In the summer I took a step back from freelancing and my own projects. That is to say, because I’m pretty extreme and I was completely burned out, I stopped doing everything altogether (other than the occasional blog post here).

Over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling better. I’m more interested in life, the universe, and generally everything. I’ve done a lot of shopping, a lot of socialising, and all kinds of activities ranging from llama trekking to art and sculpture exhibitions. But at the back of my mind I was wondering exactly how I could get back into web stuff. Even though I intended to long ago, there always seemed to be something else I wanted to do more.

That drought ended abruptly this week. By Wednesday I was climbing the walls I was so desperate to create something and get stuck into some design work. As it turns out, I don’t need to actively think about getting back into design and development and writing, because apparently it’s so entrenched in who I am that not doing it is like holding my breath – impossible to do forever. I’m not a designer, but I need to create.

As sad as it sounds, Fridays are generally my preferred choice of design night. They’re pretty rare, but once in a while I’ll put some music on and lose myself in Photoshop until about four or five am, depending on what I’m working on. Not only do I lose all track of time, but I lose all sense of…pretty much everything. It’s so absorbing. There’s something ludicrously satisfying about collapsing into bed exhausted after a night designing, and then waking up late the next morning, remembering, and checking out the design again to make a few inevitable adjustments.

But, being that it was mid-week, I didn’t have the luxury of time. So what I created was a lot less design-focused and very simple.

I have to admit that I wasn’t paying attention and installed WordPress before realising that there was absolutely no point in doing so when the entire website is just a handful of pages. I ended up trashing the whole thing and doing some hand coding (and copying and pasting) in the way that I’ve not done for years. I can’t remember the last time I typed out simple HTML head and title tags, which seems bizarre when I make so many websites. The difference now is that I rely far too heavily on jQuery. My love for jQuery is also ludicrous, and endless, and I want to be buried with it when I die (I’m not sure quite how that’s going to work, but hey, I won’t be the one trying to figure it out).

All things considered, the site took me a couple of evenings to get together. There’s not much there, but that’s the point. It’s a portal. It’s free from trying to be optimised for anything or pretend to be anything other than what it is – a simple place to showcase links to my openly public projects. The detail lies in the ‘Curious?’ section, and I had a lot of fun doing that.

The whole project was a good exercise in getting back into things and starting something fresh. Now it’s time to create a brand new look for Blossom and pick up a project I left half-finished back in the summer. It’s good to be back.