You know, life hits you sometimes with these little nudges, right? Like a pebble in your shoe that you keep ignoring until it becomes a full-blown rock. That was me, for months, maybe even a year. I had this thing in my head, a task, a project, whatever you wanna call it, just sitting there, gathering dust. And then last week, I’m flicking through some online nonsense, just procrastinating, and I see it: Horoscopes Weekly Virgo: Act!
And honestly, it wasn’t some deep spiritual revelation. It was just… loud. Like someone yelling in my ear to snap out of it. “Act!” it screamed. And for some reason, that specific combination of words and the sheer audacity of an online horoscope telling me what to do, just clicked. It slapped me awake.
I’d been meaning to get my own damn personal website up. For ages. Years, probably. Every time I met someone new, or thought about a new opportunity, the first thing people ask for is usually a link to your stuff, your work, your portfolio. And what did I have? A bunch of scattered links, a half-finished LinkedIn, and an old, forgotten Behance profile that was practically begging for a digital burial. It was embarrassing, frankly. I’d tell myself, “Oh, I’ll get to it this weekend,” or “I need to find the perfect template,” or “What even is my brand identity?” Absolute garbage excuses, all of them. Just a coward’s way of putting off something that felt too big, too important, too… permanent.
So, that “Act!” hit me. Hard. I just closed the browser tab with the horoscope – didn’t even read the rest of it. Instead, I opened up a fresh text editor. No fancy IDEs, no Photoshop, just Notepad++ and my brain. The first thing I did was actually find that old domain name I bought on a whim like five years ago, still sitting there, waiting. It was `*`, something simple. I pulled up my old hosting account details, which took a surprising amount of digging through forgotten emails. Password resets, the whole nine yards. It felt like an archaeological dig just to get to square one.
Then, I just started typing. No plan, really. Just headlines. A “Home” section. An “About Me.” A “Projects” section. And a simple “Contact.” I literally just wrote those words down in a basic HTML file. No CSS, no JavaScript, nothing. Just raw, ugly HTML. I made a tiny little `*` file and put “Hello World, I’m finally acting!” in it. It was stupid, but it was a start. It existed. I could see it.
Next day, I dove into the “About Me.” This was the hardest part, honestly. Who am I? What do I even say? I wrote a paragraph, then deleted it. Wrote another, too formal. Wrote a third, too casual. It was a mental battle. I kept remembering that “Act!” command. So I just dumped out everything that came to mind. My background, my interests, why I do what I do. It was a messy stream of consciousness. Then, I went back and trimmed it down, polished it up, keeping it short, to the point, and somewhat human. It still felt awkward, but it was done for now.
Then came the “Projects.” Oh man, the projects. I had a bunch of stuff I’d worked on over the years, personal passion projects, some client work. I had screenshots scattered across three different hard drives. I spent hours just hunting down the files. Some of them were so old, the resolution looked terrible on a modern screen. I actually fired up a couple of old projects, took new screenshots, edited them down to fit a consistent size. For each project, I wrote a quick blurb: what it was, what I did, what I learned. Again, fighting the urge to make it perfect. Just get it out. Just act.
Styling was next. I’m no designer, never claimed to be. But a blank white page is just depressing. I remembered some basic CSS I’d picked up years ago. I searched up “minimalist CSS template” and just grabbed one that looked halfway decent. I plugged it in. It instantly looked a hundred times better, even if it wasn’t exactly my aesthetic. I tweaked some colors, adjusted fonts, just enough so it didn’t look like a direct copy-paste. There were moments I wanted to tear my hair out when something wouldn’t align, or a font wouldn’t load right. I swore at the screen, I googled obscure CSS properties, and eventually, through sheer stubbornness, I got things to generally sit where I wanted them.
Finally, deployment. This was the final hurdle. I opened up my FTP client. Entered the credentials. It wouldn’t connect. “Connection refused.” My heart sank. Here we go, another excuse to quit. I tried again. Same thing. I checked the server status on my hosting provider’s site. Everything looked fine. I fiddled with the settings, re-typed the password ten times. Nothing. I was about to throw my laptop out the window. Then, I remembered something about passive mode. Toggled it on. And boom. It connected. Files started uploading. My little HTML and CSS files, floating up to the server. It took like five minutes, but it felt like an eternity.
I typed my domain name into the browser. Hit enter. And there it was. My website. Live. It wasn’t a masterpiece. It had some rough edges. The design was basic, the wording probably needed another pass. But it was there. It existed. I had acted. That stupid horoscope, that random little digital whisper, had actually pushed me over the edge. It wasn’t about building the perfect website, it was about finally, finally, doing the damn thing. And that, my friends, felt pretty damn good.
