I've always been curious about how people build their sites. Not just the polished outcome — but the decisions, the trade-offs, the invisible constraints. This is my attempt to document that process. Maybe it helps someone. Maybe it simply nudges someone to start something small — even when life feels too full.
I've been building websites since I was a kid. Tinkering after school, deep in whatever tools I could find. The early 2010s, when designers were encouraged to code, felt like my era.
Then work became heavier, a child was born.
Life shifted into that intense, beautiful, exhausting kind of busy where you barely have time to shower, let alone work on a side project.
But seasons change. Energy returns in fragments. And I wanted a digital space that was genuinely mine again. I gave myself one rule: Use tools I've never touched before. Stay current. Stay uncomfortable.
Picking the Stack
I explored Framer and Figma Sites. They're impressive. But I kept running into friction — subscription layers, limited flexibility, managing writing in a separate place. I didn't want abstraction. I wanted to get closer to the code again.
So I started tinkering with Cursor. ChatGPT nudged me toward Next.js and Vercel, which quietly solved a long-standing trauma of mine (I once tried to manage everything through FTP and failed spectacularly). It also suggested using Notion as a CMS — something I was already living in every day.
That clicked.
What I wanted:
- A blog I actually own
- Flexibility to touch the code directly
- Minimal cost and maintenance
- No platform lock-in
I remember when flexbox first came out. I spent hours trying to understand it. Now all I have to do is imagine and direct an agent to do it. Knowing how the structure works helps — but you have to let go of the traditional mindset so it doesn't become a ceiling.
After lots of back-and-forth with ChatGPT and Gemini, V1 came together in four days. It felt less like building alone, and more like thinking out loud with a patient partner.
The site isn't perfect, but it's live. And right now, that's enough.