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The Flatland Chronicles for Tuesday, June 20
JOURNAL. I've been spending the previous week recreating a website (previously GeoCities) under a new domain name. I had planned to use minimal effort transferring my files, but then the compulsion to do things 'right' took over and now I'm obsessing over details such as whether my web elements color coordinate with my backgrounds.
It struck me in the course of doing this work that a project like this one is recreation of the very highest order---not the end product, but the process itself. I am as fully preoccupied in learning to construct my pages and in gathering the materials as I am when I am working at full concentration, but the difference (as Mark Twain pointed out) that whereas I have to work, this project is entirely voluntary and entirely for me. While I'm working, the time flies by. I begrudge the time I have to take off to sleep, eat, or do anything else.
I am enjoying the process as a taste of what actual artists get to experience on a daily basis. There is immense satisfaction in doing something which visibly advances over time, without regard to the importance of or quality of the end product. When I have got my (strictly amateur) pages "right" by my amateur's standards, I have a settled feeling. If they are not quite right, I continue to fret over details until they are finished. The work (just for now) seems all-important. When I'm done, I know it will shrink back to its proper proportions and I won't be able to explain even to myself why this seemed like a good way to spend a good chunk of my vacation.
The 'public' aspect of the work is part of what makes it feel important. When my friends and family see it, I want them to be pleasantly impressed. It's an incentive to keep working till I get each page as finished as I can get it.
But in the end, the pleasure of making something, even something as crude as this is going to be by web standards, takes precedence over anything else.
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The Amateur Blogger’s Amateur Corner #1
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The Amateur Blogger’s Amateur Corner #3
My Brief Stint at the Top of the Pops.
Searching for Employment in the Too Much Information Age.
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10:42:24 PM 
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