# Care Less & Speak More Published: 2025-11-27 Canonical: https://journal.xiaotianfanx.com/journal/care-less-and-speak-more On ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ (Personal Portfolio Site of Petra Cortright), following up on building a portfolio site . It just says I don't give a *. How can we have a voice while optimizing for balance all the time? I mean... For sure, that's not impossible. Yet, I believe there is indeed a pitfall when it comes to, again, our mindset. There are countless personal (portfolio) sites out there. Some are instrumental, kind, or boring enough to render everything bluntly (not to say they are bad , actually; those are the majority that respect the presumably most significant purpose of a personal site: utility). And some seem to "combine" design, message, personality, interactivity, expressiveness, and so on with the "content" itself and, potentially, treat the site itself as a piece in its own right. Honestly, one can easily start to argue or probe what the heck I mean by "respect," "purpose," "combine," "content," "a piece," etc. And eventually, that's in fact some questions I hope to answer implicitly at the end. For now, I'd like to stick to the latter, as that's the case that inspired this post and is the case in which I deal mostly. Then, when operating in the latter case, or in fact any case that is related to design, message, personality, interactivity, expressiveness, and so on, one may be bound to thinking about the initiative, purpose, philosophy, and metaphor, if any—at least in my case, I am. Suppose you bothered to take a look at what I said in the previous short reflection on building a portfolio site. In that case, you'll probably sense how much I was bothered by balancing , or at least the need to balance (whatever the ends were, name it voice, message, depth, friction, interactivity, clarity, etc.)—it was by itself tension-laden even if I termed the final decision a "middle ground." There is no sign that site is to be user-friendly. A professor of mine said this promptly, commenting on the first version of my portfolio site—despite the mental efforts (or at least explanatory efforts) I (thought I had) put in there to make the form and content clear enough while presenting the site as "a piece." And it is true: the site effectively perplexes (most of) users whom I witnessed navigating it, even if it feels "intuitive enough" for me. That said, there are two threads/directions that follow these observations: One, certainly, is that the job I thought was completed is actually yet to be done; it could be worthwhile for me to go back, reconsider, and redesign the site to make it more friendly. Second, if at the end of the day, despite those efforts devoted, it still ended up in an awkward position, (although, again, it could simply be the case that I have done a bad job), shouldn't I take the chance to stop thinking about the balance or functionality or clarity but fully commit to a voice, even a hostile one? This idea intimidates me, frankly speaking. Despite claiming "I don't care & no difference" as a cornerstone of my life philosophy, saying most of the time I write only for writing's purpose, and even intentionally encoding the message in poetry, I was all the time nevertheless betting on the least, but still existing chance of a successful conveyance (partial or not). It's totally possible that those moves of "I don't care" are nothing more than a camouflaged embodiment of the fact that I care so much. And it is only a choice of defiance and self-protection when facing the common incapability of conveyance. Furthermore, an even more intimidating implication is that by "being fully dedicated to a voice," it entails the existence of A voice, a solid voice that speaks for itself, and a voice that is ready to be fully exposed —and none of these is easy, to my knowledge. When I responded back then to my friend's comment on the "fanciness" of my journal site equipped with paragraph summaries, LLM chat panel, etc., I did mean it in terms of considering those features to foster communication. Yet it is also very true that the motivation behind adding those features also concerns my always suspicion of the power of words alone when it comes to my own writing—no matter how surely I can normatively acknowledge that they should be powerful enough. Anyhow, finally, here comes Petra Cortright's website! Let's leave alone for now the second implication that one probably needs to deal with anyway sometime in their career as an expressor/creator/writer/etc. (and we are just trying to build a website instead of tackling one of the ultimate callings, in my opinion). Petra Cortright's site appears to me to be a radical demo of saying "I don't give a *" while conveying a clear and strong voice/message. I intend not to comment on the obvious religious connotation P.C. has there with the emoji cross. What intrigues me is the simple but forceful scrolling the site enacts—an event that a user cannot defy (at least without opening the browser console) and, to some extent, asserts time. This deprivation of agency—from me as a viewer—compels, instead of deters, my curiosity to see what the author has to say or who they are. People are weird sometimes, huh? That strong attitude of the site also carries on when moving from the landing page to its main page—I found this part of the story particularly interesting as well. Usually, with the typical mindset of balancing clarity, functionality, and expressiveness, if one decided to go with such an "ancient" and plain style, they probably prioritize the clear and simple layout to deliver the content. However, in this peculiar case, P.C., in a sense, with the forceful scroll, GIFs spilled over the place, and tiny fonts that are hardly legible, does the thing in a diametrically opposing direction—the ancient web design is no longer used to prioritize content delivery, but rather juxtaposed with and contrasting with the strong voice that almost rejects completely the simplicity and clarity the style "inherently" has—to an extent I personally found so amusing. Well, if I'm to be cynical, there is a chance, at the end of the day, that P.C. didn't intentionally design the site to have such an effect. Instead, it may be the case that P.C. also did the job badly, just like I did XD. Jokes aside, the point is, it is totally possible that this entire bunch of interpretations I made of P.C.'s website is totally subjective and has nothing to do with P.C.'s intention. But, again, the question is: Does it really matter? I have nothing to say about P.C.'s stance on this. But for me, it seems that this is another solid reason and license, if you think of it, to try out the second approach, go wild, and see how it goes—when we still have the strength and capability of going wild. Maybe it's another platitude case that intention matters for making, and interpretation matters for meaning—if the site is a piece, the audience's friction, confusion, or delight is part of the medium, not a bug report. Whether it attracts or deters, we shall let it speak for itself. So: care less, and speak more.