Bye emerson.id
Having wanted a personal domain name as the same as your name is so… (cool / awesome / lame / or ALAY) *pick one... LOL
Let me tell you a bit of context, at the junior high school you awed the computer. At the senior high school, you touch a bit of internet and HTML, daydreaming about being able to create a fully functional website. Finally, after got accepted as Computer Science undergrads and got the technical knowledge, you thought that having your own name as your personal website domain was cool. Even you can brag about it to your friend. Anyway, the universe doesn’t seem to let a kid happy. Since the desired domain name is either taken or too expensive to be owned by a broke undergrad like you.
Now, after some years of working, you got the money or the ability to pay with your own shiny credit cards. Yasss.. owned the domain. Now what?
When I know that .id become an Indonesian self-managed TLD (top level domain), I got excited to the chance of having my own name as my personal website domain. Since emerson.com is already reserved for a corporate that named after me (?), maybe having emerson.id still not bad. It still short and contains my name.
In just a week, I bought the domain and even paid around 1 million IDR (~80 USD) for it. I managed to create a crappy website and doing a hobby of trying web technology like AngularJs, Wordpress, nginx, and a bit of photoshop to design it. It was my first year role as a web engineer. So it was a cool thing to do.
The verdict of my experiment: it was ugly and unnecessary. I should have done something worth my time back then, like mastering micro-services, learning Golang, applying Ph.D., or even find a girlfriend.
So, as time went by, the domain became a burden to me. The excitement to manage both the website and the domain was no longer there. Maybe due to work or other personal priorities. Although it happens that I extended my ownership of the domain for 2 more years. Each year, I need to pay IDR 550k (~40 USD), not to mention the time that wasted on searching for my old password to log in to the dashboard. Time equal Wasted.
After my thorough pros and cons consideration. I decided to no longer give a damn about having a domain, or personal website, or even personal garbage on the internet (it easily becomes toxic and risky to post something personal nowadays). So, that’s it. I let emerson.id free. Not because I can’t pay for it, but having a less thing to manage indeed is a taste of freedom.
In my 5th years of working in Software Industry, I getting aware of having my own bullshit-meter. I need to keep telling my self: if you want things, think again! If there is no value gained from it, throw it away.
Ups… Sorry to all my abandoned self-projects. I abandoned you all because of that bullshit-meter told me so. <- Another bullshit.
Having a personal website requires high commitment and should have a real purpose and not only for the sake of coolness. Maybe in the future, having one will be beneficial to boost my personal branding. If that’s the case, it should be the only reason I bought emerson.id back.
In the meantime, I’ll spend my time to be less visible and less commitment to the internet. I.e. enjoying more time focusing on career development and doing offline networking while casually using a free platform like Medium to post my (hopefully not controversial way of) thinking.
Again, not because I can’t pay. Only to remove another responsibility of paying the premium services bill.
What do you readers thought was cool back then, but no longer interests you anymore? Tell me your story.
