A Site Should Be a Person, Not a Résumé

[Placeholder essay for the spike. The prose is invented to show the shape; the voice is house voice — declaratives, no exclamation, no plea. Replace with the real piece.]

The standard format

A résumé is a compression. It takes a life and files it into reverse-chronological rows so a stranger can scan it in thirty seconds. That is a useful thing to be able to do, and it is a poor thing to be greeted by. The compression throws away exactly what a reader came for — the shape of a mind, the things it cannot stop working on, the opinions it holds against easier ones.

What a front page is for

The first page of a site is the one decision every visitor makes: whether to keep reading. Spent on a list of credentials, it asks to be evaluated. Spent on a person, it asks to be understood. The first is a transaction; the second is an introduction, and only one of them earns a second page.

The cost of the résumé default

The quiet cost is that the format flattens the author into a candidate. It teaches the reader to sort rather than to listen, and it teaches the author to perform rather than to say what is true. The record still matters — it just belongs one click in, offered to the reader who has decided the person is worth the credential.

The shape this site takes

So the root becomes a hub: a short creed, the writing, and a compact record that leads to the full page. Thought sits above credential by design. The résumé is not deleted; it is demoted to what it always was — supporting evidence, not the argument.