Writing Back To Life
# Back in the saddle
On Tuesday, the 8th of April 2025 | 496 words
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It has been several years since I last worked with HTML and CSS, and the creation of this website has been a learning experience. At first I felt more than a little overwhelmed, and I spent some time looking through the different websites highlighted on my neocities feed for inspiration. Mistake. There are so many cool sites in the neocities community, and browsing them brought back to mind all that is possible with HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript, and how fun it could be.
But, it was also overwhelming.
Now my brain was flooded by questions, and ideas. *I need a sleek navigation bar* I said to myself. *I should have sections for this, those, and that* I thought. *Should I do two columns, or three? One column with a vertical navigation? What were those JS snippets I used to use? PHP backend? Custom chat infrastructure? Can I somehow integrate an obsidian vault into my website for an automated workflow? RSS feed? Newsletter!?*
Then I looked at Mike V's No Happy Nonsense and was reminded of the beauty of simplicity. I scrapped what ideas I had, and spent a few days just thinking about *why* I wanted to make a website in the first place. There is an adage in the Obsidian (great software, more on it later) community that I adore and it goes: "*Work in Obsidian, not on Obsidian*." Many people that pick up Obsidian for the first time, are quickly overwhelmed because they dive head-first into the world of community plugins, trying to create the perfect 'second brain', but wind up burning out on the software instead. The best way to start using Obsidian - and any software, really - is to just *start using it*. Revolutionary, I know. But rather than trying to design the ultimate folder structure, or customizing everything, just write that first note, put text on that empty page, or create that first blog post.
So, here I am. My website has a basic layout and colour scheme, both of which I may or may not change at a later date. It isn't anything fancy, there aren't a hundred scripts running to automate everything, but it gets the job done and, most importantly, I like it. There are still a few questions on my mind, like what the heck are '*webrings*', should I join one, and should I get a cool website button? But all of that I can figure out in time. For now, I'm just happy to have written my very first blog post on this site!
Here's to many more.
