22/04/04, Monday

WEBSITE RECONSTRUCTION

"Lord, I bit off more than I can chew."

"Real" vs "Cyber" Reconstruction

While I organized this blog webpage, I smiled to myself. My digital life has lived in cyberspace for over 25 years. I haven't fiddled with it much through the years. Restoring, or may I say, reconstructing my home twice since Hurricane Gustav in 2008 prevented me from giving much attention to where my digital stuff lived. So with my "tangible, solid life" reconstructied, I begin reconstructing my "digital life."

Social Media Inefficiency

Of the many reconstruction chores I needed to tackle, the most daunting was this website. I once relied upon it exclusively to dsitribute my content, primarily my artwork, and specifically, TigerToons. Only slowly have I added social media accounts to deliver more content to reach more people. You who have a few social media accounts know how hit and miss they can be. You may have attempted to share content and information on one account and then inform your followers on the other accounts. This back and forth and sideways approach for someone like me is not efficient nor effective. If you have tried it, your workflow takes you away from creating content. Painting a picture, writing a story, playing the guitar, composing a song, or creating a video takes time; concentrated, undistracted time. Therefore, I have decided to renew my website.

Cubby Holes

The website is a container. For me, it is a container with compartments, like a cubby hole cabinet. I can slip a cartoon into one cubby hole, a song into another, or a story into another. Then the social media accounts give me a conduit to reach out to you. Periodically, I can let you know there are new items in the cubby holes you might appreciate. Reorganizing this container and bringing it up to date was among my first chores.

Frightening and Beautiful New World

The world of web page design and development looks nothing like the last time I walked through this land. The landscape is beautiful, but at first glance, it's a little frightening. There are newly risen mountain ranges of growing coding languages in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Conquering the foothills and reaching the initial base camp appears impossible. Becoming sensitive to the myriad of devices available to view and experience content seems as treacherous as crossing raging torrents. We've just landed on the shores of the metaverse, virtual technologies and artificial intelligence. We have barely moved inland. Ignoring the psychology of users in different demographics may be like traveling without a compass in the days before satellite-assisted positioning.

I don't need to be perfect. I am not a huge e-commerce entity. I'm an artist that likes being appreciated. But to get paid with appreciation, affirmation and encouragement, I feel I have the responsibility to become a little more efficient and effective and responsive and relevant.

Stretching My Brain

So I ventured out into this once familiar landscape with a little trepidation. I didn't want to eat up my time learning coding languages I may use once and never again. Dad is 96 years old. We often talk about what he is unwilling to learn because using the time to learn it may be a big waste of time. That's a major consideration when your time is constrained. I'm approaching my seventies. How many seventies I have is very much on my mind. I am like Dad asking, "Will I waste time learning this stuff?" I decided to give myself a month.

I put away other projects and set aside other goals. I devoted all of my time to learning, making mistakes, correcting them, creating habits, and figuring out a workflow I can use more than once. This blog and some of the fundamental webpages upon which I will continue to build are the results. I'm satisfied. I am prroud of my efforts. And I look forward to learnng more.