Where is this journey heading? I don’t really know right now…

Sometimes, as a web developer, you hit a point where the next step isn’t exactly clear. The tech landscape changes fast, and life outside of work comes with phases that demand a lot of time. I’ve decided not to look at this uncertainty as an obstacle, but rather as a green light: I’m going to use this website to document my learning journey.

My goal? I want to share my experiences. Maybe it will help someone else who finds themselves at the exact same crossroads down the road.

My Current Stack: Why Etch?

Even though I actually planned to dive into Bricks quite a while ago, I ended up taking a detour into the world of Statamic. But ultimately, I landed on Etch.

My path here was a bit of a chain reaction: Kevin Geary was the reason I discovered Bricks in the first place. Through that, I also stumbled upon Automatic.css (ACSS). When the big announcement for Etch dropped, my interest was instantly very high.

Admittedly, I haven’t finished a complete project with Etch yet. Certain personal things got in the way and slowed down my overall progress… but yes, now I’m rising up again! My excitement for Etch is as big as ever: the clean UI and the things you can build with it by now just absolutely blow my mind.

To complete my setup, I’m currently using the following plugins:

Alongside this core setup, I’m also diving deep into Hermes, Openclaw etc. and its workflows lately. There is honestly so much to learn and explore in that corner right now as well.

My Struggles with ACSS

Technically speaking, it’s straightforward: I know exactly where to configure the colors for Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Accent, Base, and Neutral inside ACSS. The technical side isn’t what’s blocking me.

The real challenge is the design perspective: Which colors do I choose, and how do I map them out intelligently? How do I decide when and where to use the Tertiary tokens, for example? Or which color goes into Primary, Tertiary, etc., so that the final look actually feels harmonious?

Knowing how to operate a tool is one thing, but developing an eye for visuals is a completely different story. Right now, when it comes to ACSS, this is exactly where I’m stuck.

What I’m Eagerly Waiting For: Native Pagination

Since I plan on writing a lot more blog posts soon, I need this functionality badly.

I really don’t want to buy extra plugins for this especially when I only need this one specific feature (not to mention those plugins usually cost money). We’ll see if I can whip up a temporary solution myself using Vibe Code in the meantime. That’ll definitely be an exciting topic for upcoming posts.

Behind the Scenes: How This Article Was Made

A little confession to wrap things up: Truth be told, I’m pretty bad at writing an article cleanly and structurally from the get-go. Sometimes thoughts that belong at the very beginning end up at the bottom, and everything gets a bit messy. Because of that, I use AI to take my thoughts which I write completely by myself and structure them into a clean layout. For me, it’s an awesome workflow to keep the focus on the content without getting bogged down in text formatting.

Now I’m rising up…

It reminds me of that Batman quote: “Why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.“

The journey has just begun. Even if everything hasn’t fully come together just yet, I’m excited to see where this path takes me and look forward to overcoming the next hurdles.