About this website

Rationale

There is something inherently suspect about publicly volunteering information without being asked or provoked. Anyone who engages in such behavior bears the burden of explaining why they chose to do so rather than remain silent. In the absence of a satisfying justification, silence must appear far preferable.

Starting a personal website such as this one may come across as presumptuous or arrogant, provided there is no evidence of prior interest in one’s person. The author of such a website appears to be making an implicit claim that it will be useful, interesting, or relevant to someone else. It is only natural to expect them to defend this claim.

I regret to say that any justification I can provide will likely be insufficient and disappointing. At the time of writing, I have no reason to believe there exists any general interest in myself. Moreover, I most emphatically do not believe that such interest ought to exist. I do not particularly wish to be known. I have nothing particularly important to say. I am not even particularly interested in the general concept of communication with others.

The truth is that I created this website for purely personal reasons. I view it as an experiment in proving to myself that I, in fact, do exist, and that there is something that could be said about myself. I needed this because I tend to consistently doubt these two points.

It could be argued that I could have achieved the same result by writing some facts about myself on a loose piece of paper or by digging a hole in the ground and shouting the facts into it, rather than publishing them on the web for the whole world to see. This is a sound argument. In response, I can only offer a vague intuition that proving one’s existence must have something to do with establishing an objectively verifiable presence in the external world.

I assume you have visited this website of your own volition. I am afraid you will have to furnish your own reasons for reading its contents, and if none can be found, you have only yourself to blame. Whatever your motivation, by being here you are contributing to the success of my experiment. Thank you.

Colophon

This website was built using Eleventy static site generator created by Zach Leatherman. It is based on the aptly-named Eleventy Excellent starter by Lene Saile. Like the starter itself, it was influenced by techniques and principles developed by Andy Bell and Heydon Pickering: it makes use of the CUBE CSS methodology, layouts from Every Layout, and components from Inclusive Components. Fluid design was enabled by Utopia calculators. Color scheme by Open Color.