Excerpt: It's been over a year since my last update. Instead of pretending the gap didn't happen, I'm doing what any product team does after a long sprint: running a retrospective.

Well, well, well. Look who's back. 👋🏽

If you've been following along, you might remember I already wrote a "Back from a Break" post in April 2025. So yes, this is officially my second comeback. At this point, my blog has more re-entrances than a baraat walking back for the forgotten ring.

My last post was in August 2025, when AI helped me go from Figma dreams to a live site. Then life did its thing again: I had my second baby! Shaadi Simplified didn't go anywhere, and neither did I.

Instead of jumping straight back in, I'm doing what any product team does after a long sprint: a retrospective.

🔁 Why a Retro?

In product teams, a retro is where you look back honestly before moving forward. What worked? What didn't? What will we change? It isn't about blame. It's about learning so the next sprint goes better.

So I ran one on my blog and my app.

💚 What Went Well

Building in public worked. Sharing personas, MVP decisions, and bugs mid-build kept me accountable and gave me a record of every decision.
The MVP list kept me focused. Marie Kondo-ing my feature list in April was one of the best decisions I made.
AI changed my workflow. Going from Figma → VS Code → GitHub → a live site taught me more about how products actually get built than years of handoffs.
Cultural research added real depth. Moments like realizing I'd forgotten ritual food made the product richer and more honest.

🔴 What Didn't Go Well

I promised weekly and delivered… sometimes. My very first post promised a weekly series. The cadence slipped, and once it slipped, it was hard to restart.
I waited until things felt "post-worthy." I held back updates because the work felt too small or too messy. Ironic, since my favorite post was the one full of bugs.
No system, just motivation. Every post started from a blank page. Motivation is a great spark but a terrible engine.

🔄 What I'll Change

As a designer, I'd never blame a user for abandoning a clunky flow. So I redesigned the flow instead:

A fixed cadence: New posts every Thursday. Same day, every week, no negotiating with myself.
A repeatable template: Every post answers five questions: What did I work on? Why does it matter? What was the process? What did I learn? What's next?
Progress over polish: If it moved forward, it counts. Small updates are still updates.

📝 Revisiting the MVP

Back in April, I defined five MVP features. Here's where they stand after a year away:

📝 Wedding Checklist [Not started]
💰 Budget Tool [Built]
🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Guest List [In progress]
📅 Itinerary + Notes [Not started]

🗓️ Up Next

Here's what's coming on Thursdays:

A fresh-eyes heuristic review of my own site. I'll audit it as if I've never seen it before.
Fixing the bugs I flagged in August: breakpoints, missing ARIA labels, and empty/loading states.

Thanks for sticking around, whether you've been here since the personas post or you're brand new. Just like a wedding, the best products aren't built in a day. They're built one ritual, one sprint, and one Thursday at a time. 💍

Have you ever come back to a project after a long break? What was the first thing you noticed with fresh eyes? Drop it in the comments. I'd love to hear. 😊