Why start the journal in 2026?
I would like to record some of the challenges that I have overcome and over time see a progression of my skills. Hopefully I can look back on some of the things I have overcome and celebrate.
Creating the journal is also a good excuse to start another project (yay!) and to get more experience with Next.js.
I've decided to create a journal, what's next?
I should and could use a readymade setup such as 11ty or make it myself. You're kidding right, I'm a developer and will always find the most complicated way of doing something. Joke aside, extending my website seemed easier than trying to merge different solutions into my own domain/subdomains.
The stack? Next.js it is. I also like the idea of using markdown for the posts, so that I later could control things like styling across all posts. Using markdown also meant I could use Obsidian as a word processor and just easier to manage in a filesystem.
After a bit of research I ended up with these as main part of the stack:
- Next.js
- MDX - Markdown with TSX / JSX support
- Tailwind/typography - Predefined styling for posts
"It will take just a few hours to setup"
Although I have gained enough experience to know that it never only takes a few hours to setup pretty much anything, I was surprised about how much work it turned out to create a journal in the end. In total it was probably around 20-30 hours of work in total.
Some of my challenges along the way:
- Original website (without the journal) was vibe-coded on purpose to test the latest AI models. Vibe-code and production/maintainable code are very different things in early 2026.
- Structure of files and "dynamic" fetching of data from posts. MDX, front-matter.
- Converting project from module based CSS to tailwind. Using things such as Tailwind/typography for generic styling of posts.
- Design of posts and navigational elements between sites.
Was it worth it?
That remains to be seen. I'm skeptical of MDX being particularly relevant for any professional environment outside of maybe some internal docs/wiki. But the novelty of finally having a space where I can share some of my development journey is really nice and I'm excited to share some more! Hopefully, I will keep this up...