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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Chronic Comrades Chronicles Volume 1
For the last 3-4 months, I’ve convened a group of loves ones together to talk about chronic conditions. We jokingly call our group chat “Chronic Comrades” and, after today’s call, I thought it would be meaningful to lightly document some notes, partially so we can collectively remember and partially to bring others with us. The format is fairly simple: we talk for ~2 hours, taking turns sharing updates from the last month and weaving in and out of the impacts of chronic conditions. With that in mind, here are some quick notes from today’s hang: We ended on a quote…
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Mental health resources after 2024 US Election
In light of the election results, I wanted to share some resources for folks, in particular because I’ve started seeing the 988 number thrown around. I won’t get too deeply into the inner workings of 988 but, at a high level, it’s a number you can call that connects you with local hotlines. In order to be on the list for referral for 988, the local hotline must have an imminent risk policy aka if they believe you are at risk of harming yourself or others, police will be called. I wish they would simply inform you of that when…
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15 minutes
December 9th, 2023 was the last time I played soccer. Since COVID, when I no longer could play with others for a long stretch, I’ve often had the same conversation before going to play about how thankful I am that I get to go out there, how quickly it could all change, and how I still want to lace up my cleats. Usually, I’d play for 2-2.5 hours but I dipped out early after 90 minutes when I felt how tight my calves were. Megan Rapinoe had just ripped her achilles and I wasn’t in the business of getting (another)…
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New location for the 6.7 Source of Truth
Breaking from tradition is my favorite past time and this WordPress 6.7 release created a great opportunity to do so once more. To help reach more folks and offer a more logical location, I’ve moved the Source of Truth for WordPress 6.7 to the Gutenberg Times site! Birgit was kind enough to offer it to me as an option and, in trying to bring more folks into this work, I think this is a great next step for it. For WordPress 6.8 (timeline TBD), I will be on sabbatical and a crew of lovely humans is going to take that…
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Some notes from Uniting WordPress YouTubers dinner @ WCUS 2024
In the excitement of meeting each other and catching up, I’m afraid to admit that, beyond my initial notes, I didn’t get many notes in turn from others. If you are reading this and were there, comment below with your notes! Attendees For anyone interested in seeing photos, here’s a dedicated post where I shared some, minus the disposable camera photos that I’ll eventually get developed! Notes for next time For next time, I think we should consider a more open venue, rather than a narrower space, to help with intermingling and perhaps requiring name badges/do introductions to also help…
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Montana magic and memories
After spending a summer slowly desensitizing myself to sleeping outside, I put my growing comfort to the test with a camping trip in Montana. We went just to the edge of town to the Rattlesnake (what a name!) and only three miles in to accommodate various ailments, mine included. As we openly joked about bears soon after arriving and settling in, we heard some ruffling in the forest nearby almost right on time. A likely elk or deer never showed itself but it did manage to almost send me into a spiral. My fear of bears feels ancestral, like some…
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A few photos from Uniting WordPress YouTubers dinner @ WCUS 2024
I shared this in the email to those who attended and mean it so I am sharing it with you all here: Thank you all for coming tonight. Time is a big gift to offer someone and I don’t take it lightly when asking folks to join something like this. As you could probably tell, I was and am intensely excited about coming together and can’t wait to see how this space we’re creating continues to evolve. I love thinking about how we might look back on these early gathering points months or years from now. If you want to be in future…
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wooden knife
In the last two years, I have built up a supply of throwaway pieces of wood from a wood carving instructor in North Carolina who kindly lets me raid his trash each year when I see him. My dad then ships me the wood scraps, usually surrounded by candy and snacks, from Florida to Washington. With each piece I pick up, I can feel why it was thrown away and love the challenge to make something from it anyway. I made a knife for the first time this summer and decided to return back to WA to try my hand…
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Automattic: 10 year anniversary
I’ve spent just barely under a third of my life working for Automattic. These were not mindless years that somehow added up. I have felt each of them in the best way. wordpress. this is new. kevin and the gang went to teh VIP conference and he got me some AWESOME contacts. needless to say, i would love this job. work from wherever. still in tech. still can do creative stuff. still can build websites. like whaaat. On my private blog on April 3rd, 2014 I tried looking to see my first mentions of working for Automattic and stumbled on…
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Raising my hand to help others create their own productive spaces in WordPress
There is so much room for so many spaces in the WordPress world. Having created and run an official space for a few years (the FSE Outreach Program) and, as I venture into creating an unofficial one with WordPress YouTubers, my brain spins with all of the communities and pop up spaces I want to create. Off the top of my head: Each of these scratches a different itch and, as of now, requires capacity I don’t have, especially right now with where my soul is. If you’re reading this, perhaps you have capacity and a desire to get started…
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Join me in testing the Block Bindings API
The Block Bindings API was launched in WordPress 6.5 and it allowed you to “bind core blocks to read from different sources without needing to write custom block boilerplate”. In WordPress 6.5 and WordPress 6.6, this was all done via code and there wasn’t a UI yet to bind blocks to different sources. For WordPress 6.7, work is underway to change that with an initial experimental PR merged to enable a UI and a follow up PR underway to improve upon it in order to remove the experimental flag. This is a big change and opens up even more pathways for…
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Uniting WordPress YouTubers Part II on August 20th, 2024
In the spirit of open sourcing everything, I wanted to share my notes too alongside the video anyone can watch. I used Otter.AI to create the transcript and then used their baked in ChatGPT integration to pull a summary out. The notes are incredibly high level so I recommend watching the video itself if you have time as there was some awesome dialogue. AI Summary from Otter.AI Anne McCarthy led a discussion on the WordPress community’s efforts to engage YouTubers. Key points included the importance of inclusivity and collaboration, with participants sharing their backgrounds and favorite colors. Aaron Jordan explained…
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write back
Growing up, I had a few influential pen pals, a kid my age and a 70-80 year old man. This precious correspondence with the latter continues to impact me today. It’s been much harder to write cards since my grandma died and I lost the weekly ritual of writing to her, especially during COVID times. To this day, I’ll still catch myself buying extra cards thinking about which I’ll send to her, forgetting it’s not an option. What’s helped most in getting me out of my postcard slump has been writing the kids of loved ones. I remember that feeling…
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Responding to “Should we be open about discussing WordPress?”
I wanted to share a quick response to Should we be open about discussing WordPress? Yes, yes, yes, yes. We all should. That’s the beauty of open source. Please criticize, engage, share feedback, ask others hard questions, ask a simple “why”, show specifically why something is painful, show something you love, share what would be most compelling and exciting for you to see ship, etc. To underscore two things: please be as specific as possible in your feedback and please chime in even if the same feedback has already been shared. A GitHub issue with 5 comments asking for something…
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unexpected joy
I never thought I could be so ecstatic to have a flight get cancelled. Tuesday this past week, I was hanging out in Western NC (aka WNC), finally recovered from a cold caught during a week with extended family. I had made the best of getting sick fully embracing the chance to rest and so had my friends who still chose to hang out with me Saturday and Sunday when my parents dropped my congested self off at the tiny home village I was staying in before they headed back down to Florida. By Tuesday, I was feeling more like…
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Join me in testing Data Views
As the Test lead for WordPress 6.6 and from my experience running the FSE Outreach Program, I remain obsessed with how we can bring more people into testing key parts of what’s new in WordPress and empower people to share feedback in the project. A few weeks ago, I decided to throw together a WordPress Playground instance (you can learn more about WordPress Playground in my YouTube video on the topic) that has 200 pages to help stress test some of the new Data Views work. You can try this out for yourself below: I ended up finding a fair…
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flatten
I started to write this on July 18th and haven’t been able to write much more on the topic. Yet still, the urge to document, to witness, and to wonder how it’ll all evolve is strong. I share these incomplete thoughts and know it’s enough: I met my brother at my sister’s wedding — the first time I met her too. The second time I saw him, it was to watch his body in a casket return to the earth with the help of my other brother lowering him in and my sister watching on next to me. This isn’t…
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On contribution pathways and experiences
If you talk to someone deep in the WordPress project, you’ll often hear the refrain of: “Pull requests welcome!” “Open an issue!” Not all contribution pathways are the same though and something I am trying to be more aware of these days is sharing more nuance around what contribution in a certain area might be like. While I can’t predict what a contribution experience will be, I can set expectations, offer help for high priority work, and keep the right things moving. I’d be remiss not to link to a guide I wrote nearly four years ago now talking about…
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didn’t pound
Last night, I slept and my heart didn’t pound. In the morning, I could hear the rain lightly knocking on the roof of the tent and seamlessly mixing in with the sounds of river. I went back to the same campground as my recent solo adventure this time with my partner in tow. We filled out pieces of flying wish paper, reading them out loud to each other before carefully setting them on fire. We explored each campsite, plotting future trips and taking pro/con notes for our favorite spots. I obsessed with trying to pick every salmonberry I could find…
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WordPress 6.6 Source of Truth
I’m offering up the next edition of the Source of Truth for WordPress 6.6, set to launch July 16th, 2024. You can see all prior editions under this tag. As always, I’d recommend staying up to date on the dev notes as those are rolling out along with reviewing the Field Guide. As a reminder, this is not meant to replace dev notes or the release specific field guides, which serve important roles and are separate efforts. I mainly see it as for folks close to the WordPress release itself and educating others than I see it as something broadly helpful for…
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Create your own living plan
Content warning: references to suicidality. A few years ago, I sat down to write out as concisely as possible what’s helped me at times when I’m not exactly attached to life around me and quite suicidal resulting in To those who aren’t very attached to life. As part of that effort, I created an open source living plan, copied and inspired from my own that I created during my first paid sabbatical from work in 2019 (Automattic has incredible benefits and somehow I’m coming up soon on my second one). I didn’t think much would come from sharing it but, over…
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Here’s to zazu
There’s a familiar rhythm to it and, if I close my eyes, I can feel what it’s like to pack up my car to head out on a new adventure or to a brand new place to live. After a long day spent outside, returning to find it felt almost as good as an embrace of an old friend. I personified my 2016 mini cooper to a likely extreme degree out of necessity. When traveling, sometimes it was the main object and tool I used day in and day out. It quickly went from a tool to a beloved object…
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Uniting WordPress YouTubers?
With WordPress being used by so many people (40+% of the web), I’m kept up at night sometimes thinking about all of the feedback that might be missing. When running the FSE Outreach Program in the early days of the Site Editor and block themes, it meant I spent a lot of time going to where people were and listening as much as I could in order to bring feedback back into the project at key points. I have a base routine for all of this now that includes joining as many Online Events as I can to hear from…
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gain them back
This week a childhood friend came through Seattle. We texted back and forth about where to go to dinner and, when I offered up a Roman restaurant (Rione XIII), the response was instant. We were going there. We both took Latin for 6 years and it felt imperative to pay homage to our roots. An inner nerd and self felt seen. People in our lives reflect back to us both aspects of who we are and roles we embody. Who I am in relation to you shapes me. Depending on who I’m around, I’m adventurous or cautious. When I’m alone,…
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On moving at the right speed at the right time in the WordPress project
Depending on who you talk to and when, you might hear the refrain that the WordPress is moving too fast or too slow. The sentiments are often held so strongly with each side expressing dismay. An easy example I’ve heard since I ran the now evolved FSE Outreach Program is around the desire for responsive controls. It still regularly comes up as an area folks want to see movement on and lament how slow it’s been. At the same time, I hear how fast the project is moving, particularly from block themers and contributors. Whispers of a desire for a…
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deep pull
There are some places in the world I could return to again and again. Often for those same places I feel a deep pull to bring as many loved ones as I can there. It’s not enough to return alone. Chamonix, Thun, La Jolla, Jackson Hole, Brevard, Dolomites, the list goes on. The Oregon Coast has sat patiently on that list waiting for me to return with someone else to show its beauty to. Seven years on after I took a day trip here with my mom, I’ve returned this week with a loved one in tow after a failed…
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hardly
A restlessness has been brewing within me over the last month. I blame the twin forces of my body healing, allowing me to do more yet also not all I want, and the passage of time leaving me living in Seattle far longer than I could have imagined. It has been beautiful to stay put yet I feel cut off from the part of myself that’s incredibly curious and alive. I can only walk the same block so many times until I wonder what another block might be like (or what walking this same path consistently might lead to beyond…
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Healing from disc herniations: learning to listen rather than to push
Since early this year, I’ve been recovering from two disc herniations and am still on that path. I’m lucky that I both caught it early and that they are, in the grand scheme of things, not extreme enough to warrant surgery. Add to my luck a remote job with a flexible schedule for taking time off to rest and to go to doctors appointments. It’s still been painful, scary, slow, and frustrating. I’m documenting the approach I took, what I bought along the way (I’m very minimalistic so anything I purchased was necessary), and what the timeline has been like.…
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baby making age
I run a separate site called Surrogacy Stories, dedicated to stories of those born via surrogacy, that hardly gets any views or traction. It’s okay — I recognize it’s for a more niche audience considering I’ve never met another person born via traditional surrogacy. At the same time, I’m tired of lack of awareness around the impact of being born different ways so, in an attempt to increase the reach even slightly, I’m re-blogging a post I wrote recently reflecting on how painful it is to be at the “baby making” age and to witness so many folks choose to…
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what makes it
I went to explore a row of cherry blossom trees this morning after getting word that it was popping. It was like a dream land and I got there early enough to avoid any instagram influencer types posing in the middle of the street. I didn’t linger long — I was feeling pulled to a coffee shop, a book, and a bagel to settle into the morning. As I left, I wondered if I just might have a good side mirror shot. I was stoked to see I did. I only took two photos and both turned out great. I…
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