Weaving A Closer-Knit Web

Here you'll find my attempt at a post with the aforementioned title, as suggested by James via our post title trade! Read more about the initiative, or contact me if you'd also like to trade!

I have many reasons for being one of the perhaps strange folks who take a break from working on the computer…to play on the computer instead, but one of the most important ones is (apart from self-expression and shouting into the void) to find you. Yes, you, whoever you are reading this.

There's plenty of valid reasons to keep a website. The IndieWeb Wiki lists many, but I don't want to focus on them for this piece. I'd like to return to a fundamental reason of why humans do anything at all. What is making things without the connection we seek? I tend and write HTML to find you.

As James so eloquently put when he suggested this title, the web works best when we weave it. It takes time and effort, sure (I'd be lying if it hasn't hoovered most of my off hours) but it's worth it.

Every collaboration I've done, every odd thing I've made, each tweak I've made to my various projects, came from a spark of connection. An idea given, an error found, a suggestion made.

It starts with active participation, and continues with something like friendship, however fleeting. So if you're reading this and you have a website, or you're thinking about starting one, or you're wondering if it's worth the effort: it is. Always.

It's so easy to rage at an internet gone wrong, and while there's so much to mourn and work to change and discourage, my anger sucks all my energy if I don't do something with it. I don't want you to despair at the state of the internet. I want you to fall in love with it.

The web becomes closer-knit when we choose to weave it that way.

So I sign the guestbooks, I email strangers, I build (yet another) directory…and I try.

Because it's the only way I know how.