I can't believe that I'm finally coding my blog

This will change my life forever.
I’ve been dreaming about this day for over 2 years by now.

My blogging journey so far

I bought myself my first domain for my birthday in July 2023.
Back then, even the thought of owning my very own digital space felt intimidating. I remember how I was standing in front of my Airbnb in Portugal one evening, looking at the dark sky by the empty street and thought about the name perpetualsunsets.io.

perpetualsunsets, because sunsets represent one of the magical constants in life.
io, because I wanted it to be special.

The journey started slow. I chose Hostinger as web hosting provider and used Wordpress and Elementor to build.

I was determined to build and fully own my little world on the internet. My place to rest, where I can simply be me. Where I can inspire myself and others.

However, I did underestimate how much it would take to maintain a blog, design, and even create a single post and surrendered at some point to the understanding that good things always take time.

From the beginning, I was not quite satisfied with the drag and drop options and would spend hours redesigning and customising the blog. So even though I had the tools, something still didn’t feel right.

Then, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write about and how to write it.

Little did I know how different writing a blog post would be from journaling. Although I had experience with structured writing from my academics time, I quickly discovered that writing about things that I cared about, my thoughts and my experiences demanded a different approach. Sometimes, I would start typing and end up in completely different directions. I wrote posts about travel tips, poems about the Divine Feminine, diary entries about my life. I alternated between different styles of writing and topics. Not being able to find some kind of coherence in what I was doing frustrated me.

The next 2 years, I was on and off blogging, while experimenting with different types of storytelling on Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube.

At the beginning of 2025, I made a deal with myself to focus fully on my blog and Youtube for 6 months, while not using social media anymore.

It didn’t turn out well. While travelling, I always wanted to share small thoughts or quickly upload pictures. I missed the interactions with social media friends and was annoyed that I couldn’t quickly post some small blog posts. Looking back, maybe that was due to Wordpress chunkyness, maybe it was me.

Let’s see how the blogging process will evolve now.

There’s a lot of work to do:

• Different post templates for different type of posts
• Category templates (I never managed to do it in Wordpress, I got lost 100 times in the global settings etc.)
• Donation feature (I wanted to write an onchain mini-app for that!)
• Come up with a media structure that makes sense, since I won’t have a CMS
• SEO
• Statistics
• Future features to add dimensionality: Add animations and videos, dark mode, something fun stuff that changes according to the seasons

This sounds like pure madness, will take too much time, but I hope I’ll improve in speed and knowledge over time, so that I will actually be able to keep this blog going and effortlessly create new posts.

Coding the blog has been a thought in my mind for too long, and if I ‘fail’, I’ll know that I did my absolute best.

(Btw, even though I have some coding experience from university and my previous job, I really don’t like coding. Everytime I get an error, it gives me a little heart attack and I consider myself as too impatient to be a developer in any ways. AI as my buddy is truly a gift in that case.)

Sooo, what is the difference between blogging with Wordpress and coding it myself?

ownership, control & freedom

It feels more intuitive and intimate. I can make changes directly in the code, I’m not helplessly searching where to make specific style changes, and I’m not distracted by the heaviness of the CMS. Blogging feels lighter.

It’s like preparing a homemade meal from scratch with love.
Coding it myself (with help from Cursor and ChatGPT):
I handpick the ingredients in the store, and add homegrown veggies from my garden. I wash, cut, and prepare everything just how I like. I improvise with spices depending on my mood.
Using WordPress:
A pre-packed box of selected ingredients and a recipe shows up at my doorstep. I follow the recipe, which turns out delicious. But there’s little room for improvisation. And I have to accept that, depending on the provider (aka the plugin), they may not have noodles, or carrots, or aubergines.

activation of both sides of the brain: logic x intuition

Writing code pulls me into a logical, structured mindset that contrasts with the intuitive, emotional flow I tap into while creating my posts. The technical focus grounds me, providing a kind of mental clarity that keeps me from drowning in my emotions and thoughts.

creative freedom

I was not sure if I wanted to be a travel blogger, write about slow living or poems about spirituality. I wanted to create many different rooms aka categories with different themes.

I didn’t feel that Wordpress gave enough flexibility to turn a website into a multidimensional portal with different stylings and moods depending on the category. I felt that I had to decide on a direction.

My vision with self-coding is that I’ll have the creative freedom turn this space into anything I want, let’s see where it goes.