Relaunching This Website and Life in General
Outside my house at low tide. © Hadassa Haack
Siargao Island /// Sitting on my bed aka “The Boffice” writing. It’s the rare occasion where I am wearing a long sleeved sweatshirt. Pets have gathered around me. As I write this, storm Auring, the first typhoon of 2021 in the Philippines is raging outside and I can feel water spraying through the open gable above my mosquito net onto my mattress. Time to carry the laptop to safety. In a climate where I’m always too hot and not having air-conditioning, typhoon season is my favourite.
Even though I live right on the beach in a native style cottage (aka exposed and a bit like glamping), these rare moments remind me of Germany. I can finally get to cosy up under the blanket, do lots of reading and research and sleep soundly. No dogs barking, no roosters crowing, no early morning building work, no shouting surf instructors or screaming beginners standing up on their foamies for the first time.
The soundtrack to tropical life on a paradise island is on pause.
It’s been 3+ years of living on a small tropical island after leaving Sydney and now even more remote and isolated thanks to the global pandemic. How I got here and why I am still here is a story for another day but I haven’t seen my family in friends in Germany for two and half years and my friends in Australia for one and a half.
After an accident and a year of almost creative paralysis I’ve have started to resurrect the creative juices by completely redesigning this website. It’s hard going with slow internet and frequent power cuts but it helps to get clear on what one wants to focus on and who to help with what the of content.
Firstly, I realised that I was too bored with my own site to actually use it. I needed a space online where I love coming to, where I can share all the different thing I am into, be that writing, filming or photography or art, something that really felt fun and that I enjoy working on.
After years of living in big cities and working with corporate international clients, I wanted my new website to reflect the shift to living in nature, a simpler life and a desire to only collaborate with companies and now also individual people that share my values.
I also want to establish my own digital real estate and create a magazine style environment where people come back to read my blog, find useful information nor inspiration and hopefully are willing to commit to signing up and eventually (possibly) buy products.
I am leaving my beloved safety net of black and white as main colours and am going for a more soft and natural vibe to reflect my current lifestyle, to create a peaceful vibe and as a nod to the Zeitgeist.
So here we are, still very much a work in progress but much more me.
All this to say, if you’re planning to create a website for yourself,
take time to decide what you want to achieve with it
what your main goals are
how the design reflects your work and personality to attract the right clients or collaborators
make it fun for yourself to use and update to avoid it turning into a graveyard of old content.
