168 days. That’s how many days it had been between updates to this site. For me, that’s far too many days. When I decided I was going to build this site, I wanted something super crazy and over-the-top. Why wouldn’t I? Turns out that was an incredibly overzealous idea, and ended up really turning me off from making any updates since I felt like I was never making progress and the site would remain in a mostly sad state of affairs for quite a while.
In doing some reflection, it would seem that it’s been a great learning experience, despite still being far from what I’d initially set out for (and still intend to do). Some initial takeaways:
Start small. As a beginner in most things code, setting realistic goals is a smart thing to think about if you’re concerned with keeping momentum (this, of course, speaking anecdotally).
You probably have friends who would be happy to help. I’m in the really fortunate position to have some really wonderful and talented coworkers who are willing to provide me the occasional bits of advice. It’s been a godsend, and I can’t thank them all enough.
Understanding, but not accepting, that’ your project will likely suck at first. Mediocrity (or worse) is something I don’t accept from myself as much as I can help it, so it was a pretty hard truth to swallow in learning that my site was just kind of crappy. I’ll get there, but understanding it’s going to take some time to get there will help avoid the feeling of crushing hopelessness.
Building a site from scratch requires many different types of thinking. Don’t underestimate how many different types of thinking you’ll have to do to get a website going on your own. From design to publishing content, it requires a lot of thinking and even more planning, and even more time making it all happen. Don’t take any steps in the process for granted!
I’m sure that in adding improvements and polish along with publishing more posts I’ll come up with some more lessons, but for now that’s plenty of things considering I’ve barely made the site live and published a post.
Onward and upward! Until next time,
Jordan