Before writing a single line of code, I thought about what I wanted Hayven to feel like — the structure, the vibe, what anyone who landed on the site would get from it immediately. Technically the first thing I built was the navbar. Even the icons came from De-Great, someone I look up to.
"I wanted anyone who visited to understand off the jump who Kevin is."
After that came the most important part — the information about myself. What this site was about. My journey. I wanted anyone who visited to understand off the jump who Kevin is.
Then came the JavaScript. The routing broke me more than once. There was a moment I genuinely didn't want to touch the code ever again — when I accidentally wiped about 500 lines of code and had to rewrite everything from scratch with no backup.
I did it anyway. And everything you see on Hayven now didn't come at once. Most features came later, bit by bit. That's the part nobody sees — the rebuilding and the quiet decision to keep going.