Designing and Building My Site

Tomorrow is the start date for Phase 1, or the beginning of the onsite-immersive portion of Dev Bootcamp for my cohort, Squirrels. I'm super excited and feel as ready as I'll ever be, so bring on the diet of coffee and trail mix. Just a few thoughts first on the "pet project" of Phase 0, a.k.a. building this site. I'll keep this one brief.

There are few things more rewarding than starting with nothing and somehow ending with something. The creative process can be like a journey through a dark cave - during which different chambers may present bewilderment, revelation, struggle, stupefaction, and downright panic. Then the suffocating passages finally open into a mystical cove filled with One-Eyed-Willy's treasure (What? That's what happens to me in caves.). In a creative field like music or web development, you get to just make things up and then decide they'll become real. It's a real privilege.

On one hand, working on this site in bits over these past weeks has been a welcome distraction from Ruby and JavaScript challenges. On the other hand, CSS. But several things have become more clear to me regarding CSS, and interestingly one of the most helpful concepts has been how to structure HTML. Good markup in HTML with CSS in mind really streamlines the whole process of design, and just generally makes for earlier bedtimes and less broken things around your workspace.

Whether I keep this core design to build on throughout my transition to web professional or just decide to scrap it entirely and start afresh, the process of chiseling it into a cohesive whole has been indispensable in elevating my competencies to Phase 1 readiness. I look forward to a day when I'll no doubt revisit this relic with a mix of fondness and mild chagrin.