The Most Honest Page on My Website Is a List of What I’m Dodging

I have built a lot of portfolio pages. Most of them were basically dioramas: tidy little scenes of work that made me look like a person who finishes things on schedule and never eats lunch at her desk while staring at a half-built project. That person does not exist. This fall I added a page to hayleybrownell.com called Currently Avoiding. It is exactly what it sounds like: a short, public list of my own projects that are sitting in the corner with a blanket over their head, plus a few notes about why I am not touching them.

I expected maybe three people to find it. I did not expect it to become the most useful page on my site.

What I actually put on the page

The page is not a graveyard. I already have a graveyard—the archive of things I have abandoned for good. Currently Avoiding is different. It is for work that is still alive, still mine, and still making me take the long way around the kitchen. The format is simple: a project name, a one-sentence reason I am avoiding it, and a line about what would make it less scary. Three columns. No progress bars. No fake deadlines.

For example, one entry is a short essay collection I have been calling the porch essays. The reason: every time I open the folder I hear my own voice trying to sound like someone with a screened-in porch and a firm opinion about iced tea. The less-scary line: read one essay out loud to a friend before editing a single comma. Another entry is a small print project I have been avoiding because I cannot decide if it is a zine or a product, and those are two different nervous systems. The less-scary line: make a bad version on purpose and mail it to two people.

I kept the language plain. No 'blocked,' no 'in a season of recalibration.' I wrote 'avoiding' because that is the word I use when I am talking to myself at 11 p.m. I also added a tiny note at the top: this is not a to-do list for you. You do not need to ask me about these. That note was for me, mostly.

The reactions were not what I planned

The first email came from a client I have worked with for years. She said the page made her laugh, then asked if I was okay. That is a fair question when someone publicly admits she has been avoiding a spreadsheet for six weeks. I wrote back and said yes, I am fine, this is just what my brain looks like when it is not performing productivity. She hired me for a small project the next week. I do not think those things are unrelated.

A reader sent a screenshot of the page to a group chat and told me her friends now say 'put it on the avoiding page' when someone is circling a task. I liked that more than I expected. A former coworker said the page made her feel less alone, which is generous, because I was mostly trying to stop pretending.

Not every reaction was warm. One person asked if I was worried clients would see it and think I am unreliable. I thought about that for a day. Then I realized I am not listing client work. I am listing my own projects, the ones that live in the same brain space as my grocery list and my unsent emails. There is a boundary there, and writing the page made me see it clearly. I am not obligated to show every mess. But I am allowed to show this one.

Why naming it out loud helped

The strange gift of the page is that it gave me a vocabulary. Before, when I was avoiding something, I would say I was 'behind.' Behind is a fog. Behind has no shape. Behind makes me feel like a bad student who forgot to turn in a worksheet. Avoiding is specific. Avoiding means there is a reason, even if the reason is as small as 'this project requires me to make a phone call and I would rather re-grout the bathroom.'

Once I wrote the reasons down, some of them got less powerful. The porch essays were not avoiding me because they were bad. They were avoiding me because I had written them in a voice that was not mine, and I did not want to do the work of stripping it out. The print project was not a failure. It was two projects wearing one coat. I still have not finished either one. But I have stopped treating them like moral problems.

That is the part I did not see coming. I thought the page would be a confession. Instead it became a map. I could look at it and say, oh, these three things are all waiting on the same decision. Or, this one is not actually hard; I just need to put it on the calendar. Naming avoidance did not magically make me productive. It made me honest, which is a cheaper and more reliable first step.

What it changed about the rest of my site

My portfolio still has polished case studies. I still want clients to see the work I am proud of. But the Currently Avoiding page sits near the bottom of the menu, and I have started linking to it when I introduce myself. Not as a gimmick. More like a footnote that says: this is a person who makes things, and sometimes the making looks like staring at a folder.

The page has become a filter. Some people love it. Some people quietly close the tab. Both are useful. I have had better conversations with clients about scope, timelines, and the difference between 'this is late' and 'this is not ready.' I have also had a few readers tell me they made their own version—a private note, not a public page—listing what they are avoiding and why. That might be the best outcome. The page does not need to be public to work. It just needs to be true.

So no, this is not a portfolio of finished things. It is a portfolio of a person who is still in the middle of a practice. The finished work is there. The avoiding is there too. I have stopped pretending those are two different websites.