I built my website with SquareSpace in 2012. I had some experience with WordPress, but it was important that I present as professional a site as possible. This was in a time when I was writing full time, nipping at the heels of traditional publishing. I’ve renewed that site ever since, making very few changes other than adding Thoughts posts. I was laid off from my job at the beginning of 2025, and a year and a half later, I’m still looking for work. I can’t afford SquareSpace anymore, but I don’t want to abandon my site. It feels like abandoning my childhood dreams. I’m not there yet.

Thankfully, we live in the age of AI. And you’re thinking to yourself, *gasp* “AI is evil!” And that’s a nuanced topic that warrants its own post. I work with AI daily in my corporate life, and I have a nuanced take on its applications. While I never use it for my creative writing, I’ll happily use it for technical work like PDRs, business cases, and coding. So I says to Claude, “Remake my website in WordPress!” And you’re witnessing the fruit of that prompt. The site is nearly identical, but costs me $130 less per year.

And who knows, now that I’m not confined by SqareSpace’s build model, maybe I can start to add some things I never considered before.