I had another lousy night’s sleep! I will definitely need a nap at some point today. I don’t know why I am getting the nightmares at full tilt bore but it was one right after another. Despite the poor sleep, I feel okay this morning. I don’t have any grand plans to accomplish much today. Instead, I like the idea of simple, uncomplicated relaxation.

I did manage to get the boot loader repaired on my desktop yesterday morning and it was surprisingly easy. I will revisit the idea to replace the boot loader from GRUB to SystemD-Boot at a later point in time. It depends on how intent I am at breaking things only to have to repair them later. I crack myself up! There’s no pressing need to change the boot loader. I just know that GRUB is slow as hell.

I am hoping for some warmer weather in the next couple of days as I would really like to sit out on the porch and read; take in the sun and fresh air as it does wonders for the mood. I know I will have to work for the next four days and I do have an event that I am looking forward to on Saturday morning. This event is like a giant yard giveaway. It’s billed as a free market. I want to get there early enough while the pickings are good.

I’m ready to make it a good day and not the way yesterday went where I was just in an inexplicably foul mood and I had to dig deep for patience. I am going to chock yesterday up to having a day where I felt irritable and overstimulated.

I took melatonin when I did not need it and I think I actually induced a night of continuous nightmares one after another. Finally, I just got up and out of bed to start writing my daily blog entry. Despite having a lousy night, I am determined not to let that bring me down. If I need a nap later, I’ll take one. For now, it is time to write.

Yesterday, I discovered something called PressMeGPT. It is literally an AI-powered theme generator for WordPress with results that are nothing short of amazing. It looks like I will have a website up and going in time for my goal of April 15th and that pleases me. The theme is beautiful and represents exactly what I would like to project to my potential customers.

So today I need a day where I do not do anything and to simply relax. I got quite a bit achieved yesterday so I feel good about this. I also have an inexplicable craving right now for a turkey sandwich. I may have the rest of last night’s dinner which was a Cappriotti’s Bobbie. Man that is a good sandwich! Maybe it was the tryptophan mixed with the melatonin and THC that gave me a bit of a night with nightmares? I am laughing now at the poor choice I made.

So I will be watching some shows that I enjoy and do a few other things. I have to repair my desktop computer today. I screwed up the boot loader so I will have to book with an Arch Linux ISO and reinstall GRUB. It won’t take a long time and I’ll get things up and going again.

I am somewhat saddened by the fact that an electric bike might very well be a fool’s errand. I was thinking that it would be a way for me to save money and have some very basic transportation. Yeah, not so much …. It’s back to the drawing board like so many things in life. I continue to be very frustrated by life and the lack of progress I am making in it. Let’s just say I am frustrated and angry. Things feel pretty hopeless now.

I work hard and have little to nothing to show for my efforts. This makes me very sad and cynical. I know the key to some control and independence is in being a small business owner. I’ve made frustratingly little progress in that direction. I know I need a damn website and I need it sooner than later. Given I am struggling so badly, I am going to use a page builder with WordPress. I don’t really want to give Elementor the money but I need a site and I needed it yesterday. I can use it as a stop gap measure.

Maybe I’ll feel better for using Elementor if it produces something that would be good for a minimally viable launch as I am making 0 progress in that direction. I feel like my entire life has been a series of follies.

I am a bit late getting to blogging today as I slept deeply and later than usual. At the very least I feel very rested. I hope work goes okay today. Saturdays and Sundays I work the 3-11 shift and usually (knock on wood) nothing substantial happens. I am ready to try again on the web design. I have to get ideas and I need to figure out where to get these ideas from. I think looking at other websites doing the same thing that I plan on doing is a good idea.

I don’t particularly enjoy this kind of research as I usually end up overwhelmed by the sheer variety and I have difficulty making up my mind. These are totally new and uncharted territories for me. I don’t know about the different effects and their desirability. I wish I did not have such a mental block on this whole thing but I’ll ride over it.

In other news, I think I am going to save for an electric scooter to get me to and from work. The savings alone from using Lyft or Uber to get home from work will pay for itself in a month of usage. I don’t want to muck with gasoline or small engine maintenance and repair. A scooter is perfect. I can use it to get to and from the stores. An electric scooter would help.

I found one on Facebook Marketplace which is a really good candidate. I think I can get the guy down to 350.00 for it too. That would be very affordable and make transportation more feasible until I can get a car. I just came up with this idea today so I’ll spend some time researching this and see what options I have.

I have to work tonight from 3-11. For those who do not know, I work as a security guard. The site I work at is a city and county government building. I like the Saturday and Sunday 3-11 shift because I am in a locked down building. I have plenty of time to work on other things so I’ll take advantage of that.

I’m going to look for some web designs that I might like and try and modify them slightly; adopting them for my use. It’s going to be a purely educational night and I’m looking forward to the work. The plan is to figure out how to implement the design using Gutenberg.

The goal remains to have a minimally viable launch come April 15th. I have to remember that perfection is the enemy of progress. I also have to remember that good enough is perfectly acceptable here.

Hopefully I can get something up and solicit some useful feedback. There’s always going to be trolls that will tell flat out give their opinions instead of offering anything useful. I’ll ignore those.

Last night I was trying to be productive and work on a website for my business. What I thought would be a relatively easy and straightforward task turned out to be an undertaking. I have a new found respect for competent web designers. I tried to use AI to help and it was a disaster. ChatGPT and Claude are still curiosities at the moment.

So I need to take a step back and do some manual research. I have to look at other websites for ideas and examples. Then I have to figure out how the UI and UX experts implement something so eye pleasing and cohesive. My original goal was to have a minimally viable launch by April 15th and it might not happen. I’m still going to shoot for that however.

At least in this journey, I am learning how AI won’t fix a process that is broken. My current process is haphazard so I need to look at it more linear-logically versus circuitously. When it comes to design for electronic UI/UX, it can’t be done out of order. Since I cannot afford a web designer, maybe I need to look at something like Wix.

I am learning to utilize AI to help me design a website and it has been very helpful in doing so. I have the technology ability but I really don’t have design experience so I am creating this website in WordPress with the built-in Gutenberg editor. Say what you will about Gutenberg but it does lower the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs getting something up and going.

While using AI actively, I am learning how to ask questions and break down a process to small details. I am not asking AI to do everything for me. Instead I am using it to augment my own critical thinking and it’s actually helping me. ChatGPT has made recommendations for things like color palettes, design layouts, fonts, gradients, and more; ideas I would not necessarily come up with on my own.

I got it! AI is a great brainstorming tool. I balance using ChatGPT with a regular internet search engine. If I only know vaguely of what I want, ChatGPT makes the search more natural and human. If I know exactly what I want, I use an internet search engine to dial it in. Both tools help me to teach and better myself. Now that I have a strategy to build out a website, it’s only a matter of diggin in.

Tonight there should be plenty of time for me to make even more progress. I am looking forward to it.

Sometimes the best laid plans do not quite workout. I wanted to make progress on my website. Instead, I got distracted by an SSL error which was annoying. I still haven’t solved it for what that’s worth. Since I am doing development on my local machine, I don’t think I really need SSL anyways so I’ll just make it regular old HTTPS.

I will probably work more on my website this afternoon at my desk instead of my laptop. I don’t quite know what got completely fouled up and I don’t really care at the moment. I just want to make more progress.

With the help of “evil” AI, I have made some progress on the design of my business website. I have the typography, color palette, and a custom gradient defined. I’m happy that I accomplished this in an hour’s time. I joke about evil AI but it was so helpful in overcoming the mental block that I had.

I’ll continue my work on it bit by bit in fits and spurts. I’m going for a minimally viable launch at the moment. The work I did gives me some confidence that I can actually pull this off so I feel good. Oh and I forgot to mention that I started working on the site header. Watching things slowly coming together is encouraging.

I’ve discovered that I’m best in working with intensity in spurts. Since tomorrow is April 1st, I’m setting a goal of April 15th to have a minimally viable launch. That’s two weeks. I’m aiming to average 1-2 hours a day on it for the given time frame. I’m determined not to let perfect be the enemy of good/progress. It’s amazing how much can be completed in a good day.

I would like to see the header and footer come together in these next few days. That would make me feel even more encouraged.

I slept so well last night! I think it was legitimately because of a high dose of THC. I slept straight through the night. Everything feels so peaceful and relaxed. I know what I did was merely a bandaid for a gaping wound that major depressive disorder is but I needed relief. And I just realized that this is maladaptive. 😬

I really want to get more of the benefits of meditation so I don’t rely on substances. I know I have to walk very carefully here. I could use THC short term to help with some of the benefits of meditation. I know the ancients experimented with substances to augment or help people struggling with concentration.

I feel strangely motivated and positive today. It’s a good feeling. Since I feel motivated and I dare say creative, I will tackle some work on the website for my business. Even if I just work with AI to help get ideas, I’ll consider it a success. I don’t need a large bar to success here. I’ll be satisfied with any progress.