I've spent 8 years of my life building websites, but for the past 4 I haven't had one of my own. Why did this happen? When I began learning web development back in high-school, the first project I undertook was to build myself a personal website. What else would I do? I was messing around, I was excited to finally have a space to call my own whose design wasn't dictated by the constraints of Social Media or a block-based builder like Weebly. For a while, that was basically all I did, at one point I had four completely separate and disconnected personal websites, just because I liked the art of making them. And eventually, I ended up getting pretty alright at web development, and I decided to dip my hand into freelancing.

My journey with web development has been … nontraditional. I'm a big proponent of self-taught programming, and for me, that usually takes the form of deciding I want to create something, and then figuring out how to make it work as I go along. That's how I'm building this new site now, using NextJS for the very first time (in 2024, haha), and that's how I built my first website as well, way back in 2016. And while I'll always support the self-taught mentality, it can sometimes cause you to make some… odd decisions.

I was born in 2001, and ever since I've been surrounded by technology. I learned to use a computer when I was 6. I've never known what it's like to not have that sort of tech in my life. It all feels so normal, but when I hear stories from my parents about their lives when they were younger, I find myself faced with the stark difference between their childhoods and mine, and just how much society has changed since then.

I spend upwards of 8 hours with my friends every day, usually entirely virtually. If I'm awake, it's a pretty good bet that I'm talking to someone or another. It's honestly more uncommon for me to be on my own than for me to be online with one of my friends, and that's really interesting to me.

I've been making a game for the past few weeks, and the experience is amazing.

I'm no stranger to making games, of course. I've posted about my other work basically everywhere except here. But I don't think I've enjoyed it this much since I made my first project in Gamemaker 8. Since then it feels like it's been a downward spiral. Every project I did felt less satisfying than the one before, resulting in me getting burnt out quicker and quicker. Since Gamemaker, I've shifted from one development I didn't like to the next, never finding something that felt right.