I just had a full conversation with my 8-year-old son about the possibility that we live in a simulation, using our brain's data as an avatar for extending life using an after-death simulated environment and the possibilities of it all. I'm so happy to be raising nerdy kids <3.
Tengo una sensación extraña cada vez que muere una persona cercana que en alguna medida marcó una diferencia en mi vida. No hablo necesariamente de luto, dolor, o tristeza, sino de esa sensación de que sin esa persona, y con su ausencia poco a poco notándose menos hasta volverse la normalidad, el mundo ya no es igual. No es necesariamente peor, ni mejor, sino diferente.
Aunque uno no cambie mucho, aunque las dinámicas de la vida sigan ininterrumpidas, todo sucede ahora en un lugar distinto.
El miedo a la muerte
Aug 14, 2025
Desde muy pequeño he estado asustado con la idea de la muerte en general, la de mis seres queridos, y especialmente la idea de la mía propia.
Aunque con los años he podido ir gradualmente y a cierto nivel reconciliándome con la idea, este miedo empezó siendo paralizante. Al nivel de ser un niño de 6 años que no podía dormir pensando en eso.
Lo de las ideas persistentes y paralizantes ahora tiene una explicación muy clara con mi diagnóstico de ansiedad y TDAH, pero además de eso debo agregar que fui criado en un hogar ateo. Cuando buscaba respuestas relacionadas con la idea de la muerte, esperando encontrar consuelo y alguna historia relacionada con “el cielo” o “el más allá”, lo que encontraba en mis adultos eran respuestas pragmáticas que, aunque ahora agradezco, solo alimentaban leña nueva al fuego que ardía constantemente en mi cabeza. “No hay nada después de morir”, “es como dormirse, pero ya no despertamos”. “No nos damos cuenta cuando nos quedamos dormidos, ni cuando estamos durmiendo, así que ni siquiera nos vamos a dar cuenta de que ya no estamos vivos”. Ajá.
Eventualmente empecé a explorar la religión. Encontré mucho consuelo en creer en un dios todopoderoso que estaba a cargo. El adulto non plus ultra. Creer en los conceptos cristianos implica que la muerte queda invalidada por que deja de ser el fin para convertirse en un puente, en un paso a otra cosa potencialmente mejor.
Pasé unos años así, no sin cuestionar las creencias, pero cayendo constantemente del lado de creer más que de pensar profundamente, porque lo segundo era lo que ya había hecho por mucho tiempo y solo había resultado en estrés y miedo.
Eventualmente mi filosofía de vida, mi introspección temprana y mi obsesión con cuestionar las cosas terminaron “traicionándome”, y me di cuenta de que no creía en nada de eso, y de que el aferrarme a las creencias religiosas era solamente una manera de borrar, o al menos mitigar, el miedo que me causaba morirme. Acepté que era ateo y siempre lo había sido.
Tengo años diciendo en cada conversación al respecto que me gustaría tener la capacidad de creer en dios, en la mitología religiosa. Que me encantaría porque eso significaría que mi muerte dejaría de ser la amenaza de algo terrible. Pero simplemente no puedo.
Hace unos días vi “Panicked”, el especial de comedia de Marc Maron. En su bit de cierre habla de una experiencia cercana a la muerte completamente mundana, y de cómo ésta le hizo darse cuenta de que ya no tiene miedo de morirse. Y eso me dejó pensando por días.
Creo que no es cierto que quisiera creer en dios o en la mitología religiosa. Mi verdadera aspiración es llegar a un punto de mi vida en el que deje de tener miedo de morirme. El momento en el que pueda aceptarlo y hacer las paces con la idea, y dejar la fantasía de inmortalidad, que es la máxima expresión del Fear of Missing Out.
Quisiera tener la entereza de Leonard Cohen algún día (y mejor me voy apurando).
I don’t dare attach myself to a spiritual strategy. I don’t dare do that. I’ve got some work to do. Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.
Siento que cada vez estoy más cerca, pero falta un buen de camino por recorrer.
Matt.
Aug 01, 2025
— Hi, I’m Mateo Pérez
— Hello, I’m Axel Valdez. I just got here yesterday
— So, what do you do exactly?
— I’m a UI designer, and I also do front-end code. Mostly HTML and CSS, but also some JavaScript, usually for interaction stuff
— For how long have you been doing these things?
— It’s been like... 15 years now. Wow.
— And what do you like the most?
— CSS, definitely. I would be happy if I got to just do CSS forever.
— Alright. That was your English test. You’re fine.
That was my first interaction with Matt Perez, on my second day at Nearsoft in 2011. He kinda intimidated me at that time, mostly because I had read a lot about him on social media, and he was already a legend for founding Nearsoft, this weird and utopian software development joint in Hermosillo. At that time we were small. About 35 people including designers, software engineers, recruiters, and admin staff.
Nearsoft was broadly criticized locally because of their work philosophy. (You can read more about that in the book Radical Companies, by Matt and two other authors). When I joined, some of my friends made snarky comments about drinking the Kool-Aid without finding out what the catch was.
Funny thing: at one time, we joked about welcoming new team members with a glass of orange Kool-Aid in reference to this (orange was the brand color). We never did it, though.
For most of the next ten years I worked directly with Matt, as I became part of the digital marketing team and he was in sales. I got to know him and I feel like he took me under his wing in a lot of ways.
He helped me with my anxiety. We had a few conversations about it, and he, as practical as he was, gave me specific advice on how to deal with anxiety at work and checked in with me often.
He also once told me I was taking too much work because I wanted to be everywhere (I did), and I should learn how to say no. Then he proceeded to, from time to time, ask me to join or lead projects, only to tell me after I said yes and we set up a tight deadline, that the project was fake and I had failed the test. “You need to say no”. This went on for months.
Over the years, he became a role model for me on how to approach work. He taught me, inadvertently, that work can and should be fun. That the intersection of the things I want to do and the things the company needs are my most valuable contributions. That work and life are not enemies, the right job is part of our life and we should have a good time at it.
I once had a medical emergency in my family. I was very worried because I was also overloaded with work. He told me “go take care of them, we’ll figure it out, this just became very unimportant” which written out is so simple and logical I’m almost embarrassed to highlight it. We should have this kind of humanity in every job.
When I left Nearsoft, after it was sold and renamed, he replied to my farewell email the best way he could. He recognized some mistakes they had made in the process, and he fully owned them. That was also a teaching for me.
We worked on some things after that. We checked in from time to time. I talked to him about my divorce, parenting, and he talked to me about life, retirement, and his struggles with his cancer.
Matt passed away a week ago. It’s difficult for me to think about it. It’s weird knowing he is not here anymore. But I’m happy all the things he taught me, with words or by example, and his incredibly solid ethics and philosophy on how work should be, are with me forever.
Thanks Matt, you magnificent old fart. I’m not crying, you’re crying. And I will miss you forever.
I organized my vinyl records, and I found out I have 16 of them still wrapped, new, unplayed. And they're good albums, too. I think starting on Monday I will sit down and listen to one of them daily. I'll report back here. Or maybe I will set-up my music blog —The Headphonist— again, to write about them.
I got a small pack of Posca paint markers and I want to draw on every surface around me. These are my pocket notebooks.
Sometimes it gets reaaaally dificult to trust the process.
Inhale... hold... exhale.
I was doing some research about POSSE on an 11ty website when I landed on this post by Yuya Saito and I got my mind blown by the explanation about comment-driven development. I sometimes do the same, but how Yuya explains it is almost poetic.
"Just like writing an essay, I need find out something to rely on."
Go read it at virga.frontendweekly.tokyo.
Memories
May 26, 2025
With time, our memories start jumbling up, tangling, getting fuzzy.
I feel like I lived a lifetime from 15 to 20, then from 40 to 45 it was a blink. Some people say it’s the percentage of your life those years represent. I don’t think it works like that. I think i’ts a problem of us not being mindful of the things we live.
When you drive from work to home, you barely register what happened. If right after you arrive you try to remember what whas happenning in a certain block or street, most likely you won’t be able to recall it. That dynamic starts slowly happening with everything we live, especially in the cotidianity.
A few years ago, looking into this, I found this video from Johnny Harris. It made a lot of sense. He asks “what’s the most important thing that happened to you in April 2011?”
Right? Impossible to know.
This subject is very important to him too and he suggests a photo practice that helps being more mindful of the things we live. I won’t bother you with details, but it’s about constantly revisiting and curate out photos and videos from past days.
For instance, I just revisited my phone photos from this last weekend (a trip to the beach being the most important memory) and reduced 100+ photos and videos down to a few (probably less than 10). These photos are now my tangible memory of this weekend, and the process of revisiting and curate the whole thing consolidates the day into my memory, very much like telling or writting down your dreams right after waking up makes them permanent.
I just realized it's been 5 years since the COVID-19 lockdown. All events from that time on are tangled up in my memory as a drawer full of old wires.
