Caught on a Bur

Every now and then I am struck by how the things I initially thought unimportant and thus not worthy of paying attention to are the things that inevitably bother me to no end.

I bought a new place and when it came to the laundry room, I figured I wouldn’t care. Here’s a room that most people won’t see and that I’ll barely spend any time in. Washers and dryers are all the same, right? They wash and they dry. And perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the room the gives me the least amount of joy. Not because it is laundry but because it is a dull room that doesn’t serve my needs. The dryer supplied by the builder was ineffective at drying my clothes. There are no shelves for detergent or dryer sheets; Everything just sits on the floor. The walls and floor are grey.

I should’ve paid attention to the details. But as they say, ”perfection is the enemy of done” and is something that I run into with my web projects, too.

With many of my personal projects, I hit a point where I just want it out in the world, even though I know there are parts of it I still want to adjust or change or build. This design element isn’t that important. That feature isn’t needed. Of course, those are the parts that bother me to no end every time I open the site.

On my Photos site, I launched with what I needed. I didn’t specify height and widths on photos because they are output programatically and I didn’t feel like dealing with how to read those out. As a result, I’m annoyed every time I load the site and see the photos popcorn themselves into the page.

So while I consider my apartment “done” (like I consider my photo site “done”), I still have more work to do—little tweaks to polish off the burs that snag my attention.