Other people have nature. I have TOML.
People who like walking in the woods say it takes them out of themselves for a bit. By the second cow pat, life’s stresses start to fade.
Some other people get the same effect from Sudoku or the crossword. The puzzle fills the brain so thoroughly that there’s no room left for the bad stuff to get in. I understand the principle. There was a time that it worked for me too. Shit, even early Windows Minesweeper took me out of myself for a while. But I don’t find any satisfaction or fulfilment from them. At the end of the time you’ve spent on them, what do you walk away with?
Want to know what does it for me at the mo? Right now, it’s building websites. Yes. No joke. WebDev.
Websites beat Sudoku or crosswords on every measure I care about. The problems are more varied. They’re actually useful when you solve them, and there are enough to keep a thousand thousand brains busy, never mind mine.
Usually it starts with me wanting one of my sites to do something, then figuring out how. I stumble across interesting things in other people’s blogs, newsletters, tool pages some developers keep updated, and (don’t tell anyone) on YouTube. Then I get to work out how to shoehorn that shiny new thing into a site, whether it belongs there or not.
Did you know you can make section dividers that aren’t just boring straight lines, but actually move across the page? And there are websites that build the code for you. I found out recently. So I stuck it in a site I was building for a friend.
I’ve always loved learning new shit that excites my brain. Or any boring new shit in ways that excite my brain. And I can’t quite believe what’s been exciting me recently. TOML, because Hugo uses it for config, and “front matter” on content files (and even front matter was a new concept for me). YAML, JSON, JavaScript, the difference between YAML and TOML (which I’m still very, very hazy on and I have to look up every time), and a thousand different flavours of database (don’t even ask me about that stuff. Thank god there are tools that set them up for you). Plus, as many different ways of storing data that, very much aren’t databases, as there are developers who have a need for data but can’t be arsed working out whether they should use SQLite or MariaDB.
And the bonus… I’m not studying for an exam. I’m not completing some tiny part of someone else’s larger project. I don’t have to justify my decisions to anyone else. I never have to master any of them. I learn just enough to get a thing done and retain it long enough to get that thing done. And then put it down and wander off to the next shiny thing. My AuDHD brain considers this the ideal relationship: commitment-free, and nobody expects me to remember its syntax or arguments (or even what those are).
I’ve not had an easy year, personally. Life has dealt my loved ones some pretty shitty cards. There’s been more on my mind than I’d ideally like, which I know puts me in very large company. Having something I can turn to that fills my head so completely and so satisfyingly has been a blessed relief, because for a while none of that registers.
Anyway, there’s a footer for aardvarkweb.uk that I want to build, after spending ages finding hosting and server solutions that are as green as I can afford. And a thousand SEO optimisation possibilities that I’ve found from registering my sites on Google’s and Bing’s search consoles.
The trees can wait. (I’m doing my bit to increase the chances that they can.)