Axel Valdez Design Engineer
  • A life organized around a to-do list takes the joy out of living. There's always stuff to do, obviously: somebody has to wash the dishes, sweep, go grocery shopping, get that cabinet door fixed.

    The problem is not the to-do list itself. It's the timing of tasks. I tend to do things whenever the stars and my brain chemistry get aligned and I actually want to do them. When I was living alone, dishes tended to pile up, laundry got unmanageable, the fridge was empty and I had to push things over on the table to make space to sit down to eat. Then, on a random morning, my mind was right and I powered through it all and left the place spotless. Suddenly there were no 'tasks', it was all joy.

    Continue reading →

  • Yet

    It was ten, maybe eleven years ago. I was picking my oldest kid from school, he was 4 or 5. When he came out, I gave him a hug. We walked to the car, I buckled him into his car seat, and hugged him again.

    Continue reading →

  • In the last week I've found myself in two situations where I had to explain that despite all the crap I've been through, I wouldn't change a thing. That I love who I am, and I'm the product of everything I've lived, hence, I shall love all that past shit as much as I love past sunshine and rainbows.

    Continue reading →

  • I've always been a hoarder. I refuse to get rid of things, and that goes both for the box of cables and old electronics down in that cabinet in my office and for the files in my Google Drive, external hard drives, on my computers and phone.

    Continue reading →

  • — 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.

    Continue reading →

  • I’ve been thinking a lot about emotional management, particularly after a challenging year of depression and anxiety. I’ve lived with both for most of my life, but it wasn’t until recently that I was formally diagnosed. About a year ago, I hit rock bottom. Since then, it’s been a slow but steady climb, thanks to therapy, medication, and a lot of introspective work.

    Continue reading →

  • When we moved into the house where my family and I live, it occurred to me that it would be super cool and educational to have a solar system model in the ceiling of my kid’s room.

    And it would be a lot cooler —I thought— if the distances between the planets’ orbits and their size were proportional to their real-life counterparts, the light bulb in the center of the ceiling being the sun. I got really excited.

    With all the excitement still in me, I got in front of my computer to calculate said distances. That’s when it hit me: I knew nothing about the solar system size.

    Continue reading →