Wait, What's the Purpose Here Again?

At some point in the summer of 2010 I decided to replace my static website, aimed at marketing my skills as a HTML/CSS/PHP developer and designer, with a blog about my new endeavor: web development in the Ruby world (mostly focused on Rails at the moment). I figured that one of the ways for me to learn more about programming was to write posts about the technologies and the challenges I encounter in my everyday work, therefore the blog.

Picking up the technology behind it was quite exciting. There are plenty of blog solutions out there, but I really wanted to avoid using a clumsy CMS, and I wanted to be simple. Fortunately Tom Preston-Werner’s jekyll, a very simple blog aware static site generator, came to the rescue. Once I had jekyll in place all I needed was a design and some content.

I’ve never had a blog before – I even have a hard time keeping a travel journal (which, according to me, is one of the best things ever) – so my biggest concern was writing the content. Also I didn’t mention that I was born and raised in Italy, and, as is the case for most of the folks from the Italian peninsula, my first language is Italian. So writing in English, even if not a challenge, doesn’t come naturally to me. I quickly found out that content was not scarce. Working as a Ruby and RoR apprentice, everyday I come across perfect topics for articles. All I need to do is take some time to put down reflexions and thoughts.

Riding the wave of excitement, I decided that if I were to start a blog, it should look really good. But design is not necessarily my forte and I wasn’t going to hire somebody to do it. So I rolled up my sleeves and started playing with some CSS3 gradients, shadows, feature and so on. Nothing really felt right and I was losing track of my real goal: learning more by producing content.

On January 5th, 2011 I decided that it was time for me to move on with the project and make something happen. I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions (I believe in resolutions all the time), but the new year started with the idea of making a doer of myself. I have ideas all the time, I start things all the time, but sometimes I get stuck seeking perfection. I was looking for the perfect design, and it wasn’t anywhere to be found, so I stopped looking for it. Now my blog is far from pretty, but it’s functional, and that was all that I needed in the first place.

Ultimately life to me is about the experience; having a beautiful site design is not going to add anything to my experience of writing and learning, so why should I concern myself with it, if it doesn’t come easily? I know that as I go forth with this project things will come up, designs will come to mind, and they will be shaped around the experience that the content already provides rather than the other way around.