My backyard.
I don’t believe in having idols.
Taking inspiration from people we admire is great. But seeing someone as God-like or more than human seems creepy to me.
That said, one of the people I look up to most is Derek Sivers.
His book Anything You Want is the reason I wanted to start my own business. He’s given several TED Talks. And last month, I interviewed him for my book on creating.
I’d like to share an answer of his and how it inspired my newest creative endeavor.
Dill:
“Why is absolute control over what you create so important to you? Self-publishing (and printing) your books, coding your website in HTML, building things with your hands, etc.”
Derek:
“I hate bloat. It feels like pollution.
Quick-publish tools are filled with bloat because they have to cover every scenario.
Install WordPress and publish the word “Hello!”, and you’ve installed 884 PHP files, 602 Javascript files, 19 database tables, and hundreds of thousands of lines of code that are filled with bugs and security holes.
Or just type “<html><h1>Hello!</h1></html>” and save it as index.html, uploaded to a simple Linux server, and voilà. You now have a website with only one file and one line of code. No security holes. No problem to maintain it.
I hate dependencies. I have no subscriptions. Well-meaning companies say, “Oh don’t you worry about that, we’ll take care of it for you for only $10/month!” I think long-term so $10/month is $6000. And now you’re dependent on this company. If they raise their rates or go out of business, you’re screwed because you made yourself dependent on them.
So for each of these situations, I’d rather avoid the bloat, save the $6000, be un-dependent on any company, and just figure out how to do it myself.
That said, for the book publishing, I just wanted the highest possible quality, and I wanted to keep the rights so that I could do whatever I want with the books in the future. I could license them, translate them, rename them, give them away for free, or whatever I want. When you sign your rights away to a publishing company, the copyright is no longer yours to do what you want with.”
My first thought was, Shit, I use WordPress for my blog. Am I a loser?
While I might in fact be, I got an idea. In the next year, I’m going to transfer this blog over to a website that I code entirely by myself.
I’ve tried my hand at learning to code before. I got the fundamentals of HTML and CSS down. But I’ve always stopped short because I never really had anything to work on. There are only so many sample cat websites I can make until I get bored.
WordPress is easy and convenient. I don’t mind that. But creating my own site from scratch just sounds fun. I can already feel my future headaches as I try to learn Python or Javascript.
This won’t happen this month. It’ll be a slow and steady process. And I’m excited.
As I do with my book, I’ll keep you updated with every step along the way. Stay tuned.
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