Alright itβs time to check in. I have wanted to share some findings between now and my last post, but I have been too preoccupied playing catching ...
Four years of trying to be the perfect professional, dyeing the hair natural for interviews that never came, then building the shop anyway. That "be yourself vs wait for opportunity" question at the end is the real one. Which way are you leaning this week?
I am leaning in the direction that I am tired of other people's politically correct opinions. I am feeling generally angry and rebellious. Nothing malicious, just fed up with things.
At first I embraced the personality change with open arms after being run over several times by life. But now I feel like a boiling pot with a lid bolted on.
If something doesn't work, you make changes, and try again, otherwise, we are idiots. This is true, right? π or is this also a lie. Beginning to wonder. πππ
Tired of other people's opinions after getting run over is a clear signal, not a character flaw. The boiling pot with a lid bolted on is a brutal image. If something stopped working for four years, trying a different shape is the rational move. Curious what rebellious looks like in practice for you this week, neon hair, louder shop, or just saying no more often.
Saying no more often might be the lid coming off a notch. Curious whether that's about interviews, free design work, or the people who want you smaller. Either way, it beats another year of dyeing the hair natural for rooms that never opened.
bro I checked it, I'm in India so I can't order it π, but bro designs are good like you can really open a big brand... I think it is already set to be big cool brand bro keep it up... also bro where is review section per product? like it is missing now you should add it, I can see reviews on google map but there should be per product reviews too isn't? and should be visible in that product just like amazon.
π«‘π₯π₯
When I start getting some real sales, the reviews will come. My Etsy had over 3,000 sales, and a lot of my selling has been in person, at events. The reviews will come, even if they take a year or two. I pulled in the google reviews so that people know I didn't just "appear out of nowhere." haha. I've been a blacklight artist a while. I could allow shipping other places, but it gets complicated quickly, I'm not sure that too many people will want to pay $40 for a t-shirt that is also $40. LOL. Get's expensive fast. Idk, you think I should allow shipping to countries even if I have to charge them a big shipping fee?
Pulling the plug on all the pre-existing business web-remnants and building from complete scratch is a very slow process. It's not a fast operation, and being an artist is a life long journey. I have my entire life to wait for a review and until then I will keep creating, coding, and getting into things I do not understand. π€£β
Yeah I did not really want to get to terribly tangled up in all that, at least yet. I have looked into selling on amazon previously. It is possible, but would likely require the purchasing of GTINs for every product which can get expensive fast. That is a whole new level of management and mess-avoiding! XD
Bro is there any custom features available? Means if I want my own design with your signature style? If not then add it bro locally it will boost you, also manufacturing is in house or you've partnered with a third party manufacturer?
Developer, maker, and perpetual project starter. I build web apps and dev tools mostly, things that I think are really useful and should exist and be simple to use. I also like to experiment with AI.
First of all, I think you should absolutely just be yourself! Life is too short to spend so much time trying to fit into some mold of what a "professional" is supposed to look like, especially when doing everything the "right" way hasn't really gotten you anywhere anyway.
And honestly, reading through everything you've been doing, I hope you realize how much you've actually accomplished. It's a lot. I think sometimes we get so caught up in what we haven't accomplished yet that we forget to give ourselves credit for everything we have.
I know none of that makes the frustration of trying to find opportunities any easier, but I really hope you don't let the job market make you question what you're capable of. It's hard enough trying to find your place in tech without feeling like you have to change your whole personality to be taken seriously.
And as someone who's had pretty much every hair color imaginable over the years (I honestly think I've tried them all lol), I fully support the colorful hair! I've never understood why things like that should matter so much. You can have pink hair, be creative, be a little different, and still know your shit. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
I really hope things start turning around for you. You've clearly put a ton of work into learning and building things, and you deserve to feel proud of that, whether or not some employer has recognized it yet. And please don't give up the things that make you happy just to fit someone else's idea of what you're supposed to be. There's nothing wrong with being yourself.
One technical detail I'd be curious about, especially given your earlier 404 and redirect issues, is how you're preserving attribution across the entire customer journey.
There's a nasty edge case with Google Ads where a redirect silently drops the gclid parameter. The visitor still reaches the store, browses products, and might even complete a purchase, but the conversion can end up attributed incorrectly because the original click identifier never made it to the final landing page.
I've seen Google explicitly document this behavior, and it's one of those problems where your traffic numbers can look perfectly healthy while your campaign reporting tells a completely different story.
I'd probably log the original landing URL, GCLID, redirect destination, and eventual order ID together, then compare that against GA4's purchase events. That gives you a much clearer picture of whether you're dealing with irrelevant traffic, broken attribution, or an actual conversion problem.
Also, I think there's something interesting about your whole experience here: you're not just building an ecommerce website anymore. You're gradually putting together the infrastructure around it, from networking and storage to automation, analytics, and operations. That's a pretty different level of learning than just getting a storefront online.
I think there's an interesting connection between creative burnout and context switching in software development. When you're juggling frontend work, network configuration, analytics, SEO, and deployment, you're constantly rebuilding your mental model of each system. Even a quick switch back to debugging a production issue can cost more than the interruption itself. Sometimes reducing the number of active problems is more valuable than finding another productivity tool. Your post actually captures that side of building things pretty well.
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Four years of trying to be the perfect professional, dyeing the hair natural for interviews that never came, then building the shop anyway. That "be yourself vs wait for opportunity" question at the end is the real one. Which way are you leaning this week?
I am leaning in the direction that I am tired of other people's politically correct opinions. I am feeling generally angry and rebellious. Nothing malicious, just fed up with things.
At first I embraced the personality change with open arms after being run over several times by life. But now I feel like a boiling pot with a lid bolted on.
If something doesn't work, you make changes, and try again, otherwise, we are idiots. This is true, right? π or is this also a lie. Beginning to wonder. πππ
Tired of other people's opinions after getting run over is a clear signal, not a character flaw. The boiling pot with a lid bolted on is a brutal image. If something stopped working for four years, trying a different shape is the rational move. Curious what rebellious looks like in practice for you this week, neon hair, louder shop, or just saying no more often.
I should probably say no more often. πππ
Saying no more often might be the lid coming off a notch. Curious whether that's about interviews, free design work, or the people who want you smaller. Either way, it beats another year of dyeing the hair natural for rooms that never opened.
bro I checked it, I'm in India so I can't order it π, but bro designs are good like you can really open a big brand... I think it is already set to be big cool brand bro keep it up... also bro where is review section per product? like it is missing now you should add it, I can see reviews on google map but there should be per product reviews too isn't? and should be visible in that product just like amazon.
π«‘π₯π₯
Hi @akhourianmolkumar , thank you for your kind words!
When I start getting some real sales, the reviews will come. My Etsy had over 3,000 sales, and a lot of my selling has been in person, at events. The reviews will come, even if they take a year or two. I pulled in the google reviews so that people know I didn't just "appear out of nowhere." haha. I've been a blacklight artist a while. I could allow shipping other places, but it gets complicated quickly, I'm not sure that too many people will want to pay $40 for a t-shirt that is also $40. LOL. Get's expensive fast. Idk, you think I should allow shipping to countries even if I have to charge them a big shipping fee?
Pulling the plug on all the pre-existing business web-remnants and building from complete scratch is a very slow process. It's not a fast operation, and being an artist is a life long journey. I have my entire life to wait for a review and until then I will keep creating, coding, and getting into things I do not understand. π€£β
Nah for now leave foreign shipping first scale a little bit more...
Yeah I did not really want to get to terribly tangled up in all that, at least yet. I have looked into selling on amazon previously. It is possible, but would likely require the purchasing of GTINs for every product which can get expensive fast. That is a whole new level of management and mess-avoiding! XD
Bro is there any custom features available? Means if I want my own design with your signature style? If not then add it bro locally it will boost you, also manufacturing is in house or you've partnered with a third party manufacturer?
First of all, I think you should absolutely just be yourself! Life is too short to spend so much time trying to fit into some mold of what a "professional" is supposed to look like, especially when doing everything the "right" way hasn't really gotten you anywhere anyway.
And honestly, reading through everything you've been doing, I hope you realize how much you've actually accomplished. It's a lot. I think sometimes we get so caught up in what we haven't accomplished yet that we forget to give ourselves credit for everything we have.
I know none of that makes the frustration of trying to find opportunities any easier, but I really hope you don't let the job market make you question what you're capable of. It's hard enough trying to find your place in tech without feeling like you have to change your whole personality to be taken seriously.
And as someone who's had pretty much every hair color imaginable over the years (I honestly think I've tried them all lol), I fully support the colorful hair! I've never understood why things like that should matter so much. You can have pink hair, be creative, be a little different, and still know your shit. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
I really hope things start turning around for you. You've clearly put a ton of work into learning and building things, and you deserve to feel proud of that, whether or not some employer has recognized it yet. And please don't give up the things that make you happy just to fit someone else's idea of what you're supposed to be. There's nothing wrong with being yourself.
One technical detail I'd be curious about, especially given your earlier 404 and redirect issues, is how you're preserving attribution across the entire customer journey.
There's a nasty edge case with Google Ads where a redirect silently drops the
gclidparameter. The visitor still reaches the store, browses products, and might even complete a purchase, but the conversion can end up attributed incorrectly because the original click identifier never made it to the final landing page.I've seen Google explicitly document this behavior, and it's one of those problems where your traffic numbers can look perfectly healthy while your campaign reporting tells a completely different story.
I'd probably log the original landing URL, GCLID, redirect destination, and eventual order ID together, then compare that against GA4's purchase events. That gives you a much clearer picture of whether you're dealing with irrelevant traffic, broken attribution, or an actual conversion problem.
Also, I think there's something interesting about your whole experience here: you're not just building an ecommerce website anymore. You're gradually putting together the infrastructure around it, from networking and storage to automation, analytics, and operations. That's a pretty different level of learning than just getting a storefront online.
I think there's an interesting connection between creative burnout and context switching in software development. When you're juggling frontend work, network configuration, analytics, SEO, and deployment, you're constantly rebuilding your mental model of each system. Even a quick switch back to debugging a production issue can cost more than the interruption itself. Sometimes reducing the number of active problems is more valuable than finding another productivity tool. Your post actually captures that side of building things pretty well.