![\"Robin](\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/zigzagsawaypost-663x1024.jpg\" "\\"Curating")
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\u201cThis is Me, it\u2019s like a part of me. I can\u2019t just get rid of it. These graphics are my branding,\u201d I told the Ithaca College student who was writing a critical evaluation of my website for his final project. But I knew the distracting purple and black zigzags had to go. It was the Me from four years ago, when I was clinging to my past artwork because I no longer knew who I was or what I was capable of. Thinking I\u2019d never do art again, a year after my daughter died, I\u2019d grabbed graphics from decades earlier to design my site. I\u2019d filled every corner of my online home, as if I could pad and protect my new life.<\/p>\n
\u201cCluttered …crowded … crazy patterns … Unclear what the purpose is,\u201d was written in the student\u2019s report. Many of his classmates had voted in agreement, \u201cThe site doesn\u2019t look trustworthy.\u201d A suffocating heaviness enveloped me. Like grief. And I wondered how I had failed, and why my readers wouldn\u2019t trust me. After all, I had emptied my heart onto the blog posts. Each week for four years I\u2019d dug deep into my gut to extract the truth about losing a loved one, and planted it on the pages. What else could I possibly expose in order to be \u201ctrustworthy?\u201d I decided to tear down and whitewash the whole site.<\/p>\n
Days later, I learned that trustworthiness referred to the credibility of the website, and the safeguards utilized to secure the site from scammers and malicious hackers. So please excuse the mess on my website the next few weeks as I peel away the old distracting layers of design, and Bob adds layers of protection. I\u2019m lightening up and simplifying our looks. There\u2019s room to spread out now. More space. It\u2019s secure. Finally, I can breathe again. I can fly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “This is Me, it’s like a part of me. I can’t just get rid of it. These graphics are my branding,” I told the Ithaca College student who was writing a critical evaluation of my website for his final project. But I knew the distracting purple and black zigzags had to go. It was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[702],"tags":[839,838,837,247,784,835,112,833,832,836,834],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-702","tag-ameriweb-hosting","tag-curating-my-life","tag-decluttering","tag-grief","tag-healing","tag-lose-a-loved-one","tag-losing-a-child","tag-secure-connection","tag-trustworthiness-in-websites","tag-uncluttering","tag-website-makeover"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cWe\u2019re updating your secure connection, and getting you the certification sticker,\u201d Bob, my webmaster at Ameriweb Hosting<\/a>, assured me, when I called, in tears. But by then, my mind was made up. It was time to clean up and clear it out.<\/p>\n