In 2019, I stopped publishing for several weeks because I was busy improving my website. I was updating the interface, trying Gatsby, and finishing a school video project that I had left behind.
I first heard about Gatsby from Afrijal Dzuhri. It was also my introduction to static site generators: tools that combine content and templates during a build and produce static pages.
content + templates -> generated HTMLThe idea was interesting because the generated site felt light and pages loaded quickly. At first, I enjoyed using the provided theme and writing a few posts with it.
When I Started Changing the Theme
After a few days, I wanted the site to feel more like my own. I began changing the article page, post previews, and archive pages.
The result was messy.
My JavaScript knowledge was still limited, so I could make a change without fully understanding how it affected the rest of the Gatsby theme. Instead of finishing the website, I spent more time fixing the parts I had changed.
That was when I noticed that I had become more focused on the website than on the reason I built it: writing.
Returning to the Main Goal
I decided to return to publishing while continuing to learn gradually. The site did not need to be completely redesigned before I could write another article.
Looking back, I would give the experiment a smaller boundary:
- make one article readable;
- keep the archive page working;
- publish before changing more of the theme;
- learn the framework one part at a time.
Those are ideas I can describe clearly now. At the time, the lesson was much simpler: I needed to take responsibility for what I had already started instead of continuously adding new work.
The Gatsby experiment was unfinished, but it still introduced me to static generation. More importantly, it reminded me that a writing site should not keep me from writing.