The Exhaustion of Building “Fire in 15”

For the past three weeks, my life has been consumed by FIRE—not the kind that burns, but the kind that fuels a dream of financial independence. Two weeks of writing, refining, and structuring content to make sure it resonates. One full week of building a website, tweaking layouts, organizing sections, fixing bugs, and making sure everything actually makes sense.

And now? I’m exhausted.

The Reality of Creating FIRE Content

When I started this project, I thought, “How hard can it be?” The ideas were already in my head. I just needed to put them on paper (or, more accurately, on a screen). But here’s what they don’t tell you:

• Writing about FIRE isn’t just about numbers—it’s about making it relatable.
• Every word needs to feel genuine, not like some generic financial advice you’d find on a clickbait blog.
• Structuring content so it flows well isn’t as simple as listing out steps. You have to tell a story.
• The website itself? That’s a whole different beast. I am a backend developer! Between Tailwind styling, DaisyUI quirks, and fine-tuning the UI, I lost count of how many times I broke something and had to fix it.

The Emotional Rollercoaster

Week 1: Writing Content

• At first, I was excited. Every sentence felt like progress.

• But as the days passed, I realized that explaining FIRE well is hard.
• I didn’t want to just throw numbers at people—I wanted them to see what FIRE could look like in their lives. That meant rewriting. A lot.

Week 2: More Writing, More Refining

By the second week, I hit a wall.

• How do I keep things engaging?
• How do I make sure I’m not repeating myself?
• Should I add more personal experiences? Honestly though, I’m still not sure I’ve quite struck the right balance in al of the Methodology Pages. I’m sure I will go over them again. I get a feeling that I started to get ‘lazy’.

Week 3: Building the Website

🛠 Tech Stack

While writing the content was a challenge, building the actual website came with its own set of decisions. I wanted something fast, flexible, and easy to maintain, while also being simple enough to deploy without managing a complex backend.

Tech	Purpose
Astro	Static site generation
TailwindCSS	Styling framework
DaisyUI	Pre-built UI components
Firebase Hosting	Deployment and hosting
GitHub Actions	Automated deployments

Why This Stack?

• Astro made sense because it allows for fast static site generation while still giving me the flexibility to use interactive components where needed.
• TailwindCSS and DaisyUI together made styling easy and maintainable. With Tailwind’s utility-first approach and DaisyUI’s prebuilt components, I didn’t have to write tons of custom CSS. The Frontend developers also use this at work, so it felt worth learning, haha.
• Firebase Hosting Funnily enough, I used this in college, and really really liked that it had Fire in the name. It’s also free, so that’s nice!

The goal was to spend more time focusing on content rather than tech struggles, and this stack helped me achieve that.

Now that it’s done, I can say: it works well, and I’d absolutely use this stack again.

The Final Stretch

Now that the website is up, I should feel accomplished. And I do. But I’m also drained. So, if you’re reading this and thinking about starting your own blog, just know this:

• It will take longer than you think.
• You will rewrite things more times than you want to.
• You will want to quit at least once.

But in the end? You’ll be proud of what you built.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a well-earned break—preferably with coffee and zero screens. 🔥