This urge has been with me forever - the constant need to strip things down.

Here's how it goes: I'll be working on my website, getting excited about adding something fancy, then suddenly hitting this boiling point where I look at it all and think, "Nah, I don't need any of this." This has happened countless times. I'll start adding what I think are cool features and playing with designs, but by the end of the day, I'm obsessing over performance metrics.

This is totally a me thing. When I'm collaborating with others, I keep these urges to myself. Not everyone gets this obsession with optimization, and that's fine. Some developers out there optimize their work in production far better than I can imagine - and they're in a different league entirely.

The ironic part? I like JavaScript.

I love creating interactive, fun experiences. My personal site should be a playground for experiments and creativity. And it is, sometimes. But there's always this voice in the back of my head pushing me to reduce, reduce, reduce.

I'm not trying to preach minimalism here.

Honestly, I don't even know much about minimalism as a philosophy or design approach. I haven't read the books or studied the principles. This is just something I've picked up from various blogs and lifestyles I've observed over the years.

It's a weird contradiction I've learned to live with - wanting to create rich, interactive experiences while simultaneously feeling this pull toward absolute simplicity.