I find myself getting caught in a cycle, where I really want to write for a brief period of time because it helps me consolidate my learning, and I do, and then I get salty at the idea of spending time writing when no one’s reading, and then a few months down the line feeling bad again that I didn’t write anything about what I had been working on and being right back where I started.
I’ve resolved to break this habit by writing a developer diary, while I work to write and release a Gutenberg compatible WordPress theme.
It feels weird starting a dev diary writing about writing a dev diary. I think for a long time I was scared of getting stuck doing this kind of meta-writing, and always waiting to put something down when I felt confident I had something to show for myself. This weird loop of feeling the pressure to produce has kept me back, not just from writing but also from doing the actual producing.
It’s been a constant problem, really my entire life, that I start things and get frustrated before they’re finished. There’s something about the work being unfinished. When you start on a project you don’t dream of your work in that state. You’re imagining the finished product. Whether it’s a piece of music, complete with a hook, bridge, and chorus. A garden, green and productive. A loaf of bread, golden and fragrant. Or a piece of software, complete and functional.
the idea
I read an article about the state of Gutenberg theme development, and had heard that support for Gutenberg in the dot org theme repository was pretty sparse at the moment. It’s an interesting problem to work on, so I thought I could take a crack at it and develop a theme I could use for another project at the same time.
I’ll learn about the challenges of adapting a theme to the block editor. I didn’t get a chance in my last role because the orginization was committed to using Advanced Custom Fields.
It will also be my first theme uploaded to the dot org directory. A big step and necessary one.
And I’m going to write from time to time. Even though it’s not finished yet. Right now it’s just a scaffolded theme among my projects folder with a long way to go.
getting started
For anyone in the same boat my only advice would be to just do it.
If your “it” is also uploading a WordPress theme