A couple of months ago, I was let go from my position at Krafton. It has been difficult the last few years to write about anything I was doing, since most of it was merely in the pursuit of my work. That work is often specific, and often for future products which cannot in fact be discussed.
For the past couple weeks I have been working hard on one of my own project, FilmsWith. This project is... perhaps the thing I am most proud of creating so far. It involves a subject I care deeply about; movies, film, and television. It is created using modern technology, mainly React, which means I can point to it in the modern day and not be terrified that it's code will be somehow revealed.
But it was started in a time of early React. Things have changed significantly since then, and I have only barely been able to keep up with things as they changed amidst the immense scope of my growing website. Truly, I cower in fear of the prospect of having to significantly update the code of this, my main website. It is a mammoth of a site cobbled together over 2 decades of personal and web developmental change.
I recently began a rather large code refactor of my filmswith site. I have been, in fact, quite diligent about it. I am now reaching out to others in an effort to improve it's UX. I have never really 'pushed' the website, because it has never really felt done. Many things were only half created, or half thought out out, or outright not present. But now, after my concerted efforts, I am close to something I can feel is ready for consumption by more than just myself.
The FilmsWith website was created for me. Created 'by me' is irrelevant to the more relevant 'for me'. I use it. Constantly. I find in my life that I reference movies and tv shows. And in the day and age of phones in pockets, having a quickly accessible resource for those topics is something I can't believe I was able to create.
The title of this particular post states that I am in a rut. But I am not in a creative rut. I am in a personal one. I find myself with so many avenues available to me, and so many paths to take, and none of them leading anywhere significant. Over the last few years I have worked and slept and ate, and like many before me, I find this to be unsatisfying, and worse, I find myself in a position of loneliness. Many of my friends have moved on and up, and I am meandering forward.
I wonder to what extent FilmsWith could help propel me upward. I wonder to what extent I would need to pull it down from the bottom and cobble it back together to remodernize its modernity. It was made with create-react-app. A tool which, at the time, was the appropriate tool to use. But now, not only has that tool fallen out of favor, it has in all aspects been abandoned. I will need to restart to stay afloat. It is the one aspect of the web which I hate the most. The fact that an old boat cannot simply be put in the water forever. It must periodically be brought ashore to have a significant amount of its parts be Theseus'ed.
I suppose that isn't true if the thing were to be abandoned or never improved. I have never been one to sit around and not improve. But as I get older and more cobbled together, I find it harder and harder to make my own repairs.
It has been over a year since my last post. So much has happened and changed since then. Maybe I'll find more time to write in this blog soon. Probably not... but maybe.