i started by trying to code by myself. i did a lot of googling, and a lot of redditing, and a bunch of things i've never done before, like entering my mac's terminal, and intentionally listening to a man talk about coding.
i asked my dad, a veteran of the internet, how he did his thing back in the day. he sent me a link to a website he made using HTML, and a link to a physical book. yeah, ok. i looked at photos of my mom in her 20s and got back to work.
i spent a couple (5) hours on trying to make a website using the static site generator Hugo, and the text editor VSCode. i ran into a lot of problems and got tired.
i did some further digging into the indie web — a place where those disillusioned with social media have sunken into the HTML mines in an effort to regain the means of content production. i didn't want to make a neocities website because i wanted something that was all my own. i looked back at my open VSCode window and decided that maybe it wasn't totally worth it.
i went to sleep. (i recommend this step).
in the morning, i woke up and thought about my website again. if an itch doesn't go away after you sleep on it, keep scratching. i opened neocities and started watching some tutorials.
tada! under construction.
in future, maybe i will get a domain name, so this website really does feel like my own. hopefully, i will keep expanding it in both directions — cooler code, and a bigger repository of writing and images (?). it's good to have a project, and it's good to spend less time on instagram.