Why I Built This

Finishing my bachelor’s degree has a way of making me reflective. Not in a dramatic, crisis kind of way, more like a quiet moment where you look up from everything you’ve been doing and ask:
“Okay, this has been great… so now what? I want to become someone, sure. But who?”

That question doesn’t have an obvious answer. At least not for me, not yet. And while I don’t think I will ever truly know, I want to try and figure it out to the best of my ability. Not rushed, but slowly. Not discovering who I will become, but actively building who I want to become.

And somewhere in the process of figuring out who I am, I noticed something: I had almost nothing to show for myself. I have been learning and tinkering on projects and in school for years. Still I had no portfolio to show any of it. No projects page. No place that said this is who I am and what I’m working on. And I decided I wanted to change that.

So I decided to build this.

A starting point, not a finish line

This website is one of the first projects I’ve built entirely for myself. Not for a course, not for a client, not for a grade. Just for me.

And that turned out to be harder than I expected, not technically, but in every other way. What do I need to put on something like this? What does it say about me? How to make it feel like me, and not just another developer portfolio with a hero section and a skills list?

I spent a lot of time on those questions. And I know that I still don’t have any perfect answers. Well I’m not going to wait for perfect, I have decided to ignore the perfectionism and just accept good-enough. What I do have is a version I’m willing to put out into the world, knowing it will look completely different in a year.

What this place is

At its core this is a portfolio. A place to document and share the projects I’m building and will build. Right now that list is short. That’s kind of the point. I’m at the start of something, and I’d rather show that honestly than pretend otherwise.

There’s also this blog. I’m not entirely sure what it will become yet, and I think that’s okay. Some posts will probably be devlog-style, going through something I’m in the process of building. Others might be more reflective: thoughts on how to work, how to learn, things I’ve figured out or am still figuring out. Maybe there will be some technical deep-dives. Maybe some that are harder to categorise.

I have come to believe that the best way to learn is to do: make something real, share it, gather feedback, and iterate. This blog is partly that. An experiment in sharing before I feel ready.

And then there’s the photography section. I’ve shot photos for a while, mostly for myself. Occasionally someone would ask where they could see them and I’d always have to say nowhere, it’s just a hobby. That felt like a shame. Building this site gave me a place to share them (and honestly, a reason to go out and shoot more).

The hard part

The technical side of this was straightforward. I have some experience building websites so the code and components didn’t cause many struggles. However, the design went through more iterations than I’d anticipated.

The hard part was the identity question underneath all of it.

When you build something that’s supposed to represent you (not just your CV, but genuinely you), you have to answer some uncomfortable questions. What do I actually stand for? What kind of work do I want to do? What kind of person am I trying to become?

I wanted this site to feel like who I want to become, not just who I am right now. And that’s a much harder target to hit, because I don’t have a complete picture of that yet. I have values. I have directions. I have things I care deeply about: building purposefully, learning without stopping, being honest about where I am in the process. But a fully formed answer? Not quite.

Still, the person I want to become is someone that takes action. So I stopped waiting.

This site is my best current answer to those questions. It will be wrong in some (maybe even many) ways. It will be incomplete in others. And I can almost guarantee it will look entirely different in a year, because I will be different in a year, and that’s exactly the point.

What’s next

I’m finishing my degree this summer and starting a masters after. But next to that I want to do more: more building, more learning, more putting things out into the world before they feel ready. Expanding comfort zones, trying new things and likely failing a lot along the way.

But I want to be the person that’s vulnerable enough to show that failure openly. Not to warn others away from trying, but to inspire them to go for it anyway. Not because I am ready. Because it would be a shame to one day wonder how great it could have been, if only.

If any of that sounds interesting to follow, welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

— Thomas Bood