A Reintroduction & What’s Next
Most of you are probably reading this because you follow me. Most of you probably follow me because I wrote something once about Python or Django or careers in software engineering that helped you. I haven’t been writing much about those things lately.
TL;DR: Moving forward, I don’t expect to write about software much. Expect instead ruminations on wild spaces and what it means to be wild, about invasive species and food systems, about plants and my journey to being more rooted in a specific place and time. I still write software for a living and value 1:1 connections — reach out if you want to chat.
The longer version:
As is true for so many of us, my life has changed shape over the past two-and-a-half years. Changing jobs is part of it — I mostly write PHP now, instead of Python — but not by any means the most meaningful change. Loss has to be part of the story, but not the part of the story that matters here. The part that matters here seems small at first, but is not, in how it’s changed me. My family moved out of the city to a place where the land feels closer, like it has a greater impact on the shape of each of my days. We have bees and chickens and a garden and a wetland in our backyard — a backyard that’s too wild in all the best ways to really feel like it can rightly be called a yard at all.
My world shrank, in some ways: physically, I don’t often leave the island where I now live, or even the 2.5 acres we now call our own. The phrasing of that is wrong though, it makes it sound like a bad thing to have “shrunk”. It doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels instead like my world has grown. I know the names of plants and notice the changing of seasons in a more nuanced sort of way. There’s more — I will write of that more later.
I still write software for a living, but more than it used to be, that’s what it is for me — a living. There’s still purpose and a community to be had in that, but writing about it feels less like the right way for me to participate. I still believe strongly in the value of connecting with new people and supporting others earlier in their careers in tech than me — if that’s you, please do feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear from you.
But as I think about how I want to spend my time outside of work, what I want to think about and write about and do, it has more to do with plants. So that’s what you should expect to find here moving forward, mostly. If that’s not for you — I understand. That’s why I’m telling you this now, so you’re not surprised.
I want to think about (write about) invasive species and how they change our relationships with the land. How our relationships with the land change our relationships with ourselves and each other. About what it means to grow food for my family and my community and to eat more food grown by others in my community. About the places that are damaged and the ones that are beautiful, and of course the ones that are both damaged and beautiful. About invasive species and what it even means for a place to be beautiful or wild…or natural. Let’s start there.
Stick around, if you like 💙🌱
As always, every story will also be available on my website without a paywall.
