Clutter

It was so clean, uncluttered, easy to read, to navigate, and it was quiet. It was just right. It was me. I loved it… at first. Actually, I loved it for the first… how long? The first year?

When my second book, Threads Around the World: From Arabian Weaving to Batik in Zimbabwe, was about to be published, my website no longer felt right. The second book, about textiles, was so different from the first, a memoir of recovery from brain injury. Now the website needed to address both the brain injury issues and traditional textiles—it started getting cluttered. I now needed separate information about the upcoming book. I needed a separate blog about textile side of my life.

When the book actually came out, the first didn’t fade out of existence. I had to accommodate events associated with each book as well as events that combined the two. The website needed additional pages, more buttons and links.

I spoke to Judy, my editor, and Bekah, my web warrior (mistress sounds a bit off). Or should it be web ninja? Web chief? web and we reorganized a bit here, added a page there. But it seemed to be getting worse. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t enough, and no matter what Bekah did to keep things under control, I felt as if it was getting out of hand.

It reached a point where I avoided scrolling down on the home page—there was too much information. I got overwhelmed. It must have much worse for brain injury survivors who were new to the site—so many of us have trouble processing high volumes of data.

It was time to rethink the whole website. Perhaps even construct a new one.