It’s been about a month since I started working on my site and two weeks since it went live. Up to this point, I’ve left the About Me section empty, providing visitors with just two words: “Coming soon.”
Very informative.
You would think that the About Me section would be a priority when creating a personal website, since the whole point of having a site is usually to tell people about yourself. So what took me so long?
I don’t know. But here’s how I finally got it done.
The typical About Me page
I know what you’re supposed to do. Put in a glamorous photo, a standard professional bio, and a few pitches about your work, all while presenting yourself in the most flattering light possible. Make yourself seem otherworldly, someone everyone should aspire to emulate. Maybe mention a challenge you’ve overcome so you seem inspirational.
That was never going to work for me. First, I’m not glamorous, so a glam shot would backfire. Plus, I’m not going to pay for that shit. Second, it seems silly to regurgitate a professional bio in paragraph form since I’ve already included some of the relevant points as bullet points on my Academics and Swimming pages. Third, I’m not otherworldly, and selective editing to present myself as such just isn’t my style. Yes, I’ve done some cool things, but I’m certainly not without fault. Finally, while I’ve overcome plenty of small challenges, the biggest one (depression) is still a work in progress.
Clearly, the typical About Me page was out.
Help (or lack thereof) from friends
I called a few people who know me well. One of my sisters, some of my friends. You know, people that you would think could help.
After explaining my quandary, I asked them what they think are the most important things for someone to know about me. My sister’s response sums up their reactions: “well…you’re so hard to describe…”
To give her the benefit of the doubt, we can assume she meant there’s so much depth to my personality that it’s hard to put it into just a few words. But that’s giving her the benefit of the doubt. What she really meant is that I’m weird. Thanks, Alex.
My solution
Well, since my friends and sister weren’t helpful, I was on my own. At this point, I really wanted to get my first blog post online and so decided on the reliable “Coming soon” in the About Me section for the time being in order to make the site live. And then I got distracted. I wrote a few more blog posts (here, here, and here), I started teaching an Engineering course, I carried on trying to start a small business (more on that later…maybe). Every now and then I’d think about what I could write, but I’d convince myself it wasn’t a priority and move on with my day.
Here’s the thing, though. It was a priority. It was important to me to write it, and to give visitors to this site a sense of knowing and understanding me. But I was hesitant to do it, to write what I wanted to write, to put those raw words out there for the world to see and judge.
In the end, my solution was simple. I had to force myself to write it. How? I told myself I couldn’t have any desserts till I wrote it. It was done a few hours later.
Is it conventional? No, definitely not, but then, nor am I.
Is it good? I don’t know – beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
Is it me? Yes, undeniably.
(In case you missed the link at the top of the page, click here to see my About Me page.)
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