10 years

On this very day, August 5, 10 years ago, I purchased my first domain name. Back then I believed that serious freelancers had to have a pseudonym because working under your real name was lame and so my first domain was not manuelmoreale.com but niuenso.com. The meaning behind that name is not important and I’m not going to discuss it here but feel free to reach out if you want to know what it means. Also if you want to guess its meaning, go for it.

The thing I think changed the most in the past 10 years, is how I view the web and my time spent on it. Back when I started working as a developer and designer, I was all in on the visual component of the job. The design aspect was predominant. But today, I don't even consider myself a designer. To be completely honest with you, I don't even know what I am, professionally speaking. Designing takes up maybe 5% of my time. But I also don't consider myself a hardcore developer either. I am actually a passable developer at best. What I'm enjoying the best is this odd in-between role, where I try to make things happen when creative people have ideas in mind.

But these past 10 years have also taught me to both love and hate what the web enables us to do. I enjoyed every single human interaction I had as a result of me being on the web and having this blog but I also started to deeply hate all the chaos that the web is bringing upon us as a species.

And that's probably the biggest shift I have experienced in the past decade: I'm getting more and more worried about things. But that is a topic for another time.

Now, what about the next 10 years? I can safely say that I have not a clear idea about what I am going to do. For sure I'll still write odd blog posts and newsletters. That's something I LOVE doing and plan to do more. But who knows, maybe I'll start an odd one person podcast, that's also something I have considered doing. Time will tell.

Anyway, enough rambling for today. As always, if you have thoughts and want to say hello, get in touch. Maybe we can talk about your last 10 years on the web. Or even the last 20 if you're an OG.