Author: spenpo

  • What I’m doing now – October 2024

    I’m now a fourth-grade teacher in Shanghai, China. This is a significant career shift from software development that I’m glad to be embracing. At the end of 2023, I found myself on the job hunt unexpectedly. Though I wouldn’t have chosen it, it also served as a period of reflection that I welcomed. During this…

  • What I’m doing now (posted 2/1/2024)

    Still living in Fort Collins and loving it. Winter is always a great season for productivity and I’m programming at least six days a week. Daily programming usually consists of adding features to my new client platform, small enhancements to other parts of this website, or trying some entirely new tech thing to keep life…

  • Why I Almost Bought a Gym

    Last year I developed one old belief and one new one. The old one is that it is not necessary to be an employee in exchange for a good life. Good lives are lived in abundance all over the world, especially in the United States. Yet, it remains clear that predictable income through gainful employment…

  • Opportunity Cost

    I took a trip to Boston to see some old friends this past weekend. We had a lovely time, but events at each end of the trip festered in my mind to the point that I found myself lecturing over them in the middle of a long walk. Do you ever wind up talking to…

  • Stillness on an Uncomfortable Flight

    Ever heard of Frontier Airlines? The low budget commercial flight service is perfect for those of us who want the miracle of flight and almost nothing else. While popular airlines commonly boast their inflight goodies, above average legroom, and top of the line customer service, Frontier found room in the market for a company with…

  • My Open-Source Journey Begins

    I’ve realized that I’m a very specific type of person. This is the case for all of us, and I believe the process of narrowing down the cohort of people we belong to also assists in determining where we can be most useful. This is a two-way street. If you decide you want to be…

  • The Types of Work I Do

    I’ve been on a journey to realize my full potential as a young person. I’ve done all the work that you’d think a twenty-something who would make the former statement does. I listen to audio books and tell people I “read”. I pontificate on the meaning of life. I even meditate once a month just…

  • Building my Website from Scratch

    I’m going to shake things up a little. This post will be a technical overview of the website I recently built from scratch and deployed at spenpo.com. My blog will still come back to introspection, but its purpose has always been to explain the things I do. Creating content is an attempt at teaching. It’s…

  • How to be happy

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    I am extremely fortunate. In fact, we all are, and if you started reading just for a chance to derive my privilege from this click bait title, I hope you at least go away with an understanding of this fact; we are the richest animals in history. The luxurious wonders of technology that we enjoy…

  • Obstacles

    Obstacles are superficial. I believe obstacles are actually feelings and nothing more. If they were at all objective in nature, they would be possible to define and list out. Eventually, they would all be figured out, and soon there wouldn’t be any. But obstacles are subjective feelings. A river is an obstacle to the dog,…