Projects

Description

This website has been an ongoing project of mine since around 2012. In all honesty, I haven’t done much with it. It started as a way for me to test WordPress themes and plugins I was writing about for other blogs. Then, when I realized that wasn’t a very good use for my personal site, I moved my testing elsewhere and decided to write personal blog posts.

As a full-time content creator for other websites over the last 10+ years, when it came time to create content for my own site I was too burnt out on the whole process. So for the most part my site has been a placeholder for the few blog posts I worked myself up to do. Until 2023.

Now I have a a long-term vision for how I want to use my website. It’s my data garden!

Description

I’ve had around 15-20 posts on my blog for many years. All of them at various skill levels when it comes to writing and blogging as a whole. They’re also unorganized; representing a scattershot of categories and topics.

My vision for what I really want my personal website to be long-term didn’t fully take shape until 2023–though aspects of it have been brewing for over a decade.

With my new vision in mind, I’m working my way back through each of these old posts and updating them accordingly.

Description

As human beings we yearn for a sense of meaning. We crave experiences that affirm our values, acknowledge our experiences, and connect us to others. Non-Religious rituals and ceremonies engage this fundamental aspect of human nature by focusing on what’s important to the individuals involved.

For example, as a Humanist Celebrant it’s my job to help individuals and groups navigate the process of meaning-making in a non-religious context. I do this through the creation and performance of personalized rituals and ceremonies that celebrate important life-milestones.

Some of these ceremonies are well-known, such as weddings and funerals, but others are less well-known and catered to the present cultural moment. Examples include non-religious ceremonies for Coming of Age, Trans Naming, Chosen Family, Affirmation, and Appreciation. As well as completely bespoke ceremonies for unique situations, like a career milestone or checking an item off your bucket list.

I’m writing this blog post series to document and share my personal exploration of non-religious ritual and ceremony. I also hope to raise awareness of these ideas and practices in general.

Description

I had a lot of difficulty learning to read as a child. Most of my peers were reading books before I could even say my ABCs correctly and on demand. However, after attending a special reading class in second grade, I finished the year with a reading level a few grades higher than most of my peers.

This taught me a few important lessons very early in life.

• I’m just as capable of learning as anyone else, but how I go about it matters.
• Reading is not just another early life skill, like tying your shoes. Reading is the key to unlocking our full learning potential.
• The better I got at reading and the more I did it across a wide variety of topics, the more capable I was of navigating life.

At the time I wouldn’t have been able to articulate those lessons of course. “Thank God I’m not the class dummy anymore,” would have been closer to my awareness then. But it’s been a long time since then and as I reflect on my life so far I can now see how learning to read, learning to read well, and doing so on a regular basis became intuitive values of mine way back then.

This blog post series will include the best resources for learning to read well that I can create and/or curate.

Description

The skill of learning how to learn has been at the center of my adult life and career for the last 15-20 years.

As an immutable fact of life, those of us who survive childhood find ourselves as adults, set loose on society (and society on us), with the choice to continue our education however we can or see fit.

Anyone paying attention to the last 30 or so years will likely concede that so much has changed environmentally, politically, economically, technologically, and culturally that keeping up with everything can be overwhelming and exhausting.

Folks who have adapted well tend to be the ones who possess the skill of acquiring new and improved information as well as the ability to update their working knowledge of the world accordingly.

That, in a nutshell, is learning how to learn.

This blog post series will include the best resources for learning to learn that I can create and/or curate.

Description

As a late-80’s Millennial who grew up in a pre-internet saturated world, I’ve been blogging since blogging became a thing. When platforms like Blogger, LiveJournal, and Xanga came out I was one of the early adopters who immediately took the opportunity to share my bad poetry and angsty thoughts with the world.

Years later, around 2008, some individuals were finding massive audiences and lots of money in blogging. This lead to the commercialization of blogging as a tool for both marketing and monetization. I got into that game around 2010 when I began freelance blogging.

By that time, WordPress was already the clear winner in the competition to be the blogging platform of choice for the world at large. It’s only become more dominant since then. As a result, I’ve been blogging professionally on and about WordPress for thirteen years and counting.

In this blog post series I plan to draw on those years of experience to share the absolute most important and essential information anyone wanting to start a blog today needs to know and understand.

Description

In 2010 or 2011 (can’t remember which) I began blogging for WordPress blogs about WordPress and related subjects. One of the first to pay me was wpmods.com (no longer active; acquired). Other clients included Web Designer Depot, Web Design Ledger, WP Lift, ManageWP, Elegant Themes, and many others.

As blogging grew up as a medium and companies learned how to leverage it better, blogs about WordPress (the software making much of that maturation possible) was a great place to be working. I got to learn the software, teach the software, and then learn how folks succeeding with it were using it and teach that too.

In 2015 I accepted an offer from one of my freelance clients, Elegant Themes, to join their staff and become the company’s first Blog Editor. Between the fall of 2015 and the Spring of 2023 I served as their Blog Editor, Podcast Producer/Host, and eventually Content Manager–building out and managing a team of 13 full-time content creators.

During that time my team and I generated over 5,000 blog posts and thousands of accompanying or complementary videos. I think it’s safe to say I’ve not only written but also edited, re-written, and produced videos on every essential WordPress topic dozens of times.

This blog post series will be my attempt to communicate everything I’ve learned and continue to learn about those WordPress essentials–both as an exercise in personal knowledge documentation and as a collection of resources for others. It should be the first of many WordPress series to come. Laying the groundwork for everything else.

Description

Humanism as a philosphy, worldview, and lifestyle has been around for hundreds of years; some would say thousands depending on when you start counting. Its influence is ubiquitous across modern western culture, democratic governments, and social institutions.

The privileges we enjoy in a democratic and liberal society, the richness of literature and arts, the protection of individual and human rights, and advancements in science – all these are fruits of past humanistic efforts. The footprint of humanism is deeply embedded and continues to shape our world.

Despite this, few people could explain what humanism is, or, as a result, appreciate its ongoing value. In a time of rising fascism and authoritarianism the humanistic legacy we’ve enjoyed for so long is under direct threat.

In this blog post series I want to raise awareness of humanism and the modern humanist movement. I believe that if we want to meet the challenges of humanity today–pandemics, climate change, and technological disruption to name a few–we must protect and promote the values responsible for lifting us out of ignorance in the first place.

Description

A Humanist Celebrant is a secular (non-religious) clergy person endorsed by a governing body–in this case, The American Humanist Association–and empowered by state law to officiate weddings, funerals, and other life-milestone ceremonies.

I’ve been considering becoming a Humanist Celebrant for several years. The process is not long or difficult, but I’ve put it off until recently due to life circumstances (having a demanding job already) and an abundance of caution surrounding my mental health.

For context, I’m a de-converted Christian who at one point thought for sure I’d be a pastor; a church planting pastor no less (they’re considered pretty hardcore).

My de-conversion was messy, complicated, and highly traumatic. I wanted to be confident, at peace, and excited about the decision before starting the official process.

I initiated the process in July of 2023 and I should know if I’ve been endorsed by the end of August.