19 Comments
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amelia hruby's avatar

Ooh I can relate to this so much! Websites are often how I envision the building blocks of any brand (personal or business) and I’ve been lost in the existential crisis of my personal website all year!

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Yes! I was putting so much pressure on how to design this, and I was going to make it all artful and fancy (which led me to keep putting it off for idk, over a year). And then I just thought.... what about just a simple page for each of my things? So it feels like a little rolodex.

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Carolyn Yoo's avatar

May I just say, your photos are GORGEOUS! Love this new home of yours :)

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Thank you so much! I really love the process of documentation, with a real camera!

♡ ♡ ♡

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Paula Swenson's avatar

Your new website has such lovely calm energy, it made me want to linger and explore.

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Thank you so much! This is lovely to hear.

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Kelly Barrett's avatar

I have found the whole exercise of evolving a personal website equal parts agitating and exhilarating. Thanks for this share - looks awesome!

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Thank you! I know, right?! My advice is to keep it simple. I almost went a overboard with design, and then I realized it was pretty easy to just set up simple pages for each of my 'things'.

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Kristen Runvik's avatar

As a highly multipassionate, multi hyphenate human, I feel like I’m always iterating and launching new projects, but finally also created a single “home” under my own name which feels very liberating and yet vulnerable?!

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Yes, both liberating and vulnerable! I would love to see yours. Drop the link for us! ◡̈

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Seth Werkheiser's avatar

Heck yes, websites!!! It can all be so disorienting, our brands our work our THINGS!!!

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Right?! I decided keeping it simple was the way to go. Otherwise, I kept overcomplicating it and procrastinating. A simple page where it is clear there are multiple 'things' with simple pages explaining each thing definitely does the job! Plus, I love how I could embed my substack feed on my page for my substack. Have you seen this? https://supascribe.com

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Seth Werkheiser's avatar

Oh wow, never saw that! I’ll check it out a bit.

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Kristen Drozdowski's avatar

Yeah! It's cool. Just a simple code on a page in my website and then it shows however many posts I want to show. You can organize them however you want or just show 'latest' or 'top'. Then you can just click on a post and it will take you to substack. Pretty neat! Here's how it looks on my site: https://www.kristendroz.com/substack

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Jessica Goodall's avatar

Your new website is beautiful, Kristen! The thought processes you share always seem to resonate. :)

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Mike Ambs's avatar

New site looks great :)

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Tara Leaver's avatar

I love how you described the experience of trying to express yourself through/as a website - very much mine too. Also I absolutely love the clean look of your website, and in particular the way you've linked to your different roles at the bottom - that's genius, and I'd like to borrow that if I may!

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Emily's avatar

Just had a lightbulb moment reading this! Beautiful website by the way :)

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Christian Totty's avatar

This really resonates, and I've been thinking about this topic a lot as well. I am coming to realize that I need a hub, or hearth, that is under my name and incorporates the diversity of my work. Your post was a helpful nudge to go for it!

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