Axel Valdez

Comments

2026-05-14T08:00:00-07:00

A few days ago I stumbled upon this blog post by Matizeta where he talks about "the alive internet" and shares several ways to bring humanity back to the web.

His focus on human interaction, and especially the part about comments, left me thinking about how at a certain point in ancient history, circa 2003, comments on blogs were almost as important as the blog content itself. We were blogging to get our voices out, but also to let other voices in, interact, and create connections.

And we did. I did. I still have friends from that era, one of whom I texted with a couple hours ago.

At a certain point, with the web becoming more enterprisey, more commercial, and in consequence more spammy, our comment systems started to fill up with trash, and it was hard to keep up with moderation. We slowly started removing comments from our blogs. Then social media came along, and we stopped blogging altogether.

Yet here we are. I'm typing a blog post like it's 2003 to let you know that I'm adding comments, thanks to the fine folks at EchoThread.

Installing the thing was easy. Just copying and pasting an HTML snippet and done. But it looked so out of place that I hacked away at it for two hours to make it blend in with the rest of the site, and I think it's pretty good for a first pass.

So, this website has a place for friends now. Now we just need friends! lol.

Thanks, Matizeta, for the idea.

Taking a piece of Instagram with me

2026-05-12T08:00:00-07:00

For years I've been having a love-hate relationship with Instagram. I'm still there because I value the interaction with my friends, some of them remote, but I'm always annoyed by the quantity of ads that show up in my feed.

Now that I'm fully coming back to the small/indie/personal web, I'm trying to take with me some of the activities I use the corporate web for, and it occurred to me that taking a piece of instagram with me would be a great idea.

I decided to start posting photos in my own space, so this Saturday I started toying with the idea and I set up to start.

This also intersects with something I've been doing for a while: being more mindful of the things we live through revisiting and curating our photo libraries. Here's more about it if you're interested.

The Project

I knew I didn't want to do a commit every time I wanted to publish something, because that has stopped me in the past, but especially because I wanted to publish from my phone.

My first read of the project:

I needed to hold the photos, text and metadata in a database somewhere
The website should access the data via an API
I needed a client for the website that fetched the data and put it in a pretty layout
I needed a client for posting that has a form with an uploader and a few fields for text and metadata, that uploaded all of that to the database
The client also needed to be able to fetch posts to edit the contents and save the modified data to the database
I should be able to download a backup of the data at any time
I didn't want any of this to generate any monetary cost at all. No paid subscriptions, no buying anything.

I had everything clear, the problem was, learning to do that would take me weeks. So I drafted a very thorough spec document and handed it to Codex.

In about an hour, after some back and forth and bug fixing, I had a fully working app with a barebones visual design. That was Saturday night, then I spent 4-5 hours on Sunday manually working on the layout and design, and uploading content.

Here's the result: Memories.

Working with AI

I know, I know. AI is the forbidden fruit right now. But how I see it, by working carefully and staying in control, we can turn it into an excellent tool.

In this case, I made sure to understand the problem to solve, and asked exactly for the solution I came up with, with a scope that allowed me to actually code the parts I love doing. I had a blast on Sunday making the barebones app something that reflected what I wanted in terms of layout and design. I even modified the solution a little bit after the fact to adapt to some new ideas that occurred to me while I was modifying the presentation layer, and I learned some React in the process.

The most important thing for me in the end is to be able to understand how the app is built, and being able to modify it and debug things that come up in the future. AI enabled me to publish what's important to me, and I really like that. Sorry, not sorry. Or as my friends jokingly say in Spanglish, perdon't.

Who knows that you blog?

2026-04-30T08:11:33-07:00

I've seen three blog posts about this in my feeds today, and it's notable that so far everybody avoids openly sharing that they blog.

I do share it when it's relevant, but thinking about this made me realize that I feel silly saying the word "blog" out loud. And it is a silly word after all, or at least I've always thought so. I'm old enough to have called these things "web logs", which is waaay worse, but these days I catch myself saying "I've written about this on my website" more than "on my blog".

Anyway, other than my obvious self-consciousness about the term, I do share this blog with people in face-to-face conversations*.

I would actually love for more people in my immediate circles to read these texts, and I'd love it even more if they also had blogs. Reading a blog is a fascinating way to look into somebody's mind, and it gives so much context and insight that carries into face-to-face interactions.

I have old friends I've only seen once or twice in my life, and I feel like I know them well because of their writting. I think that's beautiful.

And to answer the question in the title: my partner, a handful of my friends, a couple of coworkers, and my parents.

* Ever since watching that documentary about The Pirate Bay, I avoid saying "IRL" or "in real life" to mean face-to-face. I usually say "AFK" or "away from keyboard" but it didn't quite fit in this case.

I miss email

2026-04-28T08:00:00-07:00

I miss email as a personal communication tool. Surely I still use it, but it is 20% paper trail for transactions, and 80% cold-messaging from companies I don't know—or plain old spam, if there's even a difference.

A few years ago, when I left Facebook, I tried to leave WhatsApp, but at least in Mexico that's opting into social isolation. I asked my friends to use iMessage to reach out to me, and half of them did, but a few years later only one of them does it religiously (thanks, Carolina).

Today, if I need to reach one of my friends there's a cognitive layer I have to get through: where to do it. Most of them are on WhatsApp, but others are on iMessage, Slack, Discord, Instagram DMs. Also most of them are on several of these platforms, but they each clearly have a preferred one where my message would reach them faster.

Email was simple. There were no walls. An email address is an email address. It was the default platform. Once you were a power user, and most of my friends are nerds, so that's most of them, you got a domain and then you could port your email to whatever provider you wanted. I've had mine in Gmail, Hey Email, Apple, and even a simple and basic client from DreamHost. I'm currently back on Gmail and planning to move to a paid platform for whitelist capabilities.

Email also promoted longer messages. More context. Most times you weren't in a hurry, or even when you were, if you typed just a couple of sentences it felt like something was missing. So you shared more.

My friend Mariana and I used to send each other long life updates once or twice a year over email. I still remember those messages and they make me smile. If I did this today, after sending the email I would need to reach out to the recipient on another platform just to let them know I did, so they can go dig the email out of the pile of trash that for sure is littering their mailbox.

This is not a call to action, but a simple rant. Or, in the best case, a wish. A wish for email to come back, or at least a cry for real connection.

But really, it's probably just a case of an old man yelling to the clouds.

Kindness

2026-04-16T08:00:00-07:00

This is a note from my journal that works as a constant reminder of being kind, something that's very important on my current journey. I share it here because, as simple and silly as it may seem, sometimes finding something simple at the right time can give someone a shift in perspective, and I've found innumerable things on my own path that I'm extremely grateful for.

Be kind to yourself by attending your needs and forgiving your mistakes.
Be kind to your children by guiding them, being patient with them and giving them your time and attention.
Be kind to your partner by being close, listening to them, and setting expectations clear both ways.
Be kind to your friends by expressing love, giving them your attention and communicating with them often.
Be kind to your parents by being openly thankful, generous in time and resources, and allowing them to take care of you even if you don't need to.
Be kind to your clients and co-workers by not assuming they know what you know. Communicate clearly and be patient.
Be kind to the world by sharing what you've learned, in exchange for having been taught all those things.

Journaling

2026-04-14T08:00:00-07:00

In its simplest form, journaling is keeping a record of our thoughts, emotions, and reactions to our circumstances. It gives us a history to revisit, reference material that would otherwise get lost in unreachable corners of our memory. I've gone back to pages from 4 or 5 years ago and been surprised to realize that I'd already lived through situations similar to current events I considered new.

There are many ways to keep a journal. The simplest of them is just writing about what happened today, how you felt, and what you think about it. It can be as detailed as you want: a single sentence, a paragraph, a page, several pages.

In my experience, the main impediment to start journaling is the feeling that it's too late. "I should've started a long time ago", and yes, we're always right on that. But there's a phrase that's as cliché as it is true: "the best time to start a journal was 20 years ago, the next best time is now."

I would encourage you to start a journal today. It doesn't matter what type, or how long your entries are. The single most important thing early on is being constant. Write a sentence or two every day, and soon the muscle will start to develop, the mind will be in the correct state as soon as you pick up the pen.

I struggled a lot to start. I tried notebooks, then digital tools, and at the end I came back to notebooks. At first I wrote only on some days of the week, sometimes I forgot to do it for months, but I kept returning to it. Now I find pen and paper help me think more clearly. I pause less to think and I'm able to unload my brain more efficiently than on a keyboard. It doesn't have to be like that for you, maybe typing suits you better. Constancy matters way more than the medium.

Types of journals I use

There are an infinity of types of journals, and you can come up with your own. These are the ones I use or have used:

Clarity Journal

You just dump everything that's in your mind right now into the page. It doesn't have to be in a certain format, or have any structure. I sometimes write long-form, other times I just do bullet points. The important thing here is to get it all out. If work feels like too much, list what's under control, what's not, and what questions you need answered. If it's loss, write down what you're grateful for having had before the loss and how you're feeling right now. In any case, be as thorough as possible.

This is especially useful for anxiety. Sometimes just by writing something you find that it doesn't make sense. Sometimes you connect some dots. Sometimes dumping all your thoughts into the journal gives you answers you didn't think you had.

With practice, this feels like having a conversation with yourself, because seeing and reading your thoughts on paper allows you to see them in a more neutral light, similar to listening to a good friend. It also, in my experience, gives more structure to my thinking, as if I'm pre-formatting thoughts to put them on paper. I start organizing things into mental "tabs" sometimes finding connections between seemingly unrelated things.

I recommend starting with this one.

Daily Reflections

This one is very useful to help break out of depressive thought loops. Gratitude journaling is an excellent example of this type of journal.

At the end of the day, you answer at least one question. For depressive thoughts, I've used:

What am I grateful for?
What excited me today?
What did I learn today?
What questions, if answered, would help me move forward?

Or whatever question helps you reflect on your life day to day. It does sound corny. It also works.

Note taking

Yes, note-taking and journaling are different, but sometimes note-taking can be an aid to journaling. I have ADHD, and my brain is usually jumping from one thought to another, and that's why I'm always writing down things I need to remember. They can be superfluous things like the price of something I need for dinner, or a very important idea I had for a project.

This has become almost a reflex in my day-to-day, so I've found myself writing micro journal entries in my notebook. Sometimes they become a whole extended thing in my "regular" journal, sometimes they stop mattering and I scratch them, but again, they also help give structure to my thinking.

What I do

I do 2 things:

I keep a "regular" journal. It's a pocket hardcover notebook so I can bring it anywhere without hassle. I write in it 3-5 days a week. Some entries are half a page, some are several pages. I like to start entries at the top of a page, with the date and the location, so if I don't fill one of them, I "cancel" the rest of the space with a line. But that's just me.

I also carry a notebook with me. I take note of anything I might need to remember, and that includes things that are relevant for my journaling. This is an ephemeral notebook. A couple of times a week I review its contents, and scratch out anything that's no longer relevant or I've already taken action on. I sometimes transcribe thoughts to my journal, or expand on them.

When the notebook is full, I usually throw it away after a final review. I call it "the chaos book" and it's usually beat up, with torn pages and scribbles all over it.

Advice

Things that I've learned:

Don't let anybody read your journal. This is not a privacy thing (though it might be for you). The moment I consider that somebody might read what I'm writing, I start writing for an audience. I start caring about how it might look, how I may look. And that affects how and what I write. It's important to keep things raw and unedited.
Disrespect the tools. There are few things as useless as a notebook you're afraid of ruining. I recommend ruining it right away. As soon as you unwrap it, scribble all over the first page, put a crooked sticker on it, or write with Sharpie on the cover. Then you're free to make mistakes, and mistakes are a part of the process.
Don’t limit yourself to a system. At least not at first. There are a lot of journaling and note-taking systems out there that will seem perfect, but end up being too limiting or needing too much maintenance, and that’s likely to throw off your journaling motivation. For now, my recommendation is to start simple and once you have the habit, start looking into a system if you feel like you need it.
Keep going. Write at least a sentence if today you don't feel like it. Write "I don't feel like it" if you want, but keep on writing until it's simply something you do, like eating or sleeping.

That's it. I hope you start journaling today. Thanks for reading.

Notebooks

2026-03-04T10:55:33-07:00

For years I’ve tried to have a digital-only note system, but it’s difficult. It’s easy to have an organized archive for quick-reference in digital form, but for daily on-the-go notes nothing beats the availability of pen and paper.

Paper is inconvenient. For the system to be reliable, you need to carry a notebook and a pen everywhere you go, and we all know pens are always trying to get lost. The simplicity of note-taking apps is deceptive, though: the path to get to actual note taking is full of distractions, because it lives in a device designed for distractions.

I really want to stress that I don’t share the romanticism towards pen and paper, and yet here I am, carrying a couple of notebooks and a handful of pens everywhere.

How I use notebooks

Most of the time I have two pocket notebooks with me. I like pocket notebooks because they fit everywhere and take close to no space.

The first one is my personal journal, and this is the only “precious” one, because I need this one to last. I use a hard-cover pocket notebook and I try to empty my thoughts into it 3-4 times a week.

The second one is a catch-all for the day-to-day. Everything goes there, from insightful thoughts to shopping lists. Offloading your memory to a notebook frees brain space for processing, and that’s the most valuable purpose of that notebook. Also, as a (very) anxious person, having the reassurance that I won’t forget anything gives me so much peace of mind. For this one I either choose a cheap notebook from Temu or AliExpress (they come in packs of 50), or a hand-made one. I call this “the chaos book”, as its purpose is to take the chaos from my mind and put it somewhere else.

Once the catch-all is full, and important notes are migrated to my digital file, they’re discarded. They’ve served their purpose.

My hand-made notebooks

As I don’t need anything fancy, a few years ago I started making my own disposable notebooks. A few copy paper sheets, a somewhat sturdy cover, a stapler and a utility knife are all you need.

My journal at the left, my hand-made notebooks at the right

These aren’t pretty notebooks, but they don’t need to be. It is also easier to ruin them, which is a very important thing to do in order to make a notebook really useful.

Ruin your notebooks

If you’re like me (and I’ve found a lot of people are like me on this), when you get a new notebook, especially a nice one, you put it away and wait for something “worthy” of it. Or maybe you’re already using it but you’re being overly careful not to make mistakes so you don’t ruin your nice and pretty notebook. That’s bullshit.

The solution: ruining it early. Remove the shrink wrap and scribble all over the first page. Write a sloppy title on the cover with a Sharpie. Put a sticker on, purposely crooked and off-center. Whatever you need to consider it “ruined”. Then you’ll be free to use it as you please.

I read this idea years ago from Frank Chimero and it made a lot of sense.

In my case, the more I treasure a tool, the less likely I am to use it. I always scribble all over the first page because there's no way I can make anything worse than that. So, we're off to the races. — Frank Chimero

Anyway, that’s it. Maybe some other time I’ll write about my digital file, but as a spoiler, it is a very distilled version of Forever Notes by Matthias Hilse.

Thanks for reading, and happy note-taking.

IIIMGS

2025-12-12T23:17:48-07:00

This blog is built on 11ty, and I use Decap CMS to update it (editing code directly gets old reeeeal quick). I don't love image management in Decap, though, and I always wanted a better and quicker solution for that. So I made my own.

My requirements were the following:

I want a standalone solution for image hosting
I want to use it as an image gathering app (hoarding, really), not only as image storage for this blog
It should use authentication for uploading and deleting images, but it should also be accessible without logging in for view-only features
I don't want to put money into it, so it should rely only on free products/services

The suggested solution, and the one I went with, was a project in Supabase, using their storage, authentication, and database systems, with a front end built on JavaScript and hostable locally or in any JAMstack provider (I went with Netlify, which I use for everything).

When logged in, I can just drag and drop images onto the page, and it will upload and organize them by date (grouped by month). The images are shown and paginated by month, and I can click on any of them to copy the URL, double-click them to see them in a lightbox, or click the × icon to delete them.

I also made an export script so I can back up everything whenever I need to, in case I want to move all the content to a new provider. The images from the last three posts (including this one) are hosted there, and it's been working really nicely.

For future features, I want to add a "locked" status to some images, in case I'm using them on a post and want to prevent myself from accidentally deleting them. That's pretty much it for the moment. It makes me so happy 🙂.

This is a post about a tool I made using AI. Here's the context.

CCCOLUMNS

2025-12-12T22:40:44-07:00

I’m a huge nerd for notes. A long time ago, I learned not to trust my memory, so everything that comes to mind and needs to be remembered goes into a note. There’s this idea that the brain is an excellent processor and a very shitty storage solution. I fully subscribe to that notion.

I already use a system in Apple Notes, heavily based on Forever Notes by Matthias Hilse, but very distilled and simplified. However, I wanted an even more immediate quick-note system that was always up front and ready, so I made just that.

CCCOLUMNS is a single-page app that divides the viewport into N columns. Each column has a title, and the rest of the column is a note. You can switch between viewing and editing notes with a keyboard shortcut or by double-clicking anywhere on the page. After editing, you hit Escape and everything’s saved.

The app has a settings modal where you can add, remove, and reorder columns. There you can select how many columns are visible in the viewport, but later I also added a quick switch for this using number keys while in view mode. The columns that aren’t in view are accessible by scrolling horizontally.

The content of the notes uses Markdown syntax (with a few customizations that make my life easier) and is rendered as HTML when in view mode.

At first, everything was saved only locally in the browser. But since I use two computers, I wanted them to be synced, so I changed it to save to a JSON file in a private GitHub repository, and I added a repository credentials tab in the settings modal. When credentials are not configured, it still saves to local storage.

And that’s it. I’ve been using CCCOLUMNS for about half a week, and it’s been extremely helpful during the day. Any content that isn’t discardable at the end of the day gets migrated to my Apple Notes system, and everything that’s no longer useful gets manually discarded.

It’s obviously not perfect. I’m not handling multiple sources updating the data file, and if one computer’s sync doesn’t go through and the other updates the file later, content is going to be lost. But for now, it serves me fine. I’ll try to address those issues later, when I have time to nerd out about it.

You can try CCCOLUMNS here, or see the repo and deploy your own instance easily.`

UPDATE on Apr 15th, 2026

I’m no longer using this tool. I found Antinote, which does everything I need and a little bit more in clever ways, and it’s a native macOS app.

Vibe Coding (look ma'! I'm a developer!)

2025-12-12T18:51:33-07:00

I've been vibe coding again, but this time I took a different approach. I focused on stuff whose workings I already understand. It was a very different experience.

The first time I tried to make an iOS app, with the hope that if it worked, I would also do a macOS app from that. But it didn't work: too many errors that the AI agent couldn't really solve, and I wasn’t much help because I was totally out of my element.

This time I decided to focus on problems I wanted to solve for myself (the old "scratch your own itch"), and to ask the assistants to make web apps in technologies I already know and work with every day. This was the key to successfully finish and ship stuff that actually worked.

I made two things: CCCOLUMNS (repo), a quick note taker for my day to day, and IIIMGS (repo), an image ~~hosting~~ hoarding solution. Why the naming convention? I don't know, it seemed fun and more likely to be available as service subdomains. Also, I like them as a humble tribute to the awesome and now defunct ffffound!

In case you want to learn more:

Enjoy!

Drugs and Normality

2025-11-27T22:50:43-07:00

I never did drugs in my youth because I was too afraid, but I always had this curiosity of how it would feel to be high. I imagined pure awesomeness and bliss.

Turns out I do need a lot of drugs, prescription ones, and the effect is not an incredible high, but just plain normality. I need to drug myself to feel like a regular person feels on their baseline. Ironic, I know. But you know what? it IS pure awesomeness and bliss.

I recently concluded that the only secret to happiness is to have been miserable, and to have a solution at hand. There's no high without previous lows. Without a reference, things aren't good or bad, they just are.

Headphones

2025-11-25T16:53:58-07:00

I love headphones. I love them because music has always been my safe place and headphones were my way to carry that with me in public, except I never allowed myself to use them.

My ideal way of using headphones was a very simple and normal one: to go about my day with music as a companion. The problem was I kept worrying someone would need my attention, and even in situations where that was unlikely, that preoccupation didn’t go away. I couldn’t even stand in line without switching off the music.

That was until I figured out that the whole thing was a manifestation of my own low self-esteem telling me that being available made me more acceptable. I had to be on standby for approval, even from strangers. From the day I understood that, I started going out wearing headphones. It was a gradual endeavor, though, and the hardest part was fighting the reflex to hit pause or rip my headphones off whenever anyone came near.

I’m writing this today because yesterday it was the first time I wore headphones for a whole trip to the supermarket. From getting out of the car to getting back to it, I walked through the aisles with the music flowing, not hearing anything else, and went through the self-checkout thing without even pausing for a second.

It. Felt. So. Good.

Making my phone boring

2025-09-17T21:38:45-07:00

I removed Instagram from my phone two weeks ago. Well, all social apps, but Instagram is the main one for me.

I didn’t stop using it, though. Now that they have an iPad app, I installed it there. The idea is to intentionally use it whenever I want to check or post something, instead of defaulting to it every time I have a moment during the day.

It was difficult for the first couple of days, mostly because as soon as I had a quiet moment, my hands went straight for my phone, but it turned into a small boring glass square surprisingly quickly (and honestly, I think that’s what it should be: boring but useful). Slowly I started taking the phone out just to snap photos or videos and then quickly putting it away.

For the first two or three days, at the end of the day I was eager to check the iPad and catch up on what I missed, but that also went away quickly.

I still miss those little hits of dopamine, and I’m struggling with boredom sometimes, but overall, making it slightly inconvenient to use it has helped me be more present and enjoy what’s happening. And I really like that.

El miedo a la muerte

2025-08-14T18:10:34-07:00

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.

2025-08-01T20:08:13-07:00

— 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.

Memories

2025-05-26T19:45:36-07:00

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.

Feeling the feels (and not running away)

2025-04-25T08:00:00-07:00

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.

One of the main things I’ve learned over the past few months is how to accept, feel, and process my emotions when I’m feeling down, instead of running away from them or distracting myself from the discomfort.

My first instinct is, obviously, to look for immediate relief. This often comes from easy distractions: social media, TV, drinking, sex. But being mindful of my thoughts and sensations has proven to be far more helpful. As soon as I accept that I’m uncomfortable and that those sensations won’t magically disappear, I start to feel calmer. I take inventory of what I’m feeling and consider the possible causes.

Don’t get me wrong: the uneasiness doesn’t just vanish. But taking the wheel and aknowledging the feelings and sensation makes a world of difference. Now I’m in control, and I usually have several ways to steer things in a better direction. It’s like taking a mess of irrational, jumbled thoughts and emotions, putting them in order, and turning them into something rational and manageable.

That alone, given how my mind works, brings me a sense of peace. There’s also a quiet sense of accomplishment in not escaping those feelings through artificial means.

This approach, at least for me, resonates deeply with the concept of delayed gratification. It also reminds me of the recent emphasis on the value of boredom. Boredom makes space for self-reflection, and in this age, with smartphones, computers and screens filling every single moment with work, entertainment, or distraction, that space is hard to come by. But it’s essential if we want to get better and grow.

Quick check-in on social media

2023-11-20T14:22:29-07:00

Musk has made it really easy not to go back to Twitter. Props for that.

Threads is slowly creeping into being a true replacement for Twitter, toxicity and all. It may come as a surprise to no one that the problem isn’t the platform, but the people pouring their shit into it.

Instagram is still the one app I’m using to go watch ads with scattered updates from my friends.

This quote from Leif K-Brooks, Omegle’s Founder is spot on and feels painfully prophetical:

I worry that, unless the tide turns soon, the Internet I fell in love with may cease to exist, and in its place, we will have something closer to a souped-up version of TV – focused largely on passive consumption, with much less opportunity for active participation and genuine human connection.

See you on the other side (after the ad break).

Post-pandemic Musings

2023-06-01T08:00:00-07:00

With each day that passes, I increasingly remember the pandemic with a positive twist.

It was far from good. It wreaked havoc on my mental health at first, but perhaps it is a blessing that my mind chooses to retain the positive aspects and bury the rest

I miss being all day at home with my wife and my kids. Rationally I know it was difficult, especially with a three-year-old rightfully demanding attention, but I miss it anyway. Those times evoke feelings of intimacy, closeness, and profound love. Such immense love.

I also miss my Animal Crossing New Horizons gang. Three of my friends were already playing it a lot when I got it, and they warmly adopted me. We played together almost daily for about two or three months. We would set up a WhatsApp audio call and meet up on one of our islands, then talk for hours and hop to another of our digital properties. It was delightful and relaxing. Once again, much love.

I missed my parents a lot, but when Anabel went to great lengths to bring them to me as a birthday surprise, it became one of my most cherished moments. Those tough times also brought us much closer.

I remember the freedom I felt when I drove out to the convenience store just outside our neighborhood for the first time in months. And often after that, the feeling of just going out and driving aimlessly with my kids in the back seat at the end of the day. The joy on their faces.

I don’t want to be insensitive. I’m fully aware of the pain the pandemic brought to many people. I recognize that I am fortunate to have avoided the loss of a loved one, and my heart goes out to all who did. I was privileged enough to be able to stay at home, stay safe and take care of my family.

Maybe this selective remembrance is part of our survival instinct. I don’t have enough knowledge to claim that, but it’s also not important. My brain’s mechanics choose to keep only the good, and I choose to embrace it, smile, and be thankful for my life.

Finishing my 30 days without social media

2023-04-03T08:00:58-07:00

Today is the last day of my 30 days without social media. These are some bullet points of my experience:

The first two weeks were hell. I constantly reached for my phone and got frustrated. The fear of missing out (FOMO) was strong, but after two weeks, it was mostly gone.
I socialized a lot more in person: I went to the bar, invited friends over, and visited, too.
I got a feel for who is in my true immediate circle of people.
I didn't miss Twitter or BeReal too much after two weeks, but I kinda missed peeking into friends' and acquaintances' lives through Instagram.
I read a lot more and also watched more TV.
I reactivated my personal website and started writing again. If I had to choose one good thing only, this would be it.

I don't think I'm going back to using Twitter. I don't miss being angry about the polarized opinions of people I don't even care about. The people I do care about, I already follow on Instagram.

To be honest, I'm a little afraid of falling back into the addiction patterns and the emptiness from before. But also after thinking a lot about it, I don't think abandoning social media completely is even an option today. I need to keep the harmful dynamics of it in mind and find a balance. That's easier said than done, so I will keep tabs on it and reconsider in a couple of months.

Get paid for playing

2023-03-29T23:55:58-07:00

There is this quote from drummer Keith Moon I heard from Ira Glass and deeply resonated with me:

I am the best Keith Moon-style drummer in the world.

It reminded me of my approach to work for my first few years of employment at Nearsoft, a company that heavily promoted self-management. I divided my work into two categories: tasks I had to do and tasks I wanted to do. Although both types of work were part of my daily routine, I prioritized completing the "had-to" tasks quickly to ensure I had more time for the "want-to" tasks.

At the time it felt as if I was taking advantage of the company by being paid to work a little and play a lot. But, I eventually (and slowly, to be honest) realized that the "want-to" tasks were my most valuable contributions. By pursuing work that aligned with my interests and the company's objectives, I discovered the intersection of our mutual goals. It was still work, but it was refined by my experience and understanding of my role and the company's business.

This realization has become a guiding principle in my work ethic. Once you comprehend and internalize the company's business, your role, and the value of your skillset, the work you genuinely want to do becomes the most valuable contribution you can make to the organization. You effectively become the best "you-style" worker in the world, as there is no one else who can offer exactly what you bring to the table.

I'm not suggesting that you stop doing tasks that don't interest you, that would be terrible advice. But once you adopt this mentality, you'll find that the "want-to" bucket overflows while the "had-to" bucket remains mostly empty, because as you start doing things your way, and feel more and more confident in that, most things become genuinely enjoyable. As a result, you'll be happier, more fulfilled, and contribute a lot more to your company's success.

Yet another post on leaving social media

2023-03-08T17:06:58-07:00

I used to believe that social media kept me connected to the people I love, like, and enjoy, but I now realize that this couldn't be further from the truth. Although social media gives me the impression that I'm in touch with many individuals, broadcasting random thoughts and out-of-context ideas ultimately leads to a lack of genuine communication. The worst thing is that this false sense of connection provides me with temporary satisfaction that prevents me from forming real connections with the people I care about.

By social media I mean Twitter, Instagram, BeReal, and all of those applications where we share content publicly or semi-publicly. WhatsApp, for example, does not fit my definition of a social network, much like a phone is not considered a social app.

But understanding this doesn’t make stopping using social apps any easier. The second I stop doing something and lay back, my fingers start trying to tap Twitter or Instagram. When I’m bored, my first instinct is not to look for something to watch on TV or listen to, but to open Instagram and swipe through the latest stories of my contacts.

Right now I think the only way to stop is to treat it like an addiction, stop for a while and survive the withdrawal. (Fear of Missing Out) is a powerful force. I guesstimate that after a couple of weeks, the habit will start fading away.

I am stopping for a month to give the habit a chance to start going away. If everything goes smoothly, I won’t need to go back to social media after the month has passed. If it doesn’t, I will still keep my promise to endure the full month.

During this month, I intend to consume more high-quality content. I have around 10 books waiting, and I'm eager to read all of them. Additionally, I will make an effort to have more meaningful interactions with people, face-to-face or at least one-on-one.

Lockdown check-in

2020-04-27T08:00:00-07:00

After six and a half weeks in lockdown, I’m not anxious anymore. I don’t crave going out, and video calls have replaced face-to-face meetings very well: they no longer feel fake. I don’t perceive the screen anymore, but the person on the other side.

Habits are changing. I can’t go out to the supermarket when I’m bored (yes, I do that, or used to, anyways) or call a friend to meet at the neighborhood bar, but I took on Animal Crossing New Horizons, and as a distraction it’s a lifesaver. I’m making more music, I’m drawing more, and I play with my kids a lot more than before the pandemic.

I’m lucky enough to still have a job, with a couple sacrifices, and my work-at-home setup is better than ever. I feel I could do without an office for a while.

I really miss my parents, though. I miss my mom’s visits or being able to travel there for a weekend.

How’s the world going to be after the lockdown? Will we hug each other? Will it be weird to be physically close to other people? Will the menace of a new pandemic be with us all the time? Will we all become preppers and hoard non-perishables, Lysol and beer?

I’m not going anywhere with all this. I just wanted to type some words and try to restart the habit of writing. This seems like a good moment to do it.

Stay safe.

The solar system dimensions and my ignorance

2018-05-15T08:00:00-07:00

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.

If a common light bulb is 6 centimeters wide, and I made all the sizes and distances proportional, Neptune would have to be located at 193 meters from the bulb.

My kid’s room is not that big.

Also, the moon would have to be .14 milimeters in diameter.

Then I got angry at all the illustrations of the solar system I’ve seen in my entire life. They are so misleading! Why couldn’t they just depict the orbits and planets in a proportional way? Thinking a little bit harder, I realized it is simply impossible to do it in print, or in any practical media for that matter. Here’s a proportional depiction of the solar system in a webpage by Josh Worth.

So, at the end I don’t know if the basic education system failed me, or my common sense did.

I decided to go with glowing stars in the ceiling.

Free sticker PSD mockup

2017-10-09T08:00:00-07:00

I constantly find myself looking for free PSD mockups to present work, usually for small things like stickers, mugs, or posters. Today I couldn’t find a decent one for a set of stickers, and instead of buying a premium one, I decided to scratch my own itch, make my own and share it with you.

How to use it

Usage is fairly easy:

Open the file in Photoshop
Double click the smart object icon on the topmost layer
Paste the artwork of your sticker in the file that just opened
Save the file with your artwork and go back to the mockup image
…
Profit!

The mockup automagically adds padding to your artwork, so there’s no need to worry about that. Just copy and paste as it is.

Download It

This is a free resource and it will always be, but if you're able to, please consider buying me a coffee. You can do so by clicking the button at the bottom-left corner of this page.

Download
Free Sticker PSD Mockup

You can use it for whatever you want, no strings attached. If you like it, recommend it to your friends. For any comments, here's a handy contact form :).

In awe of modern inventions

2017-06-28T08:00:00-07:00

Before photography was invented, people could only see that in front of their eyes. To experience the rest of the world, people had to physically travel, or, if they couldn’t afford it, to use other’s interpretation of remote places via narrative or painting.

That’s why the invention of photography was so huge for the human race. It removed a limit that most people didn’t even thought was there, and it opened the possibility of exploring the physical world beyond our reach.

Today we don’t believe anymore that everything important was already invented, but we have an attitude of cynicism to every new thing that comes along. In 2017 we even have cars that drive themselves, and we aren’t excited at all.

These are two (now) very basic inventions that occurred during my lifetime and changed me forever.

The Internet

One of the first things that blew my mind when I first experienced the internet back in the 1990s wasn’t the web, or email, but the possibility of connecting with random people all around the world.

I remember chatting with people from Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Philippines, Malaysia, Spain. At the time I hadn’t traveled more than 500km from my hometown, so these conversations always left me in awe, even when they usually went on superficial subjects from “how’s your house/street/city” to “what kind of music do you listen to?”.

Google Earth

The first time I used Google Earth, I felt a mix of excitement with something very similar to fear. It was awe again. I moused all around the sphere on my screen, watching aerial views of famous locations, then known cities, then my house, my relatives houses, my school. In every single step I took, I expected the experience to fail, but every single time, the experience delivered.

When photos were invented, we still needed somebody going places and taking pictures. With the internet chatrooms, we could only talk to people logged in to the same chat room we were in, but with Google Earth, everything was there. Not the necessary stuff, not the important stuff, everything.

Months after that, Google started adding maps, street photos and directions on top of Google Earth. This kind of stuff made the tool practical for everyday use. But at first, Google Earth simply removed a limit we didn’t knew we had. And that was, again, awesome.