After a whole lot longer than I originally planned, Barrett.dev was finally live. Sort of. It was still very much in beta, but the important parts were there: I could show my work, write journal entries, and make updates without rebuilding the entire site every time I wanted to change a sentence. For a portfolio, that is a pretty good start.
Launching a personal project is weird. With client work, there is usually a deadline that eventually forces you to stop polishing things and ship. With your own site, there is always one more layout to adjust, one more animation to add, or one more feature that would probably be worth the way to many hours to implement it. At some point, I had to accept that a portfolio is never really finished. It is supposed to grow with the work, not sit in a folder waiting for perfection.
The biggest thing I learned from this build was that building the site and building the system behind the site are two very different jobs. I went into it thinking I was making a portfolio, but I ended up designing a front end, developing a CMS, working through database structure, and trying to keep all of those pieces moving in the same direction. It was a lot, but if you are not learning something while building a project, well, you are not learning anything I guess.
There are definitely things I would do differently if I started over. I would probably spend less time trying to make every part of the CMS perfect before the site had any real content. I would also try to listen to the little voice in my head that says, “Maybe stop this madness and go outside”. But then again, if I had listened to that voice, this whole project would have been a lot less interesting, but I might have a much nicer tan.
For now, the plan is simple: keep adding work, keep writing, and keep improving the site as I improve. The important thing is that it exists, it works, and it is finally out in the world instead of living on localhost. And that is something.
