Sometimes I look around and I hate what the web has become.

Years and years ago when I first came to the web, back in the mid nineties, my favorite website was called “Wisteria”. It was a whimsical, beautiful, personal website that explored mythology, fairytales, kitchen magic (homemade cosmetics and organic cleaning supplies, etc.) gardening, and things that go bump in the night. It was disastrously organized, if it was organized at all. If you were lucky enough to find a useful piece of information during one visit, you had to memorize it or write it down because chances were good you’d never find that information again. Clicking a wrong link during a mosey down one of her recipes for herbal lip balms would land you on a page about her chickens (complete with pictures and a haiku, of course), which would in turn take you to a page about roaming chicken coops and a recipe for a three egg omelet. I could rarely remember where my journey had begun, and it was a hopeless task to go to her site to look for anything in particular, but every visit was such a wonder that I came back eagerly and often to see what she was up to.

She updated her site frequently, though in unexpected places. Some days I was sure the third link in her “Ode to a Lavender Fairy” used to take me to a tutorial on watercolor, only to discover it now took me to her webcam. But every update added a new dimension of whimsy and beauty to the site. The art was carefully chosen, the language delightfully sweet. The photography, while not professional, was worthy of the words that surrounded it—the pictures told as much of a story as anything else.

I didn’t just visit her website. I explored it. I relished its quirks. I looked forward to old paths leading me to new places, and just accepting it when old favorites disappeared to be replaced by her new fancy-of-the-moment.

Wisteria’s site was a treasure hunt, and I miss that about the web. I miss how personal it used to be before it was taken over by bizpeak and advertisers. I miss how free it was, how open to exploration and unfolding. Webapps are great and everything, but as a publishing platform the web used to be—and could be again—so much more. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the value of a strong architecture, of solid navigation, and of good usability and predictability. But I also understand the value of a website as art, and of art as experience, and what it means to get lost in one’s journey into images, words, ideas. The value of these things might be harder to quantify, and certainly harder to justify to a client or a company, and truthfully, these things that I hold so dear won’t be of value to many people. It will depend on the right situation, the right website, the right visitor. But these people, these instances, should be catered to as well. There’s no reason the web has to be sterile, blue-gray, and plastic.

Damn it all. I’m going to bring Wisteria back.

I love and adore Coldplay.

That’s right; I’m not ashamed to admit it. Chris Martin’s voice makes me melt into buttery little puddles.

The first time I heard that “Viva la Vida” song on an Apple iTunes commercial, I immediately knew it was Coldplay. I pounced on my husband and grabbed the remote from his hand, furiously smashing the volume + button. My husband looked at me bewildered. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s Coldplay,”I breathed.

He rolled his eyes, got up, went to my Mac, and opened my iTunes. He snorted. “Heh, is that song called Viva la Vida? it’s the number one most downloaded song on iTunes. I’ll download it for you.”

(He’s a sweetheart, but that’s not the point of this post.)

I ran into my office and searched for the lyrics to the song so I could sing along with Chris Martin and pretend we were on stage together. I stumbled upon a lyrics web forum where people could post reactions, comments, corrections to the lyrics.

If you haven’t heard the song, it’s basically a song told from the point of view of an ex-King/General/Ruler/Emperor about life as the ruler of the world, and then the fallout.

At least, that’s what I get out of the song. These people on the forum had other, very specific, and sometimes outrageous ideas.

Ideas about what the song really means range from President Bush’s war in Iraq to the French Revolution to Jesus to Capitalism. Several of the arguments about what the song means are well articulated, well supported, creative, and interesting. But none of that makes them right.

Songs are wildly subjective. But not just songs—symbolism and imagery of all sorts are deeply subjective. Sure, there are cultural norms that many of us have inherited and will refer to, but sometimes those norms conflict, and it becomes difficult to ferret out the “right answer”, assuming there is one.

My mother tells a story about an English class she took in college. They were asked to read a short story about a young woman who has an abortion. At the end of the story, the young woman is driving her car and comes upon a storefront sign whose marquee is a giant capital T. The sign makes her cry.

The question put to the students is, “Why does the woman cry?”

My mother is a deeply religious woman, so she responded that the woman cried because the T reminded her of Jesus’s cross, and the burdens He bears for all of humankind, even this woman who had sinned against Her savior and herself, yadda yadda.

The teacher, however, indicated (in red ink, no less) that my mother was completely wrong. The woman cried because the T reminded her of the uterus and fallopian tubes.

Now, I haven’t read the story. Maybe something in the story that I am unaware of indicated the association of T’s with woman parts and not Jesus, but probably not. In the context that I have, either answer seems perfectly plausible. Both of these symbols fit this scenario. The wilderness of human imagination and association is crazy territory, and who am I—or anyone—to say what is “right” and what is “wrong”? That’s part of the beauty of symbolic language and abstract thought—the territory is diffuse and watercolor. If you’re looking for absolutes, talk to the Mathematicians. And even still, be careful.

We could ask Chris Martin et al. what the song means, but even then, even though they are the creators, they’d only be giving what they intended the song to mean—what it means to them. Because once a song enters my brain and becomes part of my inner landscape, it becomes entangled with my beliefs and impressions and no longer belongs to Coldplay. It becomes part of me and I become part of it, and what it means to me is just as valid as what it means to its creators.

And, just for the record, whoever is responsible at Apple not only for choosing which songs to use in their commercials but for editing them into their thirty seconds bytes is brilliant. If you’re reading this and single, drop me a line, ok? Just don’t tell my husband.

Writers are manipulative bastards.

I can say that, as a writer, though it is somewhat disingenuous, as I am primarily (though not solely) a non-fiction writer, and it is largely fiction writers who are the soul suckers of the universe.

I say that with the most love and respect, of course.

I am sitting on my couch, eating a cookie sandwich (chocolate chip cookie, thick layer of vanilla buttercream, chocolate chip cookie. I admit that bashfully, though really I think everyone should try it, because the nine year old in all of us would cry over how sugary good this is) and watching a re-run of Bones. I love this show. I love this show even retrospectively, even though I know the writers will ruin it with a season finale that is not only preposterous but just plain cruel to those of us who have watched so diligently for three seasons.

But that’s what writers do. They’re not happy to just stick in the knife; they have to twist it on the way out.

Last night, my husband and I watched the Ridley Scott miniseries version of The Andromeda Strain. They did some interesting things to the characters and plot–they made it more modern, for one, and they also made it more multicultural, which is always something of a mixed blessing. They also, interestingly, incorporated an environmental message that was not part of the original novel. It was, as is often the case in television, a bit haphazard, and I was unsatisfied with the end of the story. Intellectually, it wasn’t good. But I went to work today and talked about it with some friends. We talked about the implications of strip mining, of obliterating natural history, of what happens when humans forget ourselves and assume territory that isn’t ours. We talked about Ridley Scott, and Alien (no s, even though I liked the second movie better. No, it’s not as deep but c’mon, it’s a great monster flick) and whether Harrison Ford was really a replicant (he clearly was; I don’t even know why we argued about this.) And I have often wondered if Frank Herbert’s Dune would have been better handled in Scott’s hands than Lynch’s (though I will be the first to admit that I love David Lynch’s Dune, even though it’s a completely different story than Herbert’s.)

In other words, stories don’t have to be great for them to leave an impression. They just have to make you feel something. Get you talking. Get you wondering. Writers, directors, artists–they’re all so manipulative. And like a jilted lover mesmerized by the memory of hot sex, we keep coming back for more.

How does that happen? What is it that they have that we want? Why do I watch Fox television and cheerleader movies? (Or gymnastics movies. As much as I hate to admit it, Stick It is fine family fun, and even has a decent message about the sport of gymnastics. Btu really I’m just in it for the snappy banter.)

But really, the answer is probably right here in front of me, on this very page. I’m eating a fat-laden, nutrient-free cookie sandwich and now I’m watching House. Maybe I just like junk.

Maybe most of us do.

And maybe that’s really the key to being great–knowing just how much “junk”, by whatever definition works for your audience, to incorporate into the hard stuff. Most of us, whether we like to admit it or not, need to intersperse our healthful intakes with the not-so-serious. And we like it, and you know it’s true, when we can actually read our literature–magazines, blog posts, textbooks–without having to have the OED in the other hand. Sure, it makes us feel smart when we’ve finished deciphering a page of Aristotle, but when we’re unwinding after a day of work we prefer revel in a bit of fluff teevee and a trashy novel. Yes, it’s candy, but that’s not all–there’s something in it we need. Because when we’re sitting before our Fox TV show, or knuckles deep in a Laurell K. Hamilton novel, we’re not just thinking, we’re imagining. We’re engaging a wholly different part of ourselves, and it feels good.

Yeah, it feels good.

Thing is, contrary to what I learned in Catholic school, there’s some benefit in feeling good. Which means there’s benefit in our work being fun, lively, flirtatious, edgy–whatever we need it to be. And transitively, there’s no reason good writing or good design needs to be stuffy, intense, or something your college professor would laud you for. We’re not in college. We’re in the real work, creating for real people who like to be entertained.

When I’m done with this cookie sandwich, I’m going to have a glass of sauvignon blanc. And I’ll still be watching House. Because I’m complicated like that.

Everyone is.

If you read my last post, it might not come as a surprise that I have recently decided to take the bull by the horns and jump ship. (Wow, those metaphors don’t really work together, for several reasons. All the same, I’m going to leave that sentence alone, because the imagery makes me chuckle. And if I can’t keep myself entertained, what’s the point?) I thought about my options: of staying with a company whose goals and passions didn’t really match my own, or striking out on my own to do what I love and am good at. But I was afraid, too: entrepreneurship has its costs. Was I ready to make the change? Was I willing to do everything it was gonna take to be successful?

I told a friend my plan, to venture into a career as a web content strategist and developer. It’s work I love. It’s work I was made for. Writing, web, and information design? That’s the recipe for the blood in my veins, I tell you what.

And what does my friend reply? “Oh, cool, can you help me with some SEO for my website?”

I closed my eyes. I breathed. I counted to five. (Ten would have been too obvious. He might have started freaking out, thinking I’d gone into heat stroke or something. After all, we were outside, and this is Texas.) When I came back, I just shook my head. “No, that’s not really the heart of it. I don’t work for machines; I work for people.”

It isn’t that I have a problem with search engine optimization. I recognize that is has value; I even recognize that is has a valuable role in my own work. But the words that craft a page aren’t merely valuable for what they offer to Google–the words on a page should be valuable because of what they offer to humans. When I visit a website, I expect to be treated as an honored guest. I want you to use words I identify with, structure I relate to, a considered rhythm and a careful harmony that engages my brain and touches my soul. I want you to show me some respect, to give me the information I require as elegantly, thoughtfully, and seamlessly as you can.

So many websites fail at that one, simple thing. And it is that experience I want to help build.

I find it appalling that so many of us have come to accept content on the web as half-assed, choppy, bungling, or otherwise inept. I love the fact that the web lowers the barrier to entry, allowing people the freedom and ability to express themselves. But these same people, especially the ones who loom large in the public eye, have an obligation to polish what they say, and how they say it. What we bring to the pages of the internet should matter. The words should have heart. The images should have soul. The experiences we create for our readers and visitors shouldn’t be slipshod and ramshackle. They should be moving. Memorable.

You don’t have to be Shakespeare or even Jeffrey Zeldman to craft an engaging experience via the words you use. But it’s not something everyone is good at. It’s not something everyone cares about. And what I hope to do in this new venture is care on other people’s behalf–to add the deftness, the precision, and the warmth to the language that fills their websites, not so search engines will find them, but so people will remember them after they’ve found them.

I’ve been a writer my entire life. When I was a little girl, my mother used to send me and my brother to our grandmother’s house outside of Cleveland for the summer. It was a much anticipated trip, as going away to grandma’s was like going away to another world–and that’s not much of a stretch if you compare Los Angeles to a tiny suburb in Ohio.

One year, the year I decided to write the great American Novel (I must have been all of 9 or 10 years old) I hauled my ancient typewriter with me. It was heavy as all get-out; an all metal monstrosity, painted cerulean blue, that I loved with all my heart. That typewriter, for me, meant creative freedom. I learned to type so that my ideas wouldn’t be hindered by the speed of my pen; I could type almost as fast as I could think, and never again would the perfect line of dialog escape me because my  brain hand run off to bigger and better things while my fingers struggled to keep apace. As strange as it may sound, I loved that typewriter as much as any little girl loved her dolls or imaginary ponies.

That I brought my typewriter with me on my annual trip to Mecca is strange enough. But that action really symbolizes who I am and who I have always been. I never took watercolor paints with me. I never toted crayons, so much more portable, or drawing paper or even pencils. My outlet of choice was writing, and therefore I needed my typewriter.

How, then, did twenty years pass and lead me astray into graphic design? How did that girl who loved writing so much she carried a 20 pound typewriter halfway across the country on summer vacation turn into a woman who, in the course of a workday, might never touch a keyboard in favor of her drawing tablet?

I think the answer lies in one of my core beliefs: I believe the universe gives me interests so that I have something to write about.

Now don’t get me wrong: I enjoy writing fiction. I even love it. But I’m rather lousy at it. I get too caught up in things that don’t matter and at character development I am a hopeless mess. I’m an adequate storyteller, and when I relay events that more or less happened (I am an embellisher, but what writer isn’t?) I can do that with a certain amount of flair and sophistication, but when it comes to making something up from scratch? Well, it comes off that way–self-conscious, trying too hard.

But my real passion and talent is non-fiction. It’s why I performed so well in college, to be honest. I outperformed my peers not because I was smarter or because I had more information then they did. It was because I could write my way into the sweet spot in my professor’s mind every time. It was almost unfair the advantage I had with that single skill.

But in order to write compelling nonfiction, there has to be passion behind it. You have to do more than know your subject, you have to live it. You have to breathe it in, interpret it, internalize it, and breathe it out as something new, changed, different. And that’s what I did with religion and philosophy, and it’s what I do now with design.

I was gifted with a love for design because it gives me something wonderful to write about.

I bring all this up because someone stumbled upon this blog recently and emailed me to say that he enjoyed my writing, and though I didn’t appear to have interest in this blog anymore, he hoped I would return.

I was deeply ashamed, to be honest. And I remain deeply ashamed. I should not have so long neglected this space, no matter how busy I’ve become.

So I will write about design. And I will write about work and life and whatever else needs to be written about. This space needs to be filled.

The prodigal writer returns.