To start, I am very lucky and grateful to have a near and dear friend who inspired me.

June 2022

Upon returning home from a life-changing trip to Singapore, just about every aspect of my life felt dull. I was at the front end of my two-month summer break, a time that is normally full of excitement and peace. But this time it was different. Days were no longer filled with biking around, playing soccer, and swimming all day. Instead, people were off working internships and taking the next steps to building their professional careers.

Then there was me, stuck at home. My unwillingness to accept the loss of those youthful days translated to me keeping myself as far away from corporate America as possible.

While I was free from obligation, I quickly became a victim of my own free-will. I had all the time in the world to put my energy towards something but lacked any direction whatsoever. It was a horrible feeling as my days were being wasted with nothing being accomplished and even worse, no fun being had.

This is where my friend came into the picture. A simple invite to join him for a work session in the coffee shop was the first true spark of change.

I showed up that day ready to work, albeit I had absolutely nothing to do. I pulled out my laptop and put on my best performance to appear as if I was working on something. Refreshing my email and scrolling LinkedIn as if I was the CEO of a company. It was an effort to trick the other people in the coffee shop, my friend, and ultimately myself that I was getting something done.

Thankfully, after about 30 minutes my friend saw right through my shit. He could sense my dilemma, as he is very similar to myself. He knew the right questions to ask and for the first time I felt like I had someone to talk through my problem with.

After determining I wanted to learn something new that revolved around a creative element, he recommended I try web development and coding. Seemingly way over my head, I was curious about what it had to offer. It seemed to be the perfect blank canvas. I had two months to learn as much as I could and try to build the coolest thing possible. There were no expectations or set pathways that I had to follow. No limitations either, which was the most exciting part.

The first few weeks were full of learning. I was starting to see the possibilities of what I could do, but lacked all basic knowledge of how to get there. Seeing code for the first time was pretty intimidating so I knew I had to spend as much time as possible getting comfortable with it. Luckily for me, I had a friend and a coffee shop to give me help and space for my learning process.

After pages of notes and hours of online tutorials, I was ready to take off the training wheels. It was time for me to start my first project. At this point I instantly fell in love with it and realized it was essentially just a form of art. My creative muscles had not been used like that since my Lego days. It was a simple process:

1. Think of what I want to create

2. Go for it

3. Get stuck

4. Trial & error or find tutorial

5. Execute it

6. Tweak until satisfaction

A perfect process for creation with learning along the way. I started with building an online calculator, rock paper scissor game, Premier League themed website, and a mock personal portfolio. At a certain point I realized my capabilities and had the desire to build something that I could actually use and fully dump all of my energy into.

That project was meechio.

At the start, my only intention was to create a website that could serve as a reflection of myself. I had absolutely no thought of every publishing it or even sharing it with anyone else. I just wanted to create something that I would be proud of at the end of the summer.

I can’t explain it without sounding cheesy, but the days I spent building meechio were by far the happiest and most energized I had felt in a long time. I would sit down and before I knew it the whole day had passed. I was absolutely obsessed with thinking of new details to add.

Coding allows you to control every single minute detail on the website. Hours of thought went into every corner of the website including the scroll bar, animations, margins, colors, fonts, spacing, easter eggs, etc. I needed every element to reflect myself and I’m sure many of the complexities and details will forever go unnoticed by everyone but myself, but I think it’s better that way.

At a certain point I realized I was content with what I had created. My direction with meechio was clear. I would use it as a place to collect my thoughts, stories, and memories. This led to the process of publishing it to preserve it for the future.

Eventually summer ended and I was left at a reflection point. Weeks earlier I started with a blank canvas and finished with thousands of lines of code that came together to create meechio. I truly felt proud of myself for what I had accomplished but was still excited and eager to continue building. I showed myself what I am capable of and felt true passion along the way.

I would say meechio is still far from complete, and may always be, as I continue to have new ideas and envision different possibilities of where I want to take this whole thing.

Advice to my future self: Think of what you want to create. Now go for it because you can do it.