Jasmine Gearhart

I went on a Vipassana retreat in April — it got cut a little short because the retreat center had to close due to wildfires nearby, but I got a lot out of it and plan to return for a full course in the fall. I'm a meditator now!

Life, tech, and the world are making me anxious. I'm nervous that we might not have the social and cultural maturity to make it through the moment without taking heavy losses. Nonetheless, I'm a committed optimist (thanks, Star Trek) and believe there's a possible future in which we come out better than we went in. While we work to get there, my cope has been doubling down on closeness to nature and community. Getting really into solarpunk lately. Went camping over my birthday. A green-thumbed friend helped me start a backyard garden (I had no idea tomato leaves smelled so good, or that squirrels were such disrespectful jerks). I'm taking a Spanish class with the goal of being conversational by the end of the year. I'm tinkering contentedly with the design concept for my new personal site. Getting more involved with the Relational Tech Project and figuring out how I can be the friendly neighborhood technologist who builds tools for my community.

I'm pulling down the personal site I've had since graduating my coding bootcamp 4ish years ago (!!!) to do a complete site overhaul that better reflects my skill and style. It had a newly implemented /now page, and I wanted to be able to keep making "now" updates while I work on the site, which might take a while to launch. So this is my /now page for now. :3

Been engaging more with the indie web lately. A number of devs I've recently discovered were using this platform called Are.na; I feel like I'm late to the party here, but damn, Are.na is incredible. Imagine if Pinterest and Obsidian had a baby, but without algorithms or advertisements of any kind. Ideas rather than content. I started my own profile and have been adding to it like mad. When the chaos of our world — sometimes, the tech world specifically — leaves me feeling nervous or scared or angry, I pull up my Are.na feed for a few minutes. All my discoveries are organic and served to me by other smart, thoughtful, creative, curious humans. The effect is immensely comforting. I've found so many people who are keeping the web weird, artistic, beautiful, and deeply human. I want to be one of them.