Welcome! This is the first post on my new blog. I created this blog to kick-start my personal website. I bought the domain name marcelkooi.com about 3 years ago and have been trying to throw something on there ever since. I ended up spending too much time thinking about what it should look like that I never got around to doing anything about it. A classic case of analysis paralysis. I finally decided I would start small and create a blog. Starting a blog should:

• Allow me to write about topics that interest me
• Improve my writing skills
• Serve as a starting point to anything else I would like to add to my website (e.g. a portfolio)

There are definitely some advantages to creating a personal website. It lets you point to something to show people more about yourself and allows you to show off a few skills as a software developer. To create the blog I decided to follow this guide to setup a Gatsby starter on GitHub pages and use TravisCI for deployment. I found it to be pretty straightforward. I could have gone the Wordpress or Ghost route but figured Gatsby would give me more flexibility for customizing my website in the future. I already know React and GraphQL seems interesting to learn.

I'm glad I finally got around to creating my personal site. As with most projects, it helps to break things down and start with a small step. It always seemed like such a daunting task since it would end up being my "official portfolio" and would need to look perfect but that's really not the case. It's better to have something simple to show than nothing at all. If you're considering building your own personal site, starting a new project, or starting anything really, I'd recommend you try it out! Start with a small step and don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.