What I’m Building Right Now: September 2026

I have reached the point where answering “What are you working on?” requires more than one sentence.

That is partly because several projects that used to exist as notes, old websites or ideas I kept coming back to are now becoming real products at the same time. It is also because my day job, my personal site and the media properties I am building all overlap in ways that make the work feel connected even when the subjects are completely different.

So I am starting a recurring series here: What I’m Building Right Now.

This is not going to be a dump of every internal detail, private workflow or business plan. I want to document what I am creating, what has changed and what I am learning without publishing the entire operational playbook behind it.

With that boundary in place, here is the September 2026 version.

MelvinMaya.com is finally becoming the home base again

This website has existed in different forms for years, but I wanted the current version to do more than function as an online business card.

MelvinMaya.com is becoming the place where the different parts of my work connect: marketing, photography, video, AI, websites, travel, food, music and the projects I am building around those interests.

A big part of the recent work has been organizing years of existing content so it is useful again. Old videos and stories are much more valuable when they can be searched, connected and discovered instead of disappearing into the bottom of a social feed.

The blog is part of that reset too. I want to write more about what I am actually building and learning rather than filling the site with generic “marketing tips” that could have been written by anybody.

That is why the first few posts here cover why I am building a network of niche media brands, what AI has changed about the way I work and why I am creating things I own while continuing my marketing career.

Coffee X Media has become the connective tissue

Coffee X Media is the larger media umbrella behind a growing number of the properties I am building.

The simplest public explanation is that I am creating focused destinations around subjects I already care about and content I already know how to make. Some are mature ideas I have carried for years. Others are much newer. The common thread is that each one needs a real reason to exist instead of being another generic website with a different logo.

Paranormal Unknown is one of the projects getting a lot of attention right now. It is being rebuilt around paranormal stories, videos, creators and locations in a way that is much more useful than its older form.

Houston Food Fanatics is another active build. That one is much more local and much more personal because Houston food has been part of my content for years. The goal is for it to feel like a place where somebody can start with one restaurant or video and keep discovering more of the city from there.

There are other properties in various stages, but I would rather talk about them when there is something meaningful to show than announce every domain I happen to own.

I am using AI as part of the build, not as the whole build

AI is involved in almost everything I am doing right now, but probably not in the way people imagine when they hear “AI-built websites.”

I am using it to help research, organize, troubleshoot, write and iterate. More importantly, it has expanded the technical range of what I can build beyond the WordPress work I have done for more than 15 years.

That means I can work much more directly with modern frameworks, databases, APIs and custom application logic while still bringing the perspective I developed from years of building actual websites for actual users.

The result is not less work. In some ways it creates more possibilities to manage. The advantage is that ideas that once would have stopped at “I would need a completely different development path for that” can now become functioning products.

Beets n Bangers somehow became an actual released music project

This is still the item on the list that makes me laugh a little.

The Beets side of Beets n Bangers is now out. The project is built around two artists, Beets and Bangers, and the Bangers side will eventually offer a different take on the same collection of songs.

I wrote the longer version in I Released an Album. That Was Definitely Not on My 2026 Bingo Card.

What I like about the project is that it has forced me to work in a creative space that does not feel identical to my normal marketing or website work. The visual identity is louder. The creative rules are different. I get to be a beginner in parts of the process again.

That is good for me.

My work at Trava Health and 10Rx is still a major part of the picture

While all of this is happening, I am also Director of Marketing for Trava Health and 10Rx.

That role is not a side note. It is a major part of what I do every day and one of the reasons I keep thinking so deeply about performance, content, funnels, search, advertising and how people actually move from interest to action.

My own projects give me room to experiment and build long-term assets. My professional role keeps me grounded in real business outcomes and real accountability. I like having both.

The overlap makes each side stronger without requiring them to become the same thing.

The biggest theme right now is turning old ideas into working things

If I had to describe September in one sentence, that would probably be it.

A surprising amount of what I am building is not brand-new. Some ideas have been sitting around for years. Some existed as older versions that never became what I wanted them to be. Some were projects I understood conceptually but could not justify building at the scale I imagined at the time.

The tools have changed. My experience has changed. The amount of source material I have accumulated has changed.

So I am revisiting a lot of those ideas with a much higher standard: if I build it now, it needs to be useful, distinct and worth maintaining.

That also means I am trying to get better about finishing things. A project that is 95 percent complete for six months is still not finished. I have more than enough ideas. What matters is getting the right ones over the line.

I want this series to become a record of the process

Part of the reason I am writing these updates is selfish. I think it will be interesting to look back six months or a year from now and see which projects became important, which changed direction and which ideas quietly disappeared.

I also think there is more value in documenting the reality of building than pretending everything appears fully formed.

Some weeks will be launches. Some will be repairs. Some will probably be me discovering that an idea was much harder than I expected.

I will share the useful parts.

I will keep the private business mechanics private.

And when the next round of projects moves far enough to be worth talking about, I will write another one of these.

For now, September has plenty on the board.