in the name of

did I used to love this because it was so brain-slaughteringly difficult?

or was it because I was once somewhat good at it?

I can't remember.

since I no longer have easy access to anything nice like Dreamweaver, I've been staring at something like the above screenshot for a few hours now, trying to remember. trying to piece all these fragments of the past into something useful.

my roommate Bekah (look, she has a blog) is starting a cookie business. and because I used to love this so much, I offered to break my head over a bit of design work for her. perhaps I should've started with the business cards instead of the website.

once upon a time, one of my professors told me not to worry about the code. the technical junk. "the rhetorical and design stuff is much more difficult," he said. (that's exactly what he said, actually. i have it on record.) but can that be true? I struggle to accept the idea. not that the rhetoric and design come easy to me, but they've never infused my brain cells with searing frustration. the rhetoric, the design--those are a pleasure to coax into perfection, to ponder and prod and revise and envision. html? css? javascript? they'll never be perfect. they'll always need hacking. all that technical stuff is just one more long list of things that make me feel helpless these days.

so, genius brother, if you're listening: what if, in the next few weeks or so, I send you this lovely pasted-down photoshop mock-up and let you dissect it into an actual functioning website? it appears I may have lost my patience with it all.