My Ugly Little Wooden Truck
The idea of a “good” website nowadays seems to be drifting more and more toward the cool, flashy, and the technically impressive.
Parallax scrolling, hover states, micro interactions, sticky navigation, responsive layouts, dynamic content, smooth scroll, scroll-triggered animations, interactive components, and all sorts of terms whose meanings I only understand in the most polite, vaguely nodding sort of way.
And of course, there's nothing wrong with any of that. Everything has its function, depending on the need and the message a site is meant to carry.
I do believe that the overall design of a website says something about its owner, whether it belongs to an individual or an institution. Designers know this very well. Even a choice of color tone or font can carry a message.
That was what I had in mind when I started building my little coaching home on the internet.
I decided to keep it very simple.
Almost plain. Lots of empty spaces. Very few effects or ornaments. Not too many elements competing for attention at the same time.
Not because I do not appreciate beautifully complex, sophisticated design. I do. But from the beginning, I felt that my site needed to carry the same spirit as the creativity coaching philosophy I believe in.
I believe creativity does not always arrive in grand, polished, visually dazzling form.
Sometimes it begins with something small. Something limited. Something that may not look particularly impressive from the outside, but carries a long story within it.
Maybe that's why I added the figure of a chubby little boy to the website.
I first drew him on the back of a seminar handout, somewhere between boredom and mild suffering. I imagined him not merely as a cute character, but as someone born from a memory of childhood, from a time when we were not yet so busy judging ourselves.
It was a time when almost anything could become something else. A refrigerator box could become a house. A piece of cloth, Superman’s cape. A chair, a ship. An empty field, an entire world of adventure.
I had that kind of experience as a child.
When I was little, my father once helped me build a toy truck out of wood, his answer to my constant whining for him to buy me one. It was painted light green. Its shape was far from perfect. Compared with other toy trucks that were neater and looked much more like actual trucks, this wooden truck looked, frankly, rather ugly. Sorry, dad..
I pulled it to the field where we used to play, with my head down. At first, anyway. (I put a link to the story of that chubby little boy at the end of this article.)
That wooden truck was not just an object. It was one of my first experiences of making something with my own hands. Of imagining something, trying to bring it into being, and then taking it out into the world with all its imperfections intact.
And maybe, in many ways, this website is another version of that truck.
“This is my ugly little wooden truck.”
This site is the reincarnation of that imperfect wooden toy I once brought to the field to play with friends.
It is an invitation to walk together, not with me as a trainer, consultant, or motivator, but as a conversation partner in the process of making and becoming. A companion for untangling thoughts, doubts, and possibilities that may not yet have had the chance to appear.
Most definitely not to point to the one correct road. Just to walk alongside you until the road that once felt blurry begins, little by little, to come into view.
Walk with me?
Let’s make a plan to start from my little home at en.suarane.id.
:)
— Southern Tangerang, July 1st, 2026
PS. The story of that chubby little boy can be read here.
.