People sometimes mistake confidence for arrogance, or authority for delusion. I understand why. When someone writes with conviction, especially about their own work, it can sound as though they believe they’ve got it all figured out — as though they woke up one morning knowing exactly what to do. The truth is the opposite. Everything I know about building and running Ottawa Valley Creations was learned the hard way, through errors, experiments, and hours of undoing my own assumptions. This isn’t a confession so much as a record: proof that learning in public, even by mistake, was worth it.
When I first started OVC, I was terrified of the idea of running my own website. I’d heard too many horror stories about broken databases, DNS confusion, and “needing to know code.” I thought hosting my own domain meant locking myself into a permanent state of tech anxiety. So I did what most first-timers do — I let a third-party platform hold my hand. Squarespace seemed safe. It offered templates, analytics, and an illusion of professionalism. But it also came with chains. I didn’t realize until much later that the convenience was the problem: it made me dependent on a system that didn’t belong to me. I learned to fear the backend instead of understanding it. When I finally migrated to shared hosting, I realized the monster I’d been running from was really just a control panel with buttons and tooltips. Nothing mystical. Nothing to fear.
Learning to Build from the Backend Out
If I’d known how simple the fundamentals were — that you can install WordPress in minutes, tweak PHP safely, or redirect domains without summoning digital catastrophe — I would have started here from the beginning. Shared hosting isn’t glamorous, but it’s sturdy and honest. You pay for what you use, you learn as you go, and you get to keep your autonomy. Having AI as a research companion made the process even less intimidating: it turned what could have been endless hours of searching through forum posts into direct, contextual answers. I still had to understand what I was doing, but I wasn’t trapped in a maze of jargon anymore. Knowledge became a tool instead of a gate.
When Integration Becomes Interference
I also learned — the hard way — that “all-in-one” plugins like Jetpack are not your friend on shared hosting. Jetpack promises convenience and security, but in practice it’s like a well-meaning roommate who insists on “helping” while leaving every cupboard open. It duplicates services your host already provides, slows down performance, and inserts itself into processes that were working fine before. I kept it for too long because I thought I needed it. I didn’t. Once I removed it, the site became lighter, faster, calmer. I could finally see where things began and ended, which plugin handled what, and how to troubleshoot without tripping over invisible redundancies. The real lesson was less technical and more personal: don’t mistake integration for improvement. Sometimes, simplicity is the most sophisticated system you can run.
The Social Media Sinkhole
Then there was social media — the most expensive free tool I ever used. For years I believed I needed a presence there. I thought it would be the key to discovery, the bridge between my work and the wider world. What it really did was devour time and attention. Posts that took hours to craft vanished into the feed in seconds. Algorithms rewrote my tone, rewarding what was reactive instead of what was sincere. I mistook visibility for growth and noise for connection. Leaving social media didn’t make me disappear; it made me visible again, on my own terms. The quiet of my website, my essays, my gallery — that’s where genuine discovery happens now. People who arrive here are looking for something, not just scrolling past it.
“I thought being seen was the same as being found. I was wrong. Being seen online means being consumed; being found means being remembered.”
There Was Never a ‘Right’ Way
The longer I work on OVC, the more I see that there was never a “right” way to do this — only the way I had to go through to learn. Every mistake taught me a skill or gave me clarity that shortcuts would’ve stolen. If I had played it safe, I wouldn’t know how to migrate a domain, optimize load speed, set up shipping logic, or write a proper privacy disclaimer. More importantly, I wouldn’t have the quiet assurance that I can rebuild from scratch if I ever have to. There’s a kind of peace in knowing you’ve done things the difficult way and survived it.
The Lessons That Stick
So yes — the hard way was still the right way. It stripped away the illusion of ease and left me with something better: competence. Not performative expertise, not fake confidence — just the grounded understanding that comes from getting it wrong and fixing it yourself. OVC isn’t perfect, but it’s real. Every broken link, every misconfigured plugin, every dead-end experiment is part of its foundation. I used to think authority meant having answers; now I know it means having scars.