As I write these words, markxtang.com is down. It’s down because I thought my hosting plan was on auto-renew; it wasn’t. Thankfully Mark (from Bluehost) was able to pull my site back from the brink of deletion and it should be restored from a November backup. Which would be perfectly fine since I haven’t added to the site since late March last year. If that doesn’t work out, that’s fine too. That’s because Mark (me) figured out how to get my WordPress site to work offline. I’m currently writing this on my local WordPress environment running in a Docker virtual machine. I can duplicate this site and stick it right back on the internet!
I’m really grateful to me from a year ago. It was tough times. My last employer, Webstudio, was running low on funds, so it was clear that I needed to find a new job. For a brief moment I freelanced at McKinney, designing social media content, but a longer-term role did not materialize. By mid-January, I was out of work.
This was the 3rd time in the last 3 years that I’ve had to scramble to find a job. This time, I didn’t panic. Every time before that, the way out was showing my website to the right person. Each time, I would tear down my existing website and reinvent it from scratch—deleting and recreating my online self because the last one wasn’t good enough. This time, I wanted to make it good enough that future Mark wouldn’t want to tear it down and start again.
So, a year ago I put my head down. I sat at my computer and worked on this website. I figured out how to get WordPress running in a Docker virtual machine. I did this while applying for jobs, while working on my resume, while making case studies, while “networking”, while basically being really stressed out and trying to maintain a normal facade.
I got the call more or less on my birthday. Two and a half or so months into the job search, the website had done its job. And now I had a job. I was, and still am, the Lead Designer at Enter.
That didn’t mean the website was done though. There are “coming soons” on case studies that were never completed. Without being motivated by an existential threat, it just wasn’t a priority. To be honest, even before I got the job, I was running out of steam. There’s only so much you can push through before the stress of it all grinds you to a halt. I also want to acknowledge that this is not an unusual situation for job seekers to be in, and it’s just hard for everyone. I was fortunate that my job search worked out.
A year later, I’m doing something I’ve never really done before. I’m working on my website while being gainfully employed. I’m trying to reshape my relationship with this thing that I’ve created. Hopefully replace some of that desperation with love and self-care. I still don’t want to, but I’ll probably have to finish those case studies. Hopefully telling stories about different parts of my working life will be a cathartic experience. I also want to write more about things I care about, not just design.
Most of all, I am done with the reboots! I want this to be a long-term project. I want to build on what I’ve done, what I’m doing, for years to come. It’s partly an insurance policy, but it’s also for me. As a designer, I’ve spent so many years using my creativity to tell other people’s stories, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to tell my own. This is me. This is my story. Soon it will be on the internet, immortalized on servers for as long as I remember to pay my bill.