When that creative spark comes back

Building is fun again!

Until this past weekend, it had been a really long time since I built something for fun.

My entire software engineering career started with tinkering. That tinkering led me to discover Shopify, which led me to start and grow a seven-figure agency, which led me to build a venture-backed software startup… You get the idea.

By the middle of last year, I stopped building.

Just… full stop. I had no bandwidth to even consider building anything. I was still writing code for a couple of nonprofits, but beyond that, it wasn’t fun anymore.

Burnout caused me to completely lose my creative spark.

I’m a little over a month into my new job now, and I can finally say the creative spark is back. And honestly, I think I have AI to thank.

I’m still not ready to write code, but I’m no longer running in the opposite direction. What is happening, though, is that the product side of my brain is waking up. I’m finding joy in the prospect of building something and letting Jesus v0 take the wheel.

I read a lot. I also buy more books than I can possibly read. My bookshelf is full, but I still go straight to the Kindle store when I finish a book—too lazy to walk upstairs and see what I already own.

This weekend, I was finally inspired to do something about this predicament.

Using v0 (and writing zero lines of code), Supabase, and OpenAI’s API, I’m sharing with you my first side project in ages: Shelf Control. You may use Goodreads or StoryGraph to track and rate what you’re actively reading, but you may not know what you have available to read next (my TBR is filled with books I don’t actually own). Or, if you’re like me and you don’t know what to read next, a little algorithmic magic can pick something for you.

Shelf Control isn’t perfect, but I’m genuinely enjoying the act of building it, and that’s the whole point. It’s useful (for me, and maybe for you too!), but most importantly, that creative spark is back again.

And that tells me I’m healing.