getting over it

or how I finally got this website off the ground

So you’re working on a project, and you’re almost done! Great work. Just need to touch this up, review this piece of code, update this css file, test a new font, etc.

Ah, the dreaded ninety-ninety rule. How can you feel so close to your goal, yet feel like you’re days away at the same time?

I think that’s how I’m feeling at the moment, after riding the high of rebuilding this website. I had tried Gatsby/Firebase before as the main framework and host, respectively, but I couldn’t quite get the hang of the UI framework, which was Chakra, so I dropped the project after a couple of days (this was in late 2021!).

After two LONG years, and with a newfound interest in coding as a hobby, looking to get back into the job market, I thought that I’d be a great idea to finally get back and complete my blog/website project, a place where I could publish my own articles, let people know how to find me, how things were going, etc.

After weeks of configuring my new Linux/Neovim setup (why not procrastinate a bit longer, right?), I was ready to start! A bit of research later, I figured Zola would be a good fit, given the simplicity of the project, a static website generator was more than enough. First days went smoothly, getting back into the groove of working with basic HTML/CSS, and figuring out how Zola’s template system worked. And then the issues started piling up. Responsiveness wasn’t how I liked it, added a CSS helper (Tachyons, which might’ve complicated things even further), translation was not as seamless as I thought I’d be, dark/light mode also wasn’t working properly.

Feels exactly like when you’re two achievements away of getting 100% in a game, but they’re just the grindiest most boring achievements ever known to man so you end up playing for 5 more hours when you’d rather do anything else.

In any case, nothing that can’t be solved. I won’t force myself to do something I don’t want to, but I’m also not going to drop the project (obviously). While I’m not employed, I’ll use my free time to work on building better habits, and I’ll keep working on this website until I am completely happy with it (might never happen, but still).

This is my first blog post ever, so thank you very much for reading!