The Author Is Also Tech Support
June 11, 2026
I fixed the blog dates yesterday morning, which means I will now be unbearable for at least two business days.
There was a time when anything technical made me immediately look for the nearest person who knew how to do the thing. Not in a charming “I’m bad with computers” way. More in a “if this screen asks me one more question I’m going to start a new life under a different name” way.
For years, I relied heavily on other people for tech support. Actual support. Emotional support. Moral support. The kind of support where someone else says, “Did you try restarting it?” and I pretend that was not my entire plan.
At one point, Josh was my tech department.
This was sweet in theory and alarming in practice because if the solution was not restart the computer, we were both standing at the edge of civilization with no map.
Then life did what life does. It took the department I relied on, turned it inside out, dropped it on the floor, and asked if I had considered personal growth.
So I restructured.
Figuratively and literally.
That has been the mantra this year, really.
Restructuring toward what is more authentic.
Not more impressive. Not more acceptable. Not more easily explained to people who preferred the older version because she came with job titles, full sentences, and the ability to attend meetings without making visible facial expressions.
More authentic.
More mine.
If I am going to be the author of my own life, then I cannot keep handing other people the outline and acting surprised when they write me smaller than I am.
That meant the platform had to change too.
Of course it did.
I could not keep trying to build an artist-first life inside a website that still had old branding hiding in the corners and tiny corporate ghosts waving from the footer. The room was wrong. The energy was wrong. The script was still carrying someone else’s notes.
So I moved it.
New platform.
Cleaner pages.
Illustrated.
Journal.
Contact.
Less explanation. More evidence.
No little GoDaddy signs in the corners, which felt deeply satisfying in a way that probably says too much about me. No leftover Lead Like Arbe pieces popping up like a former employee who kept their keycard.
The site finally feels less like a professional container and more like a room.
Which is irritating, because once something becomes your room, you are also responsible for knowing where the light switches are.
After everything that happened, I made myself a promise that I would learn more. Not because I wanted to become a technical person. Let’s not get carried away. I still believe websites are held together by buttons, vibes, and mild threats.
But I wanted to stop feeling vulnerable.
I wanted to stop needing other people to explain systems to me in ways that also gave them power over how their work was seen, described, defended, or excused. I wanted to know enough that I could ask better questions. I wanted to know enough that I could see when something was actually complicated and when someone was just making it foggy because fog is useful when you are standing in the wrong place.
That part is not funny.
The rest of it is a little funny.
Because here I am now, in my artist era, building websites.
Not one website.
Several.
I am on my third round of building, moving, rearranging, deleting, transferring, and quietly muttering at menus like a woman trying to negotiate with a vending machine.
I have transferred domains to different platforms.
I have moved my work.
I have cleaned out old language that no longer fit.
And yesterday morning I updated posted blog dates with no external helpline.
No ticket.
No panic text.
No “can you just look at this quickly?”
Just me, coffee, the website, and the quiet understanding that if I broke it, I was also the department responsible for fixing it.
That is growth.
Annoying growth, but growth.
The irony is not lost on me that I spent decades as an administrator. I have worn every hat. I have managed files, audits, emails, reports, crisis rooms, committees, people, policies, calendars, complaints, budgets, and the kind of spreadsheets that make the soul leave the body and circle the room.
And yet now, when I am most publicly becoming an artist, I am also somehow becoming more technically capable.
Which feels rude.
Apparently all the old versions of me still live in the same building.
The administrator is still here, checking dates.
The writer is still here, making everything more dramatic than necessary but not entirely wrong.
The artist is downstairs in her studio making women with long necks, strange eyes, unfinished edges, and expressions that suggest they know exactly where the problem started.
The executive is somewhere in the back, reviewing “materials”.
The exhausted woman is sitting in the corner asking if we really need another platform.
And the new version of me is standing at the desk, fixing the website myself.
Not perfectly.
Not elegantly.
Not with any real desire to become the person people call when their printer stops behaving. I have boundaries.
But enough.
Enough to not feel helpless.
Enough to know where the buttons are.
Enough to move my own work into a room that feels like mine.
That is the part I keep coming back to.
The website is not just a website. It is another room.
I built the studio in the basement, and now I am building the online room too. One has wood panels, pastels, paint, and a suspicious amount of paper. The other has pages, dates, images, links, and fewer corporate ghosts than it had last week.
Both rooms are imperfect.
Both rooms are mine.
Being the author sounds romantic until you realize the author is also responsible for the settings.
Rude, but useful.
Terrible news for anyone hoping I would remain easy to confuse.
