I have a website (finally)!
This is the story of how I made my own website, after several attempts at completing it.
This project, which has had several versions as drafts, was first started in 2016, when I took up some freelancing projects. I had designed a couple of websites by then, and wanted one for myself, where I could showcase my work; the website itself being exemplary. But being an excellent procrastinator and a trying-to-be perfectionist, I designed and redesigned this site almost thrice. So currently it is the 4th iteration.
When in college, I had made a poster with Steve Job’s iconic thinking face and a quote, which was made up by me, but I more or less believed what Jobs must have had to say about work. It read ‘If you are making something, make it f*cking perfect’. It remained stuck opposite to my working desk, as if Jobs was looking over me throughout. This project isn’t the only one I skipped and postponed, rather this is the only one which I ever completed, (other than the ones which were meant for others).
One day, I saw a video and unfortunately I don’t recall the source, but it changed my outlook towards perfectionism. I wanted everything I made to be perfect. This always kept me unsatisfied with my own work, I would make something, and after a week I would find some flaws and try to correct it and in the end would entirely give up on it. The video which I mentioned, spoke of nothing new; it said that chase for perfection is a never ending one. Instead, one must start working. Make whatever and however anything is possible to be made. You might not end up with the best website, or the best prototype, but at least you’ll have a product. You’ll free yourself from the never ending loop of perfection. It was true. You get a lot of projects done, and spend considerably less time on each one. So, the next day I decided to remove the poster from my room. Fortunately enough, I found a willing owner for it. Stating my reason to abandon the poster, I handed over the poster to a friend of mine, who had loved the design.
After almost a year, I finally have a website. It feels good to complete something, and I hope I do the same for other ‘drafts’ in my to-do list. Keep reading!
Technology
This is the simplest website you would have ever seen. It uses React, an open-source JavaScript library for writing UIs. And I absolutely love it. It is statically hosted on Netlify. For ‘Work’ page, I use the GitHub apis. Initially I had thought that I would build a full fledged blogging feature, but when I have Medium, why worry? So blog posts, like this one, go on Medium.
