Just Start
(this post is unedited. If you see silly mistakes that are bugging you feel free to push up a PR!)
It feels kind of silly, but I've never actually owned a domain
Everyone once in a while I'll look up one I like, but just won't buy it. It's kind of weird.
I mean I am a web developer, right? Shouldn't I be developing on the web? Shouldn't I have a blog, and a beautiful resume site, and be putting all my awesome ideas into the universe so shape the minds of the next generation with my 3 blog posts:
1. How I built this site 2. How to use GraphQL with X 3. Why I don't like using GraphQL anymore
Feels a bit trite at this point
What's the plan?
Whenever I feel stuck (and when it comes to making my website I have felt stuck for a long time), I find it helpful to make a plan.
I've actually heard the advice that "planning isn't doing" (I'm struggling to find a specific reference). There's this idea and experience some people have where they spend all their time planning as a means of procrastination. They spend all this time planning instead of doing
Do or do not there is no try
-A green alien wizard
This doesn't actually work for me. When I start "just doing", 1 of 2 things happens:
1. I goof something up that was pretty avoidable 2. I get very overwhelmed by everything I'm supposed to do and end up going on Twitter or YouTube and wasting hours there instead
#2 is definitely the more common one.
But when I plan, when I actually sit down and think through the large milestones, break those down into smaller milestones, and then into actionable steps I often feel much more energized. Especially when I write it down.
So I'm gonna do that, and I'm doing it live (of the cuff?)
What am I planning?
There's really a few things I've been wanting to work on and keep getting stuck on:
1. Writing more 2. Coding more 3. Building a personal website
I know we make fun of it, but this is why devs build blogs. Most developers want to do all 3 of these things! Or at least they want to get better at writing and/or coding, and having a website is cool. What am I gonna do, post my thoughts on Twitter where I'd get way more reach and don't have to try as hard? No, I'm going to write them down in long form on a website that 4 people will look at. That's how the internet was meant to be used.
Okay, enough ranting. Here's actually what I want to do. I really hate conforming, (just ask my coworker about his attempts to get me to use Neovim). The more I see something get popular and people tell me to do it, the more I want to not do that thing. I am already struggling with Remix becoming a successful framework and only find solace in the fact that I was using it when it was paid software.
I'm over-exaggerating, but the point is I really don't want to be the guy who builds a website and writes 3 blogs. But I also really want to write more, and eventually code more, and eventually have my own website.
So I'm going to flip it on it's head. I'm just going to start with the writing. I'd been considering writing more for a while, I talked with my brother about his writing habits (he writes fiction, not about tech, but it's still a writing discipline), and I was encouraged by the same coworkers own writing habit.
So I'm just going to start writing every day. The suggestion I've heard from many people is to make it a habit by setting a daily goal.
I'm going to write 25 minutes every morning before starting work Mon-Fri
Cool, done. Part 1 of the plan ✅
Digital Gardening
I really love the way Maggie Appleton thinks and explain things. Her essay "A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden" has had the biggest impact on me for something I've never actually used in any practical sort of way.
But I love the idea of a blog being a digital garden. It's so freeing!
My wife planted a garden in our backyard. It's not the best, in the past it's been very sad and dead, and right now it's doing pretty decent (I had a tomato the other day and I don't even like tomatoes!). Whenever something in her garden grows it's so amazing and life-giving! Whenever we're doing the hard work of preparing the ground, removing weeds, and planting seeds it's lots of fun and inspires us with visions of the future. And when something dies it's easy (for me) to say "oh well, we'll try again with something new!"
If building a website/writing a blog were like that, then sign me up!
And Maggie does this (so does Joel Hooks, who I also look up to). If they did it, why do I keep struggling? Why is this a brain worm stuck in my head but that can never seem to break out? <small>(that was a weird analogy)</small>
I think it's because even though I'm thinking about the "writing" part as a digital garden, I'm not thinking about the "website" part as that.
I'm thinking the website needs to be a series of hand-crafted raised beds over a zero-scaped lawn with a fountain in the middle. Until I've built all of that I'm not allowed to plant a single seed.
Well, when I put it like that I just sound ridiculous to me.
So yeah, I'm done with that. That's silly. I'm just gonna start planting seeds for a little while. I'll put them up on GitHub. Specifically on a repo called brookslybrand.com. Before I started clearing out the weeds, this was a Next.js template, version 10 😱
Sheesh, why do I continue wasting my time trying to make stuff perfect?
Okay, enough wallowing, back to the plan.
I'm going to commit my work to this repo as simple markdown files
My hope is that as I see seeds grow I'll be inspired to start building some more deserving infrastructure. That'd be cool, but it's okay if I don't do that. For now I just want the seeds to grow, because I want to learn how to like tomatoes.
Part 2 of the plan ✅
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