Colophon
This site was designed in conversation with three systems of pattern recognition: Feng Shui, Western astrology, and numerology. Not as decoration, and not as belief — as a design constraint. Every system is a set of rules about what tends to cohere. These ones were applied to a person rather than a problem, which turned out to be the same process.
The palette is Yang Wood: deep forest, sage, and teal, with water feeding the root. Vertical rhythm throughout. The entry layer is Scorpio Rising — dark, controlled, earning its own reveal. The interior architecture is Aquarius Sun — systematic, unconventional by logic rather than instinct, organized as an argument rather than a gallery. The writing sections carry Sagittarius Moon: warm gold, wide margins, the long view.
The structure underneath all of it is Numerology 4: a foundation built to last, pragmatic, orderly, trustworthy. Personality and Destiny diverge here — the 7 wants to uncover and teach; the 4 wants to build something that holds the weight. This site is the 4 in service of the 7.
The photography is Heart's Desire 3. It was always going to be here. It just took the rest of the system to find the right place for it.
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The technical stack was chosen for the same reason as everything else on this site: coherence with how the work actually gets done.
11ty because it gets out of the way. No JavaScript framework required, no opinions about your opinions. A community that takes accessibility seriously, which means the constraint is built in rather than bolted on. The languages that make sense here are the ones already understood — and 11ty lets them stay that way.
TailwindCSS because experimentation and commitment can stay separate until they shouldn't be anymore. Try something in one place. If it holds, make it permanent. If it doesn't, nothing downstream breaks. This is also how the rest of the work operates.
AlpineJS for the moments that actually need JavaScript. Sprinkles, not scaffolding. The goal is to see how far static can go before reaching for more — and it keeps going further than expected.
Static web as a philosophy: less surface area, more control, nothing running that doesn't need to run. The constraint is the point.
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This site uses a digital gardening approach to writing, borrowed from a long tradition of personal sites that treat published work as something tended rather than finished.
Every post carries a growth stage indicating how developed it is. Seedlings are fresh observations, loosely held and subject to change. Budding posts have an argument forming but not yet complete. Evergreen posts are settled enough to stand on, though I still come back to them. I cycle through old seedlings. Sometimes months later. Sometimes years. What goes around comes around.
Some posts also carry an assumed audience declaration at the top — one sentence naming who I'm actually writing for. This is a practice I borrowed from Maggie Appleton, who borrowed it from others before her. It isn't gatekeeping. It's an acknowledgment that writing for everyone at once produces writing that reaches no one. Declaring the audience frees me to be specific, and lets readers who aren't that person calibrate before they invest the time.
Posts are sorted by thread, not by date. Chronology is the least interesting thing about an idea.