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.