It happened! We have a new website and you’re reading the inaugural blog post. It would be dishonest to say this site is the result of a harmonious process, strung along by intuitive planning, perfect communication, and a flawless execution of well-laid plans. As anyone who’s ever built a website can tell you, the process is less of a clean line from start to finish and more of the digital equivalent of Homer Simpson’s makeup shotgun; you have an idea of how it will turn out, pull the trigger, and then deal with the resulting mess. Repeat until completion.
You won’t be able to predict all the challenges you’ll face on a project. For me, that meant spending weeks adapting to WordPress’s back end and diagnosing problems we were having without having the knowledge to always understand exactly what I was looking at. I had a bit of experience with web building, but I couldn’t have got the site to it’s current state without a lot of help from others.
There’s a funny parallel between finishing this site and starting ildsjel. You come up with an idea for something you want to see in the world, you bring people on board, the idea is refined, you apply your individual skills and personalities, it’s refined again, and eventually you have something. Assess your results, and you make changes.
Like our website, ildsjel has gone through many changes since its inception in 2015, and in order for it to grow, we’ve all had to take on new challenges and nurture new skills. You’ll almost never have all the tools you need at the start, but there are a few skills that will get you through just about anything: patience, open mindedness, and adaptability.
If you have those three traits, you can get through almost any of the challenges you’ll face in your career, and there will be challenges. Take a deep breath, collect yourself, and find solutions. It’s alright to encounter problems, it’s not alright to let them throw you off. Keep your head up and do the best work you can do.
I’d like to give a special shout-out to Will Campbell and Miguel Ocampo-Gooding for all their hard work and expertise. Without them, this site would look more like that Space Jam website from 1996. You guys rule.
