Website as a meandering home

I first registered the domain, reubenson.com, on 01/20/2016. At the time, I was navigating various transitions, having moved from Boston to New York City, and was in the process of pivoting from research science to web development. I was living in the Ditmas Park neighborhood, and I spent a lot of time walking along the lake in the southern portion of Prospect Park. I lived directly below the cartoonist Gary Panter, and on several occasions, I improvised duets with him, unbeknownst to Gary, in which I could hear the sound of him playing guitar through my ceiling (his floor) and I joined with my guitar. The website I launched then evolved slightly from 2016 to 2023, and you can visit it on archive.org here.

The version of the website you’re visiting now began to take shape in the fall of 2023, just as I was beginning a residency at Recurse Center. I was also beginning to wrap up my year-long personal sabbatical, and trying to understand the shape of my life to come. New chapters of life sometimes need new websites.

This website is still under construction, as I find my (pathless) path, but I’ve really been appreciating the framework of “personal website as private engine of change”. I’ve never really felt at home online, and maybe for this reason, I’ve found it compelling to incorporate an architectural design motif that is repeated across my current apartment building into the borders of the pages herein. I’ve written elsewhere a little about my interest in the Greek meander pattern, and while the border used here isn’t exactly a meander pattern, it bears more than a passing resemblance.

In my continued meander through life, I’m glad to have a website that meanders with me.