For a fuller view of my writing beyond my recent posts, dive in below and peruse as much or as little as you’d like. I write about a wide range of topics from WordPress to Surrogacy to Photography to Mental Health. Don’t follow me if you want to only hear about a certain topic as I write based on what comes up for me in that moment of time. As always, thanks for reading.
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New Zealand: Day six
We started the day showing off each group’s project work that had been done over the last two days. My group was focused on making the entirety of VaultPress easier. To that end, I was able to dive into the code and tweak things to make our overall system more user friendly, more informative, and overall less cluttered. I’m excited to get these changes committed as I think they’ll solve some recurring issues we’ve had. With that said, there’s a lot left to be done and I have a lot left to learn! I found that some changes I made initially that…
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New Zealand: Day four and five
Day Four I woke up in the morning with a sore throat and knew I was in for a rough day. I had to power through though as the island of Rangitoto was much to alluring. After a brief dash for parking, it quickly occurred to me that in order to get to said island I would need to take a ferry. I can power through a cold but motion sickness is different kind of beast. Nervously, I headed into the ship only thinking that if I got this far I have to keep going. Keep in mind this is…
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New Zealand: Day three
The team is divided between two houses. There’s a larger main house where we spend most of the day and a bit of a smaller house where me and another coworker stays at night. The result is that I get to take a nice and refreshing walk in the morning to the other house to cook breakfast and start the day. Along the way there this morning, I thought about how lucky I am to simply be in this situation. Another beautiful day in New Zealand focusing on improving what we do with my incredible team… How lucky am I?!…
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New Zealand: Day One & Two
My team is having a meetup this week in New Zealand. I have been wanting to here for years so you can imagine my excitement! I was the first person to land from my team in Auckland so I had some time to reign in my excitement. It wasn’t even light out but I was buzzing with enthusiasm just being there. After the panic that is customs, I made it through in less than a minute! After that, it was a waiting game as each team member showed up. I worked. I read. I people watched. I found this cool…
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Any other place
“But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.”- James Baldwin I’m closing in on 22 and this past year’s path has been a rocky one in the best way.…
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Control & experimental groups
Here’s the scene. I’m at TEDxUNC and a research study is mentioned where the experimental group outperforms the control group by x amount. Think sociological study where the experimental group gets access to solid early childhood education, parental resources, free day care, etc. They follow the participants for a number of years and find that having access to these resources early on, in particular a solid education, results in HUGE benefits in terms of health, income, happiness, success, etc. Everyone in the audience marvels at the impact this has but what about the control group?! The one whose “terrible outcomes” are being…
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San Diego Zoo
I was lucky enough to get a free ticket to go here but, after going, I would definitely pay to go back. Here are a select few images (believe it or not I took probably 100+ pictures and didn’t even get through the whole zoo):
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Balboa Park
I thought San Diego was beautiful before I set foot in Balboa Park so you can imagine my surprise at how lovely everything was there. If you have a chance, go! I didn’t get to explore as much as I wanted to but am headed back there today to go to the Museum of Man which sounds simply awesome. Needless to say, I’m already trying to plan a trip to come back here.
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San Diego
I’ve been in San Diego for the past couple of days and have loved it. It reminds me of the perfect blend of FL and NC. I was fortunate enough to explore Ramona to hang with some sheep and some adorable dogs. More recently, I’ve been staying at an unbelievable hotel right in downtown. I meandered through the city some today and loved how much calmer everything was compared to San Francisco. Beyond that, I can physically feel a different pace of life that puts me to ease (& to sleep). Can’t think of a better place to detox from…
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Are you sure you want to delete this for forever?
About 6 months ago I deactivated my Facebook and deleted Instagram from my phone. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself around to deleting Instagram. One day I had the courage to finally do it but when I started going through the process I found out that deleting my instagram meant 1) I would lose my username and 2) I would lose all of my pictures. I was frantic. Not all of my images! Not all of my memories! I felt like by hitting “confirm” I would be deleting these same moments I held so dear. To make matters worse, I forgot…
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Altruism
Helping people is something that’s just a part of who I am. I guess it works well seeing as I’m a happiness engineer by day. In large part, I’ve learned to love to help because I personally have been helped by so many in my life to get where I am today. Whether it’s the stranger giving me directions or family members helping pay for college, I’m the first to say I’m only here because I was helped and it’s the least I can do to pay it forward. However, I started reading a book recently where the author went…
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Loyal to myself
“Just because I liked something at one point in time doesn’t mean I’ll always like it, or that I have to go on liking it at all points in time as an unthinking act of loyalty to who I am as a person, based solely on who I was as a person. To be loyal to myself is to allow myself to grow and change, and challenge who I am and what I think. The only thing I am for sure is unsure, and this means I’m growing, and not stagnant or shrinking.” ― Jarod Kintz I stumbled on this…
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A love letter to Lyft
This time last year almost to the date, I had my first interview with Lyft: I remember how nervous I was when I first jumped on the call and how calm I felt the second I heard the friendly voice on the other end of the phone. What first drew me to Lyft as an employer is the same thing that has kept me as a fan: they are true community builders. Throughout the entire interview process, it was obvious they paid attention to who I was rather than just trying to ask bland questions gathered from what little information can…
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The Importance of Listening
I’ve noticed an odd trend amongst people. If someone is talking about something they don’t know about or that feels “over their head”, they disengage almost immediately. “mhm”. Nod and smile. Their phone screens suddenly become more interesting than listening to something they don’t know anything about. The past 2 years I’ve worked on developer heavy teams and know that my skill level today is in large part due to simply listening to conversations. Exposure to new ideas and even simply new words is invaluable. I remember the first time I overheard two developers at UNC talking about the previously mysterious setup…
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Navigating & Championing Remote Work
The above picture is of me working while sitting with my dog, Hamlet, back home in Winter Park, FL on week two of my three week stay over the holidays. The fact that I can even write that sentence is entirely due to the fact that I work remotely. With that said, remote work requires a ton of navigating as our current society is really not built for this kind of work. More than anything, the problems and the perks revolve around social norms. Most probably view remote work as answering late night emails and phone calls long after they’ve called…
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Thoughts on perfect hedges, laws, and dirt roads.
I was pulling into Walgreens yesterday when it hit me how perfectly aligned everything was and how many pre-destined turns I made to get there. From the invention of the turn signal to the perfectly spaced lines signaling a parking spot, I realized we’re living in a perfectionist world in many ways. I took a lot of sociology classes in college and learning about social norms proved to be more fascinating to me than laws. After all, laws seem to be just social norms that have been accepted by enough people to be made permanent. What and who determines whether a social norm actually should…
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Why I’m tracking my vacation time
I’ve found that one of my biggest assets as a person and as an employee is that I know myself really well.. my weaknesses, my strengths, things I have a hard time remembering, how long it takes me to do something, capitalizing on days when I have more energy than others, etc. I’m guessing it’s my sports background that’s helped me the most with understanding this and practicing how to adapt based on how my body and mind feels that day. With the start of every new year, I tend to fall into a habit of planning out the year in terms of…
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2015: the year of learning
My senior year of college I walked into a library to try to find a book on the early history of the mental health movement. I was writing a paper for an amazing course I took on social movements and was absolutely stuck trying to figure out how I could write something novel for this final paper. A routine moment in my college career (going to the library) turned into a very humbling experience. Here’s why: Go inside a library and look around. Pick up a book and set a timer for 15 minutes. See how far you get in the book.…
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Call of a potential meaning.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” ― Viktor E. Frankl I’m such a sucker for good quotes especially from Viktor Frankl. I could quote him all day. I recently rediscovered this quote above and realized that this is so incredibly true for me. I’m someone who loves to struggle and who avoids a “tension less state” at all costs. I…
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Breaking exercise out of its box
I’ve always been an athlete but there’s a part of me that hates failing even though repeatedly failing is what ultimately made me successful. I’ve never done a handstand before and yesterday I learned how! Something clicked when this happened and I was able to do it with ease. Afterward, I felt more in tune with my body than I think I ever have before. When I first was introduced to rugby, I became obsessed. I couldn’t get enough of trying to perfect each movement. Repetition consumed me. It was the first time I had experienced that all consuming feeling…
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How my job shapes my lifestyle: a reflection
“We buy stuff to cheer ourselves up, to keep up with the Joneses, to fulfill our childhood vision of what our adulthood would be like, to broadcast our status to the world, and for a lot of other psychological reasons that have very little to do with how useful the product really is. How much stuff is in your basement or garage that you haven’t used in the past year?” This quote stuck with me after I read it. It’s a quote from an article written by David Cain titled, “Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The…
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Sunday adventure
On Sunday, I decided it was time to discover the bison in Golden Gate park. What started as a quest to find bison, turned into a beautiful adventure filled (literally) with puppies and awesome coffee.
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Why I write letters
It takes me all of a minute to shoot a text to someone. I timed myself and found it actually takes me less than a minute unless I’m in a very intense conversation which is known to happen from time to time. It takes me 30 minutes or so to write a letter. Operating under the assumption that time is all we have, writing a letter is a much deeper and more genuine investment in staying in touch with someone. It’s also impractical if, let’s say, I write a letter to my roommate to tell them I’m going to buy…
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My dog > your dog
Kidding… He really is so cute though.
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If I were born ___ years ago
Have you ever been asked “What era do you wish you had lived in”? Sometimes I like to play this game where I imagine what it would have been like if I had grown up in another day and age. My mind jumps to Roman times thanks to my 6 years of studying Latin and my love for the awesome albeit unrealistic movie, The Gladiator. I’m then thrown into thinking that the Renaissance would be a better choice. Reality quickly sets in and I laugh. I grew up with terrible speech impediments. I couldn’t say R’s, S’, Th, L (lion= wion), ending g’s (going=goin), hard…
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I’m 16 again
Coming home is a strange jump back into time for me. My room looks the same along with the entirety of Winter Park ( + or – some new roads or a new house). I don’t buy new clothes very often so most of what I wear is the same. This trip home has been an especially big jump back in time for some reason. Maybe it’s because I have graduated college and now feel a heightened level of nostalgia for the past. Whatever the case is, I woke up today and decided to lean into this nostalgia. I threw on soccer shorts and…
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Life without a phone
My phone is broken. It won’t charge at all and I have given up trying to make it charge since Saturday. Yes, I’ve tried multiple outlets and multiple chargers. Nothing works. All is not lost though 🙂 I spend most my day on my computer so not having my phone is a blessing because it is one less screen to look at and check. I also can’t get pings, notifications, emails, alerts, etc. The benefits are many.. No notifications of any sort can distract me while I am away from my computer. I am less distracted generally. I don’t have to…
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I broke up with my phone and my social media persona
We’re done. I can’t take it anymore. Kidding aside, I have deleted every app on my phone that could possibly distract me or keep me using it for longer than an hour or two/day. I still have Slack, WordPress, and Inbox on there but mostly because I need that for communicating for my job. With that said, I have been considering deleting Slack and Inbox as I have found myself almost compulsively checking my email for the next marketer email like I used to check Facebook for likes, comments, and messages. As a result, I only have Google Maps, Mint, Inbox,…
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M1 Summit
I was lucky enough to be able to attend the San Francisco M1 Summit (Mobile First). One of my coworkers gave me the tickets and I jumped at the opportunity to go after seeing the lineup of people there. I was even more curious to go after reading a couple of books that digs into technological solutionism and centrism. my biggest takeaway is that I’m not sure if our attention is being fought for nowadays or if it is just being taken from us. Otherwise, these were my other big takeaway points: Mobile is virtual oxygen and the operating system…
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Reflections on San Francisco
I’ve been living in San Francisco for just over five months now. In that time, a ton and a half has happened. I’ve moved from NC to CA. I graduated college. I left a job, started a new job at a startup, left the job at the startup, and started my new job at a8c. I went through the intense yet fun trial process while working full time. My grandfather died. I traveled to Golden, Denver, and Boulder, CO. I traveled to Utah. I went home to Winter Park. I had my first taste of sushi (really like eel sushi for…
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