I'm making a website
I don't really make any New Year's resolutions because I've learned to never trust myself with any kind of bold plans. I get excited fast and burn out just as quickly. It's a miracle that this blog is still getting updated.
But I came here from neocties, or at least my futile attempts at creating a personal blog there. Issues were mostly technical: I didn't like working with CSS, couldn't get static website generators to work, failed to keep the file-system organized, etc.
Lately I've been really enjoying wiby.me and it's random button. There's stoic strength and unique beauty in personal pages contributed to niche topics like the types of spear heads, or overall something that I'd call knowledge bases - archives of notes, lists, fleeting thoughts, reviews, and everything else that is subject to categorization.
I also got inspired by great neocities pages such as https://iwillneverbehappy.neocities.org/site/ and https://mental-labour.neocities.org/home (and many more!)
And while blogging platforms offer that incredible seamlessness that I keep talking about, I think it is exactly that kind of friction that can create something truly special. Bearblog does one thing and does it well - with a website almost anything is possible, it's a blank page.
What I'm trying to get here is that a blog is ultimately a chronological compilation of thoughts and ideas presented in a special format. While a website can be that, it's not limited to it. A website (or at least the way I want mine to be) is more of a personal archive that happens to be visible to the internet public, and the way how it's structured and formatted is fully up to you.
Finally, I need a project - something to work on. With issues to solve and ideas to implement. I want a real thing (well, not fully but you get me) that I can be proud of.
So this is my New Year's resolution - make a website. Keep it alive, keep working on it. Figure out what I want on it and how I want it to look. Overcome my technical incompetence and come up with a workflow through recurring failure. It won't be pretty and it will be barely working.
I'm not 100% sure about structure or aesthetic, but I guess it'll come later. Right now I just want to figure out the best tools and remember CSS/HTML basics. So yeah, I hope I follow through. I'll keep you posted.