Landing on Another Planet: The Great Website Expedition

There are moments in life when you realize you’ve crossed some kind of invisible line. One minute you’re just trying to catch up with the world, and the next you’re squinting at a screen thinking, What species designed this interface?

That was me—freshly arrived from the early 2000s, landing smack in the middle of WordPress 2025.

I didn’t just build a website; I re-entered civilization.

For over fifteen years I lived in a kind of tech stasis bubble. No new phones. No streaming. No fancy apps. Computers came and went like rare comets I couldn’t afford to chase. By the time I stepped back in, the rest of the planet had moved to another galaxy of technology—complete with upgrades, subscriptions, and cheerful “Try Premium!” buttons guarding every door.

But somehow, through months of digital archaeology and sheer stubbornness, I did it.
A Heep of Words now exists in the wild.

🚀 Mission Log: The Build

The site builder I used offers three basic zones: header, sidebar, and main section.
That’s it.
Imagine decorating a house where you only get a roof, a hallway, and one corner of the living room—but it’s yours, so you make it work. (I have actually lived like that, but that is another story).

The sidebar now proudly lists all three of my pen names:

• Alexandra Heep, for the deep dives into health and science.

• Helena Parx, for the gnome and gem adventures.

• Lexa Drane, for the children’s tales and coloring pursuits.

It’s a small step for websites, but a giant leap for a writer who once celebrated just finding the power button.

🌈 Reality Check

Every time I tried to add color, a little pop-up whispered, “That’s a premium feature.”
Apparently, creativity now comes with a subscription fee. So yes, for the moment my site is minimalist. Let’s call it “zen-inspired austerity” instead of “stuck with grayscale.”

I’ve decided the current design perfectly symbolizes this stage of my writing journey: clean, raw, and built from persistence more than polish.

🪴 Lessons from the Digital Frontier

1. Patience counts as progress.
   There were days I spent two hours just trying to center a line of text. It didn’t center, but I did learn deep breathing.

2. Old skills adapt.
   The same curiosity that once made me take apart a sentence now makes me take apart a menu. (The sentence still goes back together faster.)

3. Perfection is overrated.
   The site doesn’t have to sparkle yet—it just has to exist. Existence is the first miracle; color can come later.

✨ What’s Next

The plan is to slowly fill that main section with news, musings, and updates from all my projects. It’ll be the living room of A Heep of Words—a place where gnomes, science, skunks, and the occasional philosophical cat can share space without arguing over whose story comes first.

It’s simple now, but it’s home. And if you’ve ever rebuilt your creative world from the ground up, you know how powerful that word can feel.

So, dear readers: welcome to my little planet of words. Please excuse the lack of fancy colors and upgraded widgets. I’m still unpacking from the time warp.

But I made it here—and that’s worth celebrating.

Epilogue: From AOL Dial-Up to Warp Speed

There was a time—not so long ago, at least in cosmic years—when I built a website line by line, teaching myself HTML on a dial-up connection. Each page loaded slower than a gnome crossing molasses, but the thrill of seeing my own words appear on a glowing screen was worth every beep and buzz of that modem symphony.

Fast forward to now: I can publish a post in seconds, add images without crashing the computer, and even make a whole website without typing a single <br> tag. The tools might have evolved beyond recognition, but the impulse hasn’t changed—to create, to share, to connect.

So if you visit A Heep of Words, know that it isn’t just a new website. It’s a tiny time machine powered by stubbornness and imagination—It’s a time traveler’s flag planted in the modern web — proof that creativity can survive every upgrade.