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+title: Béton Brut
+date: 2019-07-21
+author: Wolfgang Müller
+
+It is hard to believe that it took me well over half a year to finally
+come to the point where I can publish this website on my new domain and
+leave the old one behind. There's a few reasons it took this long, and
+for once, surprisingly, they are not at all software-related. It was a
+journey through uncertainty, insecurity, and compulsive hesitancy, which
+is why this post will mostly be a reflective one.
+
+## Legacy Woes
+
+Last year in November I had a bunch of free time on my hands, and I very
+innocently decided to work on a new site design. Back then I only really
+wanted to change a few things, since a full makeover seemed a bit too
+daunting. Still, after throwing around a bunch of ideas in my head, it
+seemed more clear that I would have to abandon the bulk of what I
+already had. Mainly this was because the old site was built on a
+considerable amount of legacy code: I was using AsciiDoc, which I had
+fallen out of favour with, and most of the site was being held together
+by an unwieldy Makefile and a couple of hacky shell scripts.
+
+So whilst it was easy enough to add new content, changing the design or
+even merely attempting to tweak core concepts was impossible without a
+bigger rewrite.
+
+Another concern was my growing disdain for a few of the things that I
+had published. Ideally I thought it'd be best to rewrite the bits that I
+didn't like and keep the rest, but I couldn't find a sufficient amount
+of motivation. I ended up neglecting to write any new posts on the site,
+and knowing I had stuff online that I kind of despised made me feel
+depressed every time I thought about it. I felt that the site could no
+longer reasonably present the kind of person I was. I felt that I was
+lying.
+
+## Honest Design
+
+Around the same time I stumbled upon [Brutalist
+Websites](https://brutalistwebsites.com/) (since defunct, and only
+reasonably browsable by removing the prominent overlay), which curated a
+collection of _brutalist_ websites.
+
+![Brutalist Websites](img/brutalist-websites.png)
+
+There was always a certain - perhaps morbid - fascination I had with
+Brutalism and its idea of _béton brut_, raw concrete. The German word
+for this concept, _Sichtbeton_, takes a more experiential approach; it
+is simply concrete that is unobstructedly visible. There's no attempt to
+hide the underpinning, instead it is displayed with a certain kind of
+pride. Core to the whole concept is a notion of honesty, of being
+utterly clear about what a thing is made of.
+
+So when I felt that I was lying about what kind of person I was, it
+seemed only fitting to create something new in that sort of style, and
+to take to heart the idea of being more honest to the outside world and
+myself.
+
+## The Foundation
+
+Not only did that mean creating a new design, it also meant starting
+from scratch and looking for a new engine to build the whole website. I
+quickly decided to use [sblg](https://kristaps.bsd.lv/sblg/) to generate
+HTML files from templates, and
+[lowdown](https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/) to convert markdown files to
+XML content that sblg understands.
+
+The whole project would live in only a couple of directories, tied
+together with a much simpler and cleaner Makefile this time. Compared to
+AsciiDoc, site generation was blazingly fast and very robust. It only
+took me about a day or two to fully tweak everything the way I wanted it
+to behave.
+
+## Small Steps
+
+What ended up taking 90% of the rest of the time was the design. With
+the idea of being fully honest came a problem: I started questioning
+certain decisions because of what they might reveal about myself, what
+they might look like from an outside perspective. I noticed that, for a
+very long time, I had been genuinely insecure about releasing anything
+that was in any way personal to me.
+
+For instance, the idea very early on was to have one single page
+containing everything I published; be it a piece of software, a poem, or
+some sort of essay. This resulted in a lot of internal conflict as I
+often considered my poetry to be "pretentious" and inherently less
+impactful than a software project. Suddenly I was wanting to have two
+sites, one for the "real" and technical projects, and one for the more
+personal. In turn that would mean that I was actively censoring my
+output by categorizing it away to a more obscure part of the site.
+
+Another problem was an almost compulsive need to tweak the most
+insignificant parts of the design towards a sense of perfection and
+coherence that was frankly unattainable. Because of a lot of internal
+turmoil, it became impossible to do any further work I would feel
+positive of.
+
+In the end the solution was to take considerable time off personal
+projects and reflect on and try to dismantle those problems and
+insecurities. I learned that it is very helpful to talk to trustworthy
+friends about this, and to find a comfortable space in which to
+experiment with being more immediately public with projects, ideas, or
+thoughts - even if you think they are unrefined and not ready. This is
+especially helpful if one tends to feel vulnerable after having
+published or when considering to publish. Initially it is perfectly fine
+to create a "mock public" space that no one can see initially, but which
+can be made more public as time goes on (a locked Twitter or Fediverse
+profile, for example). The idea is to build confidence in the act of
+publishing itself, and to take away the vulnerability and fear.
+
+## Horizon
+
+Building this sort of confidence in publishing personal content is
+time-consuming and not always easy. You may feel the intense urge to
+undo a publication or to re-read it until it sounds drab and uninspired.
+In those cases, maybe ask a friend for feedback, but most importantly:
+take a step back and take some time off. It may read wholly differently
+tomorrow.
+
+As for technical work, if you, like me, feel sometimes that what you do
+is unimportant, unrecognized, or invisible, it might help to start a
+document in which you collect even the smallest things that have some
+sort of impact day to day. Julia Evan's idea of a [brag
+document](https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/) is a helpful resource. I
+tend to be overly humble myself and want to highlight the following excerpt,
+which helped me understand something no one had explained to me before:
+
+> One thing I want to emphasize, for people who don't like to brag, is –
+> **you don't have to try to make your work sound better than it is**. Just
+> make it sound **exactly as good as it is**!
+
+Like _béton brut_, be uncompromisingly honest about your work. Don't
+make it sound better than it is, but most importantly, learn that it
+has value and that there is no shame in showing it.