“What's happening today? Are we partying?”
Back in 2024, my wife and I wanted to answer our children's questions. The only way they knew if it was a solemnity (party days in our household), a family member's birthday, or some other noteworthy event was by asking us. So we thought: “We should have a calendar with a clear visual system that lets them figure it out at a glance.”
Obviously I immediately began overengineering a solution. What we needed was a technology where I could enter our events once, and it would combine that information with the liturgical calendar and let us print off a standard 8.5x11 sheet of paper at the library that we could tape to our kitchen wall at knee height. So that's exactly what I did.
I built it and each month I'd fire up the tool on my computer and print off the next month's calendar. My wife would give me feedback on what was working and what wasn't. Within a few months we arrived at a place we were happy with... until I got annoyed.
I was tired of being the bottleneck for my wife printing things off. The only way she could get the next month's calendar was to ask me to create it for her.
Enter the "Overengineering Thought Cycle"
Obviously, I need to publish this app to my personal website, then she can just go there and do it herself.
Obviously, if I’m going to publish it online, I should share it with my sisters, which means I need to make it easy for anyone to enter their own data.
Obviously, if I’m allowing the creation of custom calendars I should just build something that could do yearly & academic planners too.
Obviously, if anyone can design a custom planner we should offer to manufacture a premium version & ship it to their door.
Obviously, I then spent the better part of a year building the obvious, and Theological was born.