In 2016, I updated my website in an effort to get a new job. I also used it as an opportunity to get back into something I enjoyed doing (baking), and sharing it with others. I started working on that website on January 14, 2016. I wrote three posts, and put up a portfolio of work. I eventually got a job, and totally forgot about my site.
It’s February 5, 2020. I haven’t written code or baked bread in three years. I haven’t shared anything that I’ve done or learned during that time with people outside of my colleagues and family. I can list many reasons of why that happened. Today, I start working on my website with some artifical constraints to remove two of those reasons
Reason 1: Not enough time
I have two gaps of time in the day: the time between 5–6 A.M., and after 8 P.M. In the morning, I like to read, maybe exercise, or fold some laundry. After 8, I used to end up on the couch, watching something.
To combat this habit, I’ve scheduled 8:30-9 P.M. every day to work on this site for the next 30 days.
Reason 2: What can I contribute
In the context of my day-to-day work, I easily share my thoughts and experience with those around me. In those scenarios, there’s a clear problem or opportunity that I can frame questions around or share resources to help someone develop a new skill or grow in their role.
Outside of that, I struggle to find reason to share those same experiences. Who am I to share an opinion in a world of opinions? I get paralized thinking about what is ”new” or ”valuable”.
30 minutes isn’t that much time. I don’t intend to get much done. Over these 30 days, I intend to write about my experience, the work that I’ve done in the last 4 years, and things I’ve learned. Maybe along the way I’ll remember how to write HTML & CSS. I will use these 30 days to write and publish something, every day, regardless of the subject, scale, and quality.
Format
It’s been a long time since I’ve done any web development. Each of my posts during these 30 days will include:
- Celebrating my accomplishments.
- What I looked up.
- Things I’ve learned.
- What I’m working on next.
Accomplishments
- I successfully wrote this post in Markdown, can commit it to GitHub, and deploy it to a publically available location. It has taken me 17 days to get to this point.
- I successfully updated the SSL certificates to cover year specific subdomains.
What I looked up today
- How to store draft posts in Jekyll
- Possibly using GitHub action workflows to handle the current manual build and deploy process
- If HTML5 boilerplate still existed, and what changes they’ve made to their nginx configs, which I currently use on the site.
Things I’ve learned
- I still remember the keyboard bindings for tmux.
- How to request SSL certificates for multiple subdomains at once, using certbot’s
--webrootflag.
What I’m working on next
- Setting up automatic deployments
- Filling out the content outlines I wrote during days 1-16. Posting those.