URL:http://www.cartania.com
Age - How old are you now?
41
When you started your site?
37
Marital Status?
Married
Occupation?
Computer interface designer and writer
Hobbies - What do you like to do, besides keep this site?
I've spent years studying a nine-dimensional mathematical structure, a kind
of maze, which I find beautiful and interesting. I also read, hang out
with my three cats, and spend as much time as I can with friends and
family. I particularly like meandering conversations. I've been
exchanging weekly audio tapes with one close friend for more than 25 years
now.
Location - Where are you from? Where are you now?
I was born in Montana and raised in southern Idaho. After ten years of
college, I returned to Montana and spent five wonderful years in a cottage
on the Continental Divide. While there, I met my wife online and the two
of us wound up in the San Francisco Bay Area. We live in an old Victorian
on the island of Alameda. I like living in Alameda because it's quirky and
no two houses are alike.
Why did you start writing your Web site?
I am a great believer in PONARVs, Projects Of No Apparent Redeeming Value.
Projects we do for irrational reasons, for love or for fun or for the hell
of it, carry us to places we can't predict, and often end up providing
surprisingly practical rewards. My very first web page was an essay about
PONARVs. I soon realized that my nascent website was itself a PONARV, one
that would carry me to places I couldn't predict. That's when the pages
started flying!
Why do you write a site about you?
Because that's the only thing I truly know about. I think of myself as an
artist. Art is self-expression. So I am, by my nature, driven to express
myself. And I think that web pages are a legitimate art form. In fact,
personal web pages may be the purest form of self-expression.
I am fascinated by the challenge of distilling experience into words and
pictures and then sending it all out into a vast, intangible ether so that
total strangers on different continents can connect with what I see inside
me. The greatest praise I receive from visitors is that they feel as if
they know me.
And if I do a good enough job, my pages may survive me and connect with
people who haven't even been born yet. I don't expect this to happen on
any grand scale, but it pleases me that my web site might someday become a
wonderful legacy for my daughter.
Do you communicate with readers of your site?
Yes. If they take the trouble to write a comment in my guestbook, I
usually send a note thanking them. Occassionally we strike up a brief
correspondance. At the moment I'm in the midst of a wonderful exchange
with a woman in Tennessee; we are pondering what happens after a mid-life
crisis. I had a really interesting debate with a guy in Canada about
dreams. A young man in Africa wrote to tell me that one of my essays
helped him get through a difficult break-up. A delightful woman in
Portugal reads my essays aloud to her cat (and her husband). I regulary
dispense free advice about digital cameras and web design and get letters
from school children about my Civil War pages. Some of the most touching
letters come in response to the eulogy I put up for my father; readers
often end up telling me about their own fathers. These interactions are
what keep me going.
How much email feedback to you recieve from your site? Is it mainly positive or negative?
I get about a hundred notes each year. In over four years I think I've
received only one (mildly) negative e-mail from a guy who thought I wasn't
baring my soul sufficiently.
Have you met any new friends because of the site?
Yes! I made one friend in Belfast who got me interested in genealogy and
eventually inspired me to travel to Ireland. He fed my wife and I, took us
in, and helped me with my research; we still keep in touch. That trip
inspired a web page on Ireland which brought me to the attention of a
councilwoman from another Irish town. We've been corresponding for years
and she even sent a beautiful dress for my daughter. I've also made
contact with some distant relatives I never knew I had.
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