Completely different folks have differing views on writing in the case of private blogs. Some folks spend a very long time perfecting a draft, ensuring all the pieces reads effectively, there are not any grammatical errors, and all of the code examples are useful and flawless. Others sprint out a draft and publish as rapidly as doable, then fear about modifying later.
I was within the former camp, now I more and more discover myself within the latter. As any mum or dad will little question recognise, since having my son in 2016, my spare time is extraordinarily restricted. I get house from work, have dinner, play with my son, run him a shower and put him to mattress. By the point I’ve finished that, plus some other family chores, it’s typically 8:30 or 9pm. If I’m not exhausted, then I’ve round two hours to work on any facet tasks, mess around making demos on Codepen, or write for my weblog. And but, I really feel prefer it’s the most efficient I’ve ever been.
Given the constraint of time, I’ve pushed myself to place issues out into the world which are hurried, which have flaws, which are typically half-baked concepts, and which have a lot of potential for enchancment. I’ve let go of the thought of “perfection” as a result of, for me, it’s inconceivable – and it was already an unattainable purpose to start with. A bit like parenting, funnily sufficient.
It’s additionally why I now not do a lot drawing and illustration work – I used to be by no means pleased with a bit of illustration till it was excellent, whereas coding (for me, at the very least) seems like a collection of small wins, slightly than one massive prize.
This has been liberating. There’s a enormous quantity of satisfaction to be gained from deploying one thing on the finish of a protracted day, as a substitute of ready and ready till a undertaking is good. Typically I am going again and edit later, typically I deem one thing a low sufficient precedence to let it slide, and that’s okay.
It’s okay to be a perfectionist – I love folks with beautifully-curated portfolios and Codepen profiles, however I can lastly recognise that not having that, and channelling your vitality elsewhere, shouldn’t be a failing.
Redesigning this website
This brings me onto my purpose for 2020, which was redesigning this weblog. I wrote in my 2019 overview that I wished to revamp and rebuild from the bottom up. However, on reflection, that seems like a frightening process, and one which has the potential to slide into that cycle of chasing perfection. On a whim, on 1st January 2020, I made a decision to see if I might roll out a redesign (with slightly refactoring right here and there), and deal with the rebuild later (if in any respect). The primary iteration, deployed at 11:55pm on 1st January, was removed from excellent: the About and 404 pages have been largely unstyled, I hadn’t up to date the favicon or social media pictures, and there have been a thousand little styling enchancment that could possibly be made. Nevertheless it was one thing – it was usable, and it was (I believe) higher than what was earlier than.
I nonetheless plan to spend time engaged on a whole lot of enhancements over the following 12 months, however I’ll do it figuring out that 2020 is already off to an ideal begin.
