🌀 FREELANCE ARC - ses-journal!

building something mid-chaotic for a reason i can’t fully explain

📍 so here’s what’s happening

i randomly decided to take on this project called ses-journal — basically an academic journal site i’m rebuilding from the ground up using:

nextjs, tailwind, shadcn, firebase, and for the first time, resend.

this whole thing is a direct replacement for their current wordpress setup, which (no offense) is kind of hanging on by a thread. especially for something meant to archive academic papers... not exactly what wordpress was born for.

🧩 the current setup is a mess

my girlfriend was assigned one basic task:

“add a download counter to every article.”

sounds easy. it wasn’t. here’s the actual process:

• install a plugin
• create a download page for every single file
• manually update the article’s page to link to that
• add shortcode to display the download count

and since the site doesn’t even use a database for displaying articles (everything’s typed in manually), she’d have to go through every article since 2013. like... one by one.

she spent 4 hours updating just one issue — and there are like 20 to 30 issues total.

genuinely cursed.

🚶‍♂️so i stepped in (reluctantly but also willingly)

i couldn’t really watch that go on so i just said screw it,

i’ll try to fix the whole thing myself. for free.

because i’m weird like that. and also maybe a little too free right now.

🧠 the tech hit back

i’ve worked with nextjs before, sure. but building something that’s actually used by people — with actual features and scaling in mind — is a different kind of pressure.

tutorial-free mode is brutal.

api routes? weirdly hard.

system design? existential.

firebase rules? painful.

resend config? idk man.

i’m realizing i’ve been cruising off vibe coding for a while. and the moment vibes aren’t enough... i start feeling like i don’t actually know what i’m doing.

🤖 the ai dilemma

ngl, the fact that a lot of this can be done through a couple of AI prompts made me feel useless for a bit.

like… is everything i know now just promptable?

but also — no.

because when things break (and they do), it’s the fundamentals that let me fix stuff. people who don’t understand the underlying logic are stuck when AI spits out something broken.

so yeah, knowing how it all works still matters.

📚 where i’m at now

i’m still figuring things out.

still googling dumb stuff.

still struggling with setups that should be “simple.”

but i think this is the only way it really sticks.

get lost. get stuck. figure it out. repeat.

i’m pairing this chaos with some self-study too — going back to actual basics just so i don’t keep feeling like an NPC in my own project.

📎 tl;dr

• girlfriend stuck in wordpress hell
• i volunteered to build a modern version of the site
• realized i know just enough to get overwhelmed
• ai helps, but fundamentals still win
• currently trying to not lose my mind

wish me luck out there 🫡