Enemy of Entropy

Why Have a Site At All?

Or at least, why put such per­sonal infor­ma­tion out there on the net for the world to see? I had pre­vi­ously said some­thing on my main page about the net being the great­est van­ity press ever invented, and I still think of it that way. It has given an unprece­dented num­ber of peo­ple not just the abil­ity to pub­lish their mate­r­ial, but to reach vast audi­ences with it. I orig­i­nally started cre­at­ing a home page because I needed to learn HTML to do my job, but I quickly found that hav­ing a forum in which to present my thoughts as I please, with­out edit­ing by or for any­one else, was an addic­tive experience!

And, really — why wouldn’t I have a web page? Why wouldn’t I be happy to be noticed?

There are plenty of excel­lent sites that are just links or search engines, like Yahoo. There isn’t a need for addi­tional pages that are only col­lec­tions of links, and there­fore I’ve avoided that on my site. Why have a site with no orig­i­nal content?

If you’re going to cre­ate con­tent, you have to speak on some sub­ject. Some­thing you do know about. Some­thing you have rea­son to believe some­body else wants or needs to read. I have writ­ten about what I know, from com­put­ers or music to my fam­ily and life.

I am a very open and hon­est per­son. I do not hide any­thing about who I am. I am care­ful to con­ceal some infor­ma­tion for safety’s sake, such as pre­cisely where we live. Oth­er­wise I don’t care who knows such things about me. My activ­ity on the net, both pro­fes­sional and per­sonal, has always been con­ducted under my own name and email address with no attempt to con­ceal my iden­tity. I do not say any­thing online that I wouldn’t acknowl­edge pub­licly. I’m happy with who I am and what I’ve done in my life, and the vast major­ity of the email I receive from vis­i­tors to this site indi­cates that read­ing about my expe­ri­ences has helped some of them in their own lives. That is, in and of itself, a pos­i­tive result.

It is also ther­a­peu­tic to write about some issues, such as being a sur­vivor of child­hood sex­ual abuse. Some issues, such as size accep­tance, are impor­tant to me per­son­ally, and I want to pro­voke thought regard­ing them. I am absolutely pas­sion­ate about the respon­si­bil­i­ties we as adults bear with regards to chil­dren, so I wrote the par­ent­ing page. Shar­ing infor­ma­tion about, for instance, the books and music I enjoy may allow some­one else to receive plea­sure from the same sources.

In short, this site exists because it helps me and oth­ers. If any­one doesn’t like what I pub­lish here, they don’t have to read it. If you do choose to read it I hope you enjoy the expe­ri­ence. If you feel a need to attack me based on what I say here, or to twist this infor­ma­tion out of con­text, I pray that some day you will find heal­ing so you can find bet­ter pur­suits to fill your days.

 

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