Howdy howdy! It’s been quite a while since I’ve written any journal updates, as I’ve been regularly posting only in the Groundhog Day Resolutions (GHDR) section regularly. So, here’s what’s been happening since Summer 2025!
End of Javascript Contract Work!
Grant money for National Science Foundation projects were the main source of my income since 2014, and with the re-election of the Trump administration that funding has dried up. My last contract ended in July 2025.
That’s a decade of time spent doing development work that I hadn’t planned as a career shift, and with no future contracts on the horizon I thought that I’d try to return to freelance design and blogging about productivity tools and stuff I found interesting. However, a lot has changed since 2014. Not only is the Internet as a whole more of a walled garden than ever before, the kind of long-form content I used to write no longer has the uniqueness to punch through all the content farm slop that dominates Google’s shopping-oriented search algorithms.
So, in the meantime I’ve been reskilling myself with design tools and blogging itself. I’ve talked a lot about that in recent GHDR posts, starting with 2025’s The Month of Change, The Month of Motion, and The Month of Building.
I think my reskilling has gone reasonably well. I identified areas I wanted to have strong examples of the design and development work I do, but not in the context of finding a regular design or software job. Instead, I’d like to find a human-focused job where the problem solving is focused first on understanding what individuals actually want, using my analytical/organizational/design/tech as supporting tools. In other words, I don’t to be designing or programming to meet a technical brief or nudge marketing analytics toward business goals. I’m far more interested in applying those skills to people who need someone to listen to their ideas and provide the support tooling that helps them find their way.
I don’t know what this is called. Kind of like a teacher or a mentor, but with the independence to choose what I work on and with whom I work. I don’t know what a financially sustainable version of this looks like, but perhaps it involves writing a book about the nearly 20 years of pursuing Groundhog Day Resolutions with monthly reports of what I’ve tried to do to achieve the kind of independence I’m thinking of. In itself, it’s a very detailed first-person longitudinal record of effort by someone who has struggled to find their place. That might be of interest to someone. Writing even part of this book might give me an idea of where this could go.
The Importance of Living By One’s Personal Values
Another key finding is that I am happier when I live by my personal values, which I defined as:
- Authenticity - Presenting myself genuinely as I am
- Transparency - Saying what I mean and why
- Curiosity - Freely asking and answering questions without fear
Taken together, I feel the represent the truth of myself that emerges as an inevitable side effect of being on the autism spectrum. In my case, I have come to realize that I’m rather blind to the social norms where people feel vulnerable with expressing any of these traits! I do not have this fear and only belated realized that it causes a lot of misunderstanding where there is subtext and unspoken social etiquette that people follow to avoid conflict and boost group harmony.
Whoops!
So I’ve been thinking a lot of what the practical ramifications are for me, as there is a tension between my innate cognitive profile and mainstream social norms. Can this tension be resolved?
Toward this end, I’ve outlined a binary ecosystem I’ve defined as The Colony and The Meadow. The Colony is a set of governing and cultural principles that are intended to create a cooperative sharing community of mutual benefit. The Meadow, by comparison, is about a culture of emotional support and psychological safety where genuine friendships can form and develop. The presence of both qualities in a community may be the seeds belonging of a kind I have missed for a long time. This is a place where I think my personal values can be freely expressed, as the the Colony and Meadow are derived directly from them.
Building a Foundational Portfolio
I can’t survive simply through reskilling and living by one’s personal values, so to keep busy I’ve also wanted to focus on building things that are complete examples of the things I can do that matter in today’s markets and economic machinery. Broadly, it’s converting the skills I have into tangible products that can be evaluated directly.
The most highly developed skills I have are:
- Software Development
- Writing
- Graphic Design
- Organizational Development
- Personal Development
- Productivity and Process Design
And I want to “package” them into something that can be experienced directly. For example:
- a simple web application framework for rapid prototyping of realtime interaction
- a collection of essays about productivity and personal development
- graphic works that communicate my ideas through effective visual media design
- a set of targeted productivity tools and approaches
- a virtual online community that demonstrates the ideals of The Colony and The Meadow
- opportunities to join me in person and pursue creative adventures in the spirit of The Colony and The Meadow
This is the new body of work toward which I’m working as I keep my eyes open for opportunities that meet my criteria for a human-focused job where I can make nice things that help people find their way and thrive. That would be a super nice pivot.
Wrapping Up
That’s not all I’ve been working on. For example, I’ve been refining this very website for five years after archiving davidseah.com. It’s become a fairly capable personal knowledge management system where I capture all my thoughts and can share them publicly. The code itself is could use a lot of clean-up and improvement, and it would be nice to create a public fork for other people to use. But those are topics for a future Journal entry. Thanks for checking in, and have a great September!