Terms Governing Portfolio Denial Day
The person has not updated their portfolio in fourteen months. They are aware of this and have chosen not to address it today.
Annual Review: Portfolio Maintenance Period Covered: July 2021 Through August 2022 Status: Reviewed, Not Acted Upon
Summary
The portfolio has not been updated in fourteen months. This review acknowledges that fact, documents the reasons it has persisted, and confirms that no corrective action will be taken today.
Current State
The portfolio was last updated during a period of motivated job anxiety, which is no longer present, which is part of the problem. The period of motivated job anxiety produced four new case studies, a redesigned layout, and a domain renewal. The person found work and the portfolio entered a maintenance-free phase that has continued since.
The portfolio currently reflects work from 2020 and early 2021. Some of the work on the portfolio was good. Some of it was average. All of it was what the person was doing when the portfolio was updated.
What the person is doing now is not on the portfolio.
Why It Has Not Been Updated
Updating the portfolio requires reviewing past work, and reviewing past work requires a level of critical distance the person does not currently have available. Past work exists in a state of simultaneous inadequacy and nostalgia that cannot be processed during a normal week.
Additionally, portfolio updates imply an audience, and an implied audience implies a purpose, and a purpose implies either a job search or a professional positioning exercise, and neither of these is what the person wants to be doing when they are not doing them.
The work exists. It was done. It does not require a photograph and three paragraphs to have happened.
The Three Specific Items Not Added
There is a project from November 2021 that would make a strong case study. The project was complicated. Writing the case study would require simplifying it into a narrative arc the actual project did not have. The person finds this unappealing and has found it unappealing for nine months.
There is a client project from February 2022 that cannot be published without approval. The approval has not been requested. Requesting approval requires sending an email. The email has been drafted in a notes app and is 80% complete.
There is a project the person is proud of that they have not included because including it would require defining what kind of work they want more of, and they have not decided.
The Absurd Rule
The portfolio is publicly accessible. It receives approximately twelve visits per month, most of which are from the person checking whether it loads correctly. The gap between the portfolio's version of the person and the current version of the person is now fourteen months wide and growing.
Updating it is a four-hour task. It has been pending for fourteen months.
Conclusion
This review is not a plan. It is a record of the current state. The current state is unchanged from the previous review, which was conducted mentally in April and produced identical findings.
The portfolio will be updated. Not today.