Either I have been hanging around more than my fair share of web designers or it just seems to me that everyone I'm meeting is in the midst of redesigning their own layout. Which is just as well too because at the end of it, despite the lack of more professional feedback, I managed to pick up a lot of things I needed to know.

I just wish I bothered to check out Karmatosed's Blog, the coconut themed "Diary of a Website" earlier in the design. It would have took saved me a hell lot of time in designing my layout. Not that it would have made it easier, it's just that it would have saved the frustration of having to redo the colours again and again because I couldn't find the right colour scheme.

But it's not to be said that I was entirely on my own in this. Many of you helped. Lelia who gave me the inspiration for a wider theme and the first of many colour schemes. Kristin whom I think I scared off and pretty much annoyed since I was asking for her help one too many times. "Just one more look Kristin, just one more!" And Ivette who thankfully saved a tutorial on how to create the horizontal sidebar I wanted.

The rest of it however was marked with sheer frustration, proving that just because you know a little XHTML, CSS and PHP, it does not make you a web designer. It just makes you someone who knows more than the average MySpace user which is still a lot in most cases.

It is however true what they say about building something of your own. Starting it is always the hardest part. But as you go along, as you begin to wizen up and learn the time saving shortcuts, you realize that the design itself has a life of its own and as you near the end of your finished product, somewhere along the line, it gets easier and you find yourself never wanting to finish it because the "fun" would be over.

And indeed the fun is over for me because I have finished it. I have finished a design that I like and if all the closed feedbacks were right, has no catastrophic bugs whatsoever. For the first time, I have created something not from the ground up, but as close to it as possible and you know what? I'm proud of what I've done.

The hardest thing now is the fact that I have to wait another 2 weeks before the 20th before I can finally upgrade this blog and slot in the finished layout. That would not be easy because I really feel like showing off what I did right about now and waiting for the opportune moment really tests the limits of my patience. I really got to find something to take my mind off things for the next 2 weeks.

This is definitely a worse temptation than sex.