Why I Built Another Blog (The Truth)

It's only fitting that the first post on "yet another blog" explains why I built it, how I built it and where it leads.

Frankly, creating this entire blog structure wasn't really difficult. It was much easier than last times.

With the existence of AI-assisted coding tools - I was able to save a lot of time. And now I can focus on the raw, unfiltered honesty I always wanted to share with the world.

Why I Really Built This Site

This isn't some polished story, but an obsessive and messy truth about why building a blog was important to me.

I could have just written on Ghost, or Medium or any other of the great platforms. But I needed to have my own space, my own corner on the internet.

I've had several blogs before:

All of which were subject to sabotage due to imposter syndrome. None of them exist anymore.

It's not that they were failures, they were built on temporary sparks that had to burn out.

Each time, I would overcomplicate things. Perfecting themes, tinkering and iterating endlessly. All of this at the expense of the most important thing: the Written Word.

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I've come to realize that my focus needed to be on content—typography and words.

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Back then, I was intrigued by the possibility to monetize blogs, to live a "digital nomad" life. I was able to achieve this but not through blogging.

In truth, I was just creating masks. I was building identities beyond the one I already had, the one I know the most about, my own name: Tim Pright.

Unable to face this masked reality, I spent too much time distracting myself from actually creating, sharing and letting it be.

I am killing the "perfectionist" inside of me, so that my literature can breathe.

This website is the core to my vision. It isn't another mask.

It's the foundation for my new projects, my writing, and my thoughts.

The Lies I Told Myself

When building this, I was telling myself "I'm building to own my content."

That's only half-true, tbh.

The real truth: I lied to myself.

I did already own my content, I just wasn't sharing it with anyone.

In a way, I was just scared that my writing wouldn't stand on its own. Thus, I compensated with technical complexities.

I needed to feel in the past that I was "building a serious business" instead of simply writing what I wanted to write and letting people who care—care, and those that don't—move on.

What I Actually Built

Because I already had some experience using AI and LoRAs for image generation, I wanted to experiment with AI-assisted development while keeping the build minimal.

For this site, I came up with a tech stack rather quickly. It has a strong utility for custom features, ease of hosting and cost.

Despite not spending too much time developing, I was able to get near-perfect lighthouse results, the typography style I wanted and the optimized load times.

It's not flawless for small and large screens yet, but I'm getting there.

Extra touches in development:

The words load super quick. The site is quite lean. That's all that matters to me.

The Real Numbers

I started with the Cursor Trial to build this blog. It's free.

That quickly changed, though. It wasn't powerful enough for what I wanted.

I upgraded to Claude Pro ($20/month). It was worth every penny.

Using Claude Code engages me in a way that anything would engage me as a child. One activity leads to another, with full focus and enjoyment.

Instead of getting bored or context-switching to avoid creating something, I would remain in flow much, much longer.

With AI, I think people only fall into two categories:

I belong to the latter.

Even though the Pro plan was enough, I would have to split my coding sessions into 3 per day. Each one of them having less focus than the other.

I eventually switched to Claude 5x Max ($140 CAD/month) to avoid the limits.

This allows me to do a lot more, while allowing me to code longer.

The hosting was through Netlify, which is also free and very intuitive.

The domain was about $10 for the year. Luckily, it was still available.

After about 120 hours of coding, and a multitude of coffee cups - the project was pretty much complete. If I had to use API token pulls for Claude, I would have spent about $500 by now.

Any emotional cost is hard to quantify, because more or less, I was enjoying myself the whole time. There was some frustration at session limits when I was about to finish a task, but the limit was reached.

Inspiration for design came from minimalist sources, and I'd like to give credit where credit is due:

All of which are basically minimal, raw and useful to their particular audiences.

What I Learned From Past Blogs

I used to obsess over trying to perfect my writing environment. This would take away time from actual writing.

Custom CMS features and overcomplicated UI never made the words flow any easier.

Now that I'm older and more experienced, I see that avoidance for what it is.

Technical complexity protecting me from difficult creative vulnerability.

Writing Vulnerability

I always have the choice between being more vulnerable, sharing myself with the world or choosing to work on things that don't matter as much. Authenticity strips away a lot of the masks we wear in daily life.

Working on the business side of things can be fun, engaging and productive.

But if you have a drive to write, to share and you don't—you're letting yourself down.

With the whole world fighting for man's attention and energy, sharing authentic writing can be similar to speaking with a wall. Talking to nobody.

I almost never choose the path of least resistance, in a way this is also a fault of mine.

By choosing to be a writer, I have to spend time figuring out how to bridge the gap between the void of nothing and the world of substance materialized into word.

I've always believed that writing is, in a sense, quite divine. It's a dialogue between me and God, and whoever else invited to share this moment.

My private journals and stories I wrote never reached others, but these words might. That makes these words a little bit different.

Even though, it's all just keyboard tapping, pen scribing—the destination of your writing determines some of its power.

Authentic, vulnerable shared writing connects two minds, ideas colliding against each others, changes are bound to happen. Somewhere, somehow.

Building for Myself

In the past, I built features for me as the reader, not for the potential readers themselves. That's entirely fine, but it left me isolated in the world where I can serve others better.

Through extensive travel and life experience, I've grown much fonder of the individual person and their uniqueness. I try to be more of service to others in my daily life, to understand them better.

This blog, although primarily for myself to share my thoughts, is also a means for me to serve others honestly—even if it is done through imperfection.

And even though I fail at times (often), I can only learn from my mistakes.

AI-Assisted Development

This blog is my first example of learning AI development in practice.

AI didn't erase any of my perfectionism. In fact, I think it amplified it.

With limitless possibility to adjust and tweak, I have to learn restraint.

I have to be able to say "It's good enough. Publish now."

I became a power-user without having a strong background in coding or web development. From building this blog with Claude and other tools, I learned:

There was a knowledge gap with terminology and functionality, which I have now filled by learning through the process.

In the end, I'm not hiding behind AI to develop for me. It's a tool, an extension of my own mind that helps me create what I want.

I can feel my understanding growing and my mind expanding as time passes.

Like a paintbrush serves a great artist in getting the right stroke, AI helps me bring out the ideas in my mind and realize them.

The Greater Goal

Let's be honest.

My priority is with life, living and experiencing. Even though my work is part of that, I'm not particularly fond of it unless it's very engaging.

This blog is simply my first step in an umbrella of creative projects and web apps that tie back to my writing.

My books are not published yet—that's on me—but the foundation will help me share and promote them. Nobody else will do it for me.

I'm building a minimal ecosystem where each projects connects to the other. Formulated together around intentional living, life experiences and more good.

In a way, this is a foundation for a business that doesn't exist yet.

The silver lining is the thread line.

My doubts, failures, assumptions—all of them become my content. The blog isn't a product trying to collect ad revenue, it's a system for documenting process.

A place where everything that comes next gets recorded.

The Hassle of Promotion

Time can always be spent better.

With writing, one could focus a lot more on how to reach readers who care about the topics I like to write about—the niche I aim to serve.

Instead, I easily find myself sinking hours into things nobody asked for: optimizing font loading, tweaking features, and trying to build better components.

Still, I trust myself wholly, the purpose behind my motives, and the foundation of 26 years of lived experience that the world has generously gifted me.

What's Working

The choice of Typography.

Georgia Serif font makes things a little bit more professional. I think it's easier to read things that look like a book, rather than not.

The world is filled with long-form video, shorts and mediums of greater entertainment. There will be those like me who still appreciate text.

The minimal design of the website.

It forces the content to try and stand on its own.

When there's not a lot of room to hide behind colors or UI, there's nothing left to do but write.

The personal domain.

Writing under full name feels different than writing with aliases or pseudonyms. It has a sense of permanence.

Accountability.

With AI, endless iteration is relatively easy. I have to be reasonable with myself and admit I'm done when I know I'm done.

The Difficult Questions

Am I building, writing for independence or to feed my ego, and gain control?

Do I spend way too much time coding instead of connecting and trying to use social media?

Am I addicted to solving technical problems, at the cost of emotional creative meaningful work?

Do I really want to say something important at all, or am I trying to appear important?

All in all, I'm not focused on the outcome with this project, I'm simply putting myself out there.

The Pattern I See

In a very evident way, this blog reminds me of all the wrong things I've done in the past.

Building a website that loads under a second isn't the hardest part. Getting consistent readers seems to be my weakness.

My first real internet job was writing ghost-content for businesses, so I learned a lot about content optimization. But it doesn't matter, if you're not writing consistently for yourself as well.

I can easily over-engineer SEO features and schemas. And yet, I don't spend nearly enough time finding out what the reader wants.

The realization above the realization is that I'm documenting the pattern as it happens. This might be the most valuable thing about the project.

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The "product" is not the blog itself. It's the honest documentation of what is happening in my life and my mind.

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What's Next

Now that I finally created this post, I'll simply keep going. I'll slowly populate the site with my essays, notes, reflections and experiments.

In order to avoid overwhelm, I'm simply going to test the 1-1-1-1 framework:

One single piece of content, aimed at one person, once a day, on one topic.

It's likely that there will be some resistance and a slump in motivation will occur. But that's fine.

Maybe readers will come, and maybe they won't. Either way, I'll learn something about myself, content-market fit and writing consistently.

The real test is if I keep going when the numbers stay low and progress feels stagnant. The data will be there and it's going to be honest.

This blog is proof of my work.

The website works.

The backend foundation is solid.

The writing system is effective.

What I'm doing right is building in public, being honest with my experiences and documenting as much as I can. Learning to share my imperfections rather than putting away my works from seeing eyes.

Starting with this level of transparency feels a little bit risky. Usually, people put out their most polished thinking, and launch with their best content first.

When they zig, I zag. I'm launching with my confession about my process and my proposed future.

Now the hard part begins: writing what I want and be transparent about it.

Thanks for reading.