Don't Be Precious

26 May 2017

I’m not very nice to my books. I dogear the pages, write in the margins, underline passages and sometimes break the spines (never intentionally). It’s my quest in life to learn as much as possible, and my path to do that is littered with ruined books.

It wasn’t always this way, though.

Precious Books

Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, I revered books. I loved the way they looked on the shelves, the perfect smoothness of a well-handled spine, all of it. My time working at Barnes and Noble put me in the company of a lot of book people. They, like me, held a similar reverence for the printed word.

I looked askance at those who didn’t take care of their books. Who didn’t dust their shelves, who didn’t write in a notebook instead of a margin, who didn’t do any of the things I considered necessary for the curator of a library, or the owner of books.

Homepage Woes

Fast forward several years. I’m staring at the folder containing my personal webpage, my finger hovering over the delete key.

I want to keep it so badly.

But I can’t. It’s getting in the way.

I had spent the better part of the last week trying to integrate a statically generated blog onto the website. For a long time, I heard calls to start a blog from many of my favorite online columnists, and thought “That would be a good thing to do…on another day.”

By the time I wanted to actually start a blog, my homepage sat before me, taunting me. I liked its simple look and straightforward design. I agonized for days trying to integrate a blogroll onto the site. I just couldn’t make it happen, and it soon became apparent:

I had to kill my webpage to move on with my life.

Get It Done

There was no funeral.

In the end, I found a static site generator that I liked and applied a theme that I didn’t hate. Kept most of the text from the original homepage for this new one, and moved on with my life.

It comes back to what many people have said, but in my opinion Amy Hoy said it best:

Just. Fucking. Ship.

I can tell you from personal experience that you’re going to waste an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to make your way around all of these barriers you’ve set up for yourself.

Instead, consider just shipping. Get something done. Get your energy back.

Move on with your life.