Better Late than Never (v1.0.1)

It’s a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot lately—mostly from the voice in my head every time I looked at my empty "Personal Project" folder.

For someone who would much rather consume a 50-page technical documentation than write a single paragraph of prose, the push to start blogging felt like a sour thought which I kept pushing to the back of my mental backlog.

"How difficult can it be?"

Famous last words.

I hit the one-year mark at my first "real" Software Engineering job recently. University-era Joel was a different beast—constantly building, experimenting, and breaking things just to see how they worked. But corporate comfort is a real thing.

You get used to the steady paycheck and the structured tickets. Suddenly, you're spending four hours in a meeting discussing the hex code of a "Submit" button, and that "builder" muscle starts to atrophy. I realized I was becoming a consumer instead of a creator. I decided I’d had enough; I wanted to bring back that inner engineer kid who built stuff just because it was cool.

But getting started on a new habit? Turns out, my personal Static Friction is off the charts.

The Perfectionism Paradox

Why did it take 64 days to write a blog and ship a simple portfolio site built with Next.js, Bun, and Tailwind? My self defense would be the Perfectionism Paradox.

"The higher your standards, the lower your productivity. Perfectionism is actually just procrastination in a fancy suit."

That quote was something I came across while scrolling on instagram, and it hit home. I wasn't "optimizing the DX" for two months; I was just procrastinating while staring at a blank screen. I was so worried about making this site "The Best Portfolio Ever" that I forgot that a perfect site with zero content is just a very pretty 404 error.

Funny enought that I chose Bun after the long internal debate of making things fast— 🫠ironically, everything except my own writing process.

The "Over-Engineering" Backlog (Coming Soon)

Now that you have read through my elongated excuse for not writing sooner, I want to share what’s next.

This blog is my way of breaking the friction. The goal isn't to be perfect anymore; the goal is to just git push.

However, since I'm trying to find my "inner builder" again, I can't promise I won't get carried away. Until I come across an idea or fun problem to build on I will keep amping up the features on this seemingly simple portfolio page 😂

Thats it for now 👋

Expect more rants and some actual technical deep-dives soon. For now, v1.0.1 is live.