested in external perspectives, followed by a genuine appreciation for them.

It's a wild ride, and I hope you enjoy it. But don't worry if the psychobabble seems too trippy or intimidating at this stage, because the story as a whole contains helpful hints for illustrators and authors, an angry garbageman, a lovable vampire, a pouty-faced octopus, and a list of steampunk-related TV shows and movies that'll knock your socks off.