Stories and reflections from my life—moments that shaped me, lessons I’m still learning, and thoughts I can’t shake. These posts are personal, often vulnerable, and sometimes a little messy. Just like life.
Fall has always been the season I’m most conflicted about. It gets darker and colder, and in Colorado, things start to freeze. Especially in October. Since it’s October 22nd, I thought I’d pause to reflect on the past and look toward the future.
I’ve been assigned to think back on 2025 and look forward to 2026, and honestly, I’m a little stuck. It’s been a while since I’ve done real reflection and forward planning in a concrete way. Sure, I worry about things I’ve done or things to come, but that kind of worrying isn’t productive. Putting thoughts like these on the screen takes presence, and that’s something I’m learning to prioritize.
Personal Reflections on 2025
This year, I’ve continued to focus on taking care of myself, physically and mentally. I stopped drinking alcohol in 2020 and haven’t looked back. It’s simply not good for me, and I feel better without it. I still enjoy spending time with friends and family who do drink, but the biggest gift of quitting has been regaining my mornings. I wake up early now, feeling clear and creative. I’ve developed a morning writing habit that I plan to keep nurturing, as this very post demonstrates.
I’ve also been plant-based since 2012, and that lifestyle has become second nature. It keeps me healthy and helps me avoid overindulging in my favorite activity: eating. Lately, I’ve been using ChatGPT to plan meals and create recipes, which has expanded my culinary horizons and made learning generative AI feel tangible and practical.
Exercise and physical activity continue to be a work in progress. I use Apple Fitness+ most mornings. Their on-demand classes make it easy to stay consistent. Since I spend so much of my day at a desk (or couch), staying mobile is non-negotiable. I’ve gotten better about walking the dogs, taking breaks, and even getting out on my bike more often. I still haven’t conquered pull-ups yet, 2026 might be the year for that.
As I get older, my risk tolerance has shifted. I descend a bit slower on my mountain bike and snowboard. The thrill has evolved: it’s less about adrenaline now and more about being outdoors with friends. The joy is in the experience, not the edge.
Professional Reflections on 2025
Travel and Events
This year brought more work travel than any other in my career, and I’ve loved it. I’ve visited new cities and returned to familiar ones, but the highlight was Basel, Switzerland. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I found it charming: kind people, beautiful old town, and a grounded energy. Presenting at WordCamp Europe there for the first time was a milestone. Altogether, I’ve attended 11 events so far in 2025, with three more to go. I’m genuinely enjoying the travel: meeting new people, reconnecting with colleagues, and deepening friendships.
Public Speaking
Public speaking has become one of the most rewarding shifts in my professional life. I went from just one talk in 2024 to seven so far this year, with one more in December, eight total. That’s a huge leap for someone who used to dread the stage. Joining my local Toastmasters club has helped immensely. It’s a space to refine my skills and encourage others to find their voice too.
Work Projects
Two big projects stand out: our open-source sponsorship program and our agency partner program relaunch.
The sponsorship project has distributed tens of thousands of dollars to contributors and projects worldwide. I still sometimes feel like an intermediary, but it’s deeply satisfying to see our company supporting something bigger than ourselves.
The agency partner program has been years in the making, and this year it finally relaunched. The goal is to help agencies grow their businesses using our infrastructure and services. It’s just the beginning. Now comes the real work of building relationships, understanding needs, and connecting partners with customers. WordPress may be free to download, but creating a consistent, professional experience takes collaboration. Helping agencies deliver that feels meaningful.
Generative AI
AI has found a permanent seat in my workflow. It saves time, helps me organize thoughts, and frees me to write more. Still, I sometimes question whether it’s making me sharper or lazier. Maybe both. The irony is that I’m writing more on my own now than I have since college.
The best part, though, is the conversations: hearing how others use AI and helping people integrate it into their work. It’s exciting to see curiosity turn into confidence.
Community
The Durango WordPress Meetup turned one year old this month since I relaunched it. It had gone dormant during COVID, and reviving it has been a rewarding challenge. Attendance fluctuates, you’d think free lunch would help, but I’m learning the importance of consistency and better outreach. The goal is simple: keep showing up and building community, one month at a time.
Personal Goals for 2026
I turn 50 at the end of next year, a milestone that somehow feels both heavy and light. My memory isn’t as sharp, my joints aren’t as forgiving, but overall, I feel strong and optimistic.
Goals for the year:
Finally master the pull-up.
Have a fun and injury-free snowboarding season.
Plan an anniversary trip, location TBD.
Deepen friendships, even if that means making more effort in a small town where few people work in tech.
Decide how to use my upcoming month-long sabbatical. Last time, I took it in July, which opens up endless summer options. Or maybe I’ll chase snow to South America, learn Spanish, and keep winter going.
Professional Goals for 2026
Public Speaking
Toastmasters remains a cornerstone of my growth. I’m working through the Presentation Mastery pathway, starting with my Ice Breaker speech this year. More importantly, I’ve realized how much I need in-person connection. Remote work is efficient, but it can also be isolating. Toastmasters offers that rare combination of practice, feedback, and human contact.
Next year, I want to double my 2025 speaking engagements, aiming for 16 talks. That means applying to at least 32 events, knowing I’ll be accepted to some fraction of them. I’ll start that outreach soon. My focus areas include:
The critical role of websites in an increasingly gated digital world.
Automating plugin updates as the foundation of website security.
Personal growth in a digital age: how to stay human amid constant change.
Agency Partnerships
My goal is to deepen relationships with agency partners and cut through the noise around AI. There’s still too much fear, confusion, and short-term thinking in digital marketing. Agencies that thrive will be the ones building fast, functional, mobile-friendly websites. Ones that make it easy for customers to take action. It’s surprising how many sites still make paying or contacting someone difficult.
I’ll keep focusing on co-marketing, lead sharing, and helping partners connect with clients who truly value quality.
Open Source and Community
Our open-source sponsorship program is off to a strong start, but I’d like to expand our impact, both as a company and as a community. Locally, I want to grow the Durango WordPress Meetup, build a simple website for it, and start publishing useful content for attendees. A little “dogfooding” wouldn’t hurt either.
Leadership and Mentorship
At this stage in my career, leadership feels less about titles and more about teaching. I want to help others see what’s possible on the web; to share what I’ve learned about creativity, communication, and connection. I might even reboot a blogging challenge like the one I ran years ago, this time with more focus and structure (and maybe some Toastmasters influence).
Do I want to move into management again? Maybe. There’s potential to grow our partnerships team in North America. The question is how to scale relationships while keeping them genuine.
AI Tools
AI continues to be the frontier. The tools are powerful, sometimes magical, but they still depend on thoughtful input and careful execution. I plan to take a few structured courses next year to deepen my understanding and consistency. The more I master these tools, the more effectively I can apply them to everything else I do.
Conclusion
That turned out longer than I expected, but worth it. Writing this helped me process a lot of what’s been swirling in my head. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope it inspires you to pause and take stock of your own year too.
There’s something deeply reassuring about hearing a seasoned contributor say, “I had no idea what I was doing.”
That’s how my conversation with Olga Gleckler began. What followed was an honest, funny, and moving conversation about her path from hardware student to software developer—and eventually, to an outspoken advocate for contributor mentorship in WordPress.
“I started writing my own CMS… because I didn’t know better. WordPress was like a revelation.”
Olga shared how a frustrating job, a broken website, and a bit of curiosity led her down the WordPress path. From her early days reverse-engineering PHP to the moment she discovered the WordPress community through WordCamp Nordic, her journey is anything but linear.
We talked about what drew her to WordPress (spoiler: it’s hooks and flexibility), her love-hate relationship with Gutenberg (she’s now fully onboard), and the future of WordPress contribution. Her biggest mission now? Making contribution more accessible for newcomers:
“You don’t want to do work that no one needs. You need support. But you also need to ask. That’s why mentorship matters.”
Olga believes mentorship shouldn’t be a limited-run program, but a permanent and accessible part of the contributor ecosystem. And I couldn’t agree more.
If you care about the future of WordPress, this is an interview you shouldn’t miss.
👉 Want to connect with Olga? You’ll find her in Make WordPress Slack or on Twitter: @olgagleckler
Full Transcript
Roger Williams (00:00) When did you start getting involved with that and start contributing back to the project?
Olga Gleckler (00:04) Firstly, I had no idea about any community that exists, but when my boss started to switch to this system, I was sure that it’s like a mistake. I started to look around for support group. I needed some people who understand me and found out my local community, my local meetup. I am very grateful that people was doing this thing. And then I started to look for more events and
I was lucky again because it was WordCamp Nordic. In 2019, in February, I went there. It was quick, cheap for me and I was so excited. This event opened a whole new world for me. So first thing I did when I went back from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, I bought a ticket to Berlin. And from Berlin, I started to contribute to marketing. I was so excited and I…
Roger Williams (00:33) Okay.
Olga Gleckler (00:55) had a great time in marketing team and big thank you to Abatako who mentored me and pushed me forward and convinced me that I actually can do things.
Roger Williams (01:05) Hey y’all, it’s Roger with Kinsta. I’m joined today by a new friend, Olga. Hey, Olga, how are you?
Olga Gleckler (01:11) Nice, thank you. Great to see you.
Roger Williams (01:13) Yeah, it’s great to see you too. We ran into each other for the first time at WordCamp EU earlier this year and had a lovely conversation about all things WordPress. And so I’m really excited to get you on this show because I want to learn more about not only what you’re working on currently and in the future, but also learn like more about how you got into development and how you got into WordPress code. So take us back a little bit. How did you get into becoming a developer?
Olga Gleckler (01:39) You know, when I finished my education at school, I was thinking logically. I had no idea what I want to do, but future is sure is with computers, right? So you have to do something with computers. And I decided to be a programmer, but I messed up a bit and turned out that I was studying hardware instead of software.
Anyway, I landed a job in a software company just updating system at clients. It’s like closest thing to software I was able to land the job on. And then I think I wanted to become a programmer, but I was like, I had no idea how to start. And then I had some lousy job, but…
Roger Williams (02:11) Okay.
Olga Gleckler (02:25) My boss had a site that needs to be maintained and he had a row with the developer actually. So I took it to maintaining and I started to decipher how it’s working. I understood this and since this I started like, like normally it turns out that I can do these things. And, but I, I was not like very bold to apply for a job.
as a developer. So it was a couple of more years before I actually started a job as a developer. So you need to take a carriage.
Roger Williams (03:00) Yeah, no, absolutely. So with that first website, how was that being built? Was that just raw HTML or was there a system to
Olga Gleckler (03:08) It was custom made system by this developer, but I read the code on PHP. I understood this. I started to write my own content management systems. Yeah. So I took a way to these things because I had no idea how things should be done. So I had only one working example, but I was lucky to have this. And actually I started to write my own things.
Roger Williams (03:18) Ha ha ha.
No,
Okay. At what point did WordPress kind of enter the scene for you?
Olga Gleckler (03:39) Of course, when I started to develop sites, people started asking me to help with something that already exists. And I started to came across WordPress. Sometimes, for example, a developer made a mistake in infinite loop in its theme. And I had no idea what is the whole thing is about. It took me like two whole days, the whole weekend to find this loop.
But I solved the problem and it was the key.
Roger Williams (04:08) Okay, absolutely. When did it kind of click like, wow, this WordPress is much easier than just rolling my own content management system?
Olga Gleckler (04:18) I think it clicked very quickly, but I didn’t, was able to, like figure out which system is the best one. I was working with another one and with a couple more systems, but then I, of course, I landed a job in fashion company and I had a site to maintain and develop further. But then my boss decided to, that he needs a like cool new look.
Roger Williams (04:26) Okay.
Olga Gleckler (04:44) And I was unable to produce cool look. I can produce like normal functional look, not cool one. So, and he found an agency and they’ve sold him another system I’ve already working with and had no great experience with this one. But they sold this system to my boss and I was like in shock because I was feeling that we are making a mistake, but I had like no voice. No…
nothing against this decision. It was like right feelings because it took like two years, a lot of money, a lot of stress for everyone and both blaming me as a result that I didn’t tell him that it is a mistake. Yeah, so…
Roger Williams (05:30) Yeah.
Olga Gleckler (05:33) At this point I’ve already understood that WordPress is the best choice and decided to stood with WordPress. So we built this horrible thing and I went then they asked me to return back and I supported them One year and a half more Yeah, and finally finally when I landed full-time cool job. I Told them no, I cannot support you anymore for years
Roger Williams (05:55) Oof. ⁓
Olga Gleckler (05:58) and
it took them four years more to rebuild it with another system. Yeah, people stumble on the same rake again.
Roger Williams (06:03) jeez.
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so you started, now you’re like, okay, WordPress is kind of what I want to work with. Was there any like specific features about WordPress that made you initially go, yeah, this is the one to work
Olga Gleckler (06:20) I think hooks because I can figure out how to do things on my way. Like if I need to change some things, I can do this and I’m sure that I can do this and all plugins like reliable plugins offer hooks as well. So you know that some things can be done. You just need to figure out how to find right hooks, et cetera. And for example, REST API as well.
you can easily extend it by your own endpoint and do whatever you want. It’s easy. And if things are looking hard with WordPress, most likely you are doing them the wrong way. So it is easy. Everything is easy. Apart possibly from good at work. Let’s take a bit.
Roger Williams (07:06) Okay. Okay.
All right. So are you sold on Gutenberg or is it kind of still iffy for you?
Olga Gleckler (07:14) No, I’m doing blogs, I’m working with blogs right now all the time, but it took me like a month to figure out how things are working. It was like next big challenge. Right now I’m quite comfortable and quite happy because yet again I can do whatever I want. editors are happy when I’m presenting you like new feature. Of course, my manager is presenting new feature.
Roger Williams (07:26) Gotcha, gotcha.
Olga Gleckler (07:40) getting all the excitement from editors and I’m just getting a response that it’s working great.
Roger Williams (07:49) Alright, alright. Okay, so at what point, so you’re working, you’re designing, you’re building with WordPress, at what point did you realize, hey, there’s this whole other side of WordPress, the open source project. When did you start getting involved with that and start contributing back to the project?
Olga Gleckler (08:07) Firstly, I had no idea about any community that exists, but when my boss started to switch to this system, I was sure that it’s like a mistake. I started to look around for support group. I needed some people who understand me and found out my local community, my local meetup. I am very grateful that people was doing this thing. And then I started to look for more events and
I was lucky again because it was WordCamp Nordic. In 2019, in February, I went there. It was quick, cheap for me and I was so excited. This event opened a whole new world for me. So first thing I did when I went back from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, I bought a ticket to Berlin. And from Berlin, I started to contribute to marketing. I was so excited and I…
Roger Williams (08:38) Okay.
Olga Gleckler (09:02) had a great time in marketing team and big thank you to Abatako who mentored me and pushed me forward and convinced me that I actually can do things.
Roger Williams (09:12) Excellent. So, would you say that the in-person events for WordPress are really what pushed you even more into the community?
Olga Gleckler (09:21) Yeah, to feel you like part of a community. But of course we had great time online in the marketing team and right now we still have this great time, but WordCamps is the things you should not miss.
Roger Williams (09:35) Absolutely. Okay, so today you’re involved with testing and some different things. What are you currently working on and what are you looking forward to work on when it comes to the open source project?
Olga Gleckler (09:49) Right now I am a representative of the test team, but my term is going to the end. We will have new people. And right now I’m looking forward to support new contributors in WordCamp Asia as part of the organizing team. And I’m thinking about things I can do in community, investigate a bit more. But of course I’m very interested in continue to support new contributors because…
This is the future and helping people is what motivates me. think this is very important. Providing an ability for people to learn to help them grow.
Roger Williams (10:26) Absolutely, the mentor side of the WordPress project to me is always the most impressive part of it. Because with open source, right, the whole idea is this community and getting people in and working on the project. It seems like right now one of the issues that I keep seeing is that the contributors to WordPress are aging out a little bit. Like I’ve got gray hairs in my beard here if you can see, but…
Olga Gleckler (10:51) you
Roger Williams (10:52) What is your take on how do we get younger people more interested in WordPress?
Olga Gleckler (10:58) You know, think Gutenberg is one thing because we need new cool look inside and outside. And of course, we have a new initiative to bring aboard more students like Campus Connect, but we need a system because right now what we have like an issue is that people are contributing like, for example, a patch. And then this patch…
Roger Williams (11:04) Okay.
Yes.
Olga Gleckler (11:23) No one is bothering about this patch. We need establish a flow. Some people to review this, some people to push this forward and make it consistent and provide help to new contributors for them to stay and get comfortable. So I think this is like a big work needs to be done. So it’s not about making patches, it’s about the system itself.
Roger Williams (11:46) Okay, all right, so maybe digging into that a little bit more, and I’m not a developer here, so many things will go over my head quickly, but my understanding is the easiest way for people to get involved is doing like a bug scrub type of thing, right? And start looking at tickets and seeing how they can fix things. But what you’re really talking about is actually adding code and contributing patches and contributing improvements to it.
What about the current program do you feel makes it more difficult for new people to get involved?
Olga Gleckler (12:18) everything and you’re not sure how to start and there is like even if you are looking for like good first bucks it not exactly
It’s not exactly 100 % guarantee that they are actually easy things. Someone decided that they are easy, but it’s someone else’s opinion as well. And we have a lot of tickets to look forward. So right now what we are offering people in test team is to specialize on one component. Take small thing.
look through the whole tickets, find some patterns, find some connections, understand the whole system before you actually will be doing something. And of course, you should ask if you have doubts, people with more experience, because you don’t want to do some job that no one needs actually. So
You need help, but sometimes you need to ask for this help and be open to communication and to interaction with people. Because if you are staying calm and just get lost, you are stuck. So you need to collaborate with people, ask questions.
And this is what we need to offer to people, make more easier for them because some people are shy. No one wants to look stupid or something. Like, I don’t know, things. Yeah, because we have like complicated things. We have a lot of tickets, more than 8,000 only in core and we have Gutenberg as well. So a lot of things to do. So we need some people who will be guiding new contributors, who helping, who reviewing and make it consistent. Yeah, it’s…
for me it’s like a dream I want this to be happening
Roger Williams (14:00) Okay, all right, so there is already a mentorship program for people to get involved with. Do you think that that’s going on the right track?
Olga Gleckler (14:09) We had several contributor manager programs, but right now we don’t have active program. So it was like three times we did this. So I think we need this on consistent base. So if I want to be taught, if I need a mentor, I’m raising hand and waiting until I will get a or something.
Roger Williams (14:16) Okay
Olga Gleckler (14:33) make some kind of group of people and mentors with them, like working in a group, something like this. So I think we should have this more consistent and like all the time.
Roger Williams (14:47) Okay, you think, you know, one of the things that came across to me when I was looking at the mentorship program is it seemed very organized, but at the same time, maybe too organized. And what I mean by that is it was very regiment. You had a certain number of people that could apply and be a part of it. And from talking with you right now, it seems like maybe we just have a channel.
in make slack that’s for mentoring, you for people that are looking for mentors and they just they go in there and they say, hey, I could use some help with this. Does somebody want to help me understand something like this? Is that kind of what you’re proposing here?
Olga Gleckler (15:26) I think we need some kind of things in between because people are asking questions about it’s like one time and sometimes they got an answer, sometimes don’t because it’s just lost in the process of a lot of questions and everything in the channels. So I think we need people who will raise their hands to be mentors like all the time or part-time. For example, I can mentor people like two hours a week.
Roger Williams (15:52) Okay.
Olga Gleckler (15:53) And
I’m available on certain hours and I’m like taking, making session and everyone can come and ask questions or something like this. And people are really value life interaction. Somehow it’s working better than writing things down. I don’t know why, but yeah, it’s like it is.
Roger Williams (16:11) Yeah, absolutely. And I wonder if there’s an opportunity, maybe with the contributor days at different word camps to have a whole section of it of like the mentorship part of the contributor day. Do you see that potentially as being helpful or is there already kind of an aspect of this in contributor days?
Olga Gleckler (16:30) We have to think about this. Right now with WordCamp Asia, we are thinking about raising more table leads inside the community to have a lot of support for new contributors. So possibly we can combine this initiative with Contributor Mentorship Program and make some kind of consistent income of…
people with experience. Something to grow people from new contributors to experienced contributors to table leads to team representatives, etc. So we need to grow them in more, more, more, bunches. And I have no idea what is the right word about two bunches. Anyway.
Roger Williams (16:55) Okay.
No, absolutely. I
think what you’re saying is we really need to establish a more consistent mentorship program so that people can sign up as mentors easily and then people can be mentees easily. And maybe the existing program is maybe just a little too regiment, but we need to have some sort of organization to really make it work. So.
It’s fascinating. I love seeing your passion and excitement for the project and your enthusiasm. WordCamp Asia, sounds like, is going to be the next big WordCamp event for you. Is there anything else coming up that you want to mention?
Olga Gleckler (17:46) I have two PHP conferences.
this autumn, so I am preparing in Russia, so I am preparing for them. I am campaigning for WordPress inside Russia because you know, you need to go outside of WordPress bubble, our safe zone. So you need to go to PHP community to show them how WordPress is working, to make them understand. At one conference, I am a backup speaker. On the second conference, I am like normal speaker and I will be talking about.
Roger Williams (18:01) Hmm. Yes.
Olga Gleckler (18:16) So I think it’s quite important for people to understand these things.
Roger Williams (18:20) Excellent, excellent. We’ll share the link, we’ll get the link shared with all of those so that people know where to go. And I like the idea of getting outside of the WordPress bubble. You mentioned PHP. Do you think it’s also beneficial to get into like the JavaScript groups because of all of the React and stuff in Gutenberg now?
Olga Gleckler (18:37) I applied to a conference that called Frontend and they decided that Gutenberg is not so much of a frontend. I was trying to explain that this is still a frontend, but I’ll try again.
Roger Williams (18:48) Okay, all right. So maybe that’s where the rest of the community can also start working is really reaching out to the JavaScript community more and see if we can get something there. Olga, it’s great to talk to you. Thank you so much for the insights into how you got into WordPress and your thoughts about contributing and mentorship. If people want to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to reach out?
Olga Gleckler (19:08) I think in Slack, it makes WordPress Slack. But of course, if you don’t have WordPress Slack or if you have some issues with it, I am on Twitter as well. So you can easily find me.
Roger Williams (19:17) Okay?
Fantastic, fantastic. Olga, it’s great to talk to you. I look forward to seeing you again soon in person and hopefully have you back on here to talk more about WordPress in the future.
Olga Gleckler (19:30) Thank you very much, it’s so exciting. My pleasure.
When I sat down to chat with Arpit G Shah, I wasn’t expecting to get a crash course in how a client request turned into a thriving WordPress plugin business. But that’s exactly what I got.
Arpit started out building custom websites in India after graduating in Information Technology. Like many of us, his early experience was hands-on: working in PHP, customizing themes, tweaking plugins, and delivering websites for a wide range of clients.
But it didn’t take long for the realities of agency life to set in.
“We needed to offer service during the day and also stay up late to support overseas clients,” Arpit told me. “It became hard to manage. That’s when I started looking for something more scalable.”
That “something” turned into WPSyncSheets, a plugin business born out of a real-world problem: a client needed to manage data between Gravity Forms and Google Sheets in real time. So Arpit built the integration, and then realized it wasn’t just a one-off. There was real product-market fit.
He launched the first plugin in 2018 and hasn’t looked back. Today, WPSyncSheets includes integrations for Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, and more, with features like syncing coupons, inventory, and pricing directly from Google Sheets.
It’s the kind of plugin that scratches a real itch for agencies and store owners alike.
What’s next? AI.
Arpit’s team is working on WPSyncSheets AI, a new version designed to help manage massive inventories, think 50,000 products, while detecting duplicates and mismatches between data fields automatically. It’s not just about automation; it’s about insight.
“The AI will clean and map the data for you,” Arpit said. “It’s about making things easier before import.”
On top of that, Arpit’s deeply involved in the WordPress scene in India, co-organizing his local meetup and encouraging global folks to come to WordCamp Asia in 2026.
“We had 2,000 people at just one local meetup,” he said. “Imagine what WordCamp Asia will be like!”
If you’re building plugins, managing clients, or just thinking about how to shift from service to product, Arpit’s story is worth following. It’s proof that you can go from solving one client’s problem… to helping thousands of others solve theirs too.
A meditation on standing tall, eating well, pulling back, tuning in, and finding balance in life
Balance Is a Moving Target
I’ve been thinking a lot about balance lately.
Not just the kind that keeps you from tipping over when you’re walking on a rocky trail or holding a yoga pose. But the kind that threads through your entire day—quietly adjusting itself from one moment to the next. Balance in your body, your plate, your head, your heart. In your work. In your relationships.
Balance isn’t something you “find” and keep forever. It’s something you practice, lose, and return to—again and again.
It’s a rhythm. Or maybe a song you’re constantly remixing. Adjusting the bass and treble until things sound just right. Some days you hit it. Other days, not even close. But tuning in? That’s the key.
Warrior II and a Broken Finger
Take yoga, for example.
Warrior II looks simple, but once you’re in it—feet grounded, arms reaching in opposite directions—you realize it demands presence. You’re rooted and open at the same time.
It’s a stance that reminds me I’m strong, I’m capable, and I’m ready for the day.
Then there’s the less graceful side of balance—like when I flew over the handlebars of my mountain bike during a race and broke a finger. That moment was humbling. I finished the race, sure. But it cost me. Physically and emotionally.
It taught me that I don’t need to race through life. I can push myself without pushing past myself.
Every morning starts with a bowl of oatmeal that’s become its own kind of meditation. Not just oats—flax, chia, hemp seeds, cranberries, dates, cacao, cinnamon, nutmeg, and blueberries. A whole rainbow in a bowl. It grounds me.
And at night? A different ritual. My wife and I make ice cream sundaes with homemade brownies and chocolate syrup.
It’s how we say: “We made it through today. Let’s celebrate that.”
I don’t count calories. I count colors, satisfaction, and joy. Especially during work travel, I try to stay balanced—fruit in the bag, a drink mix for breakfast, moderation on the road.
Emotional Centering and Curious Dogs
I remember being a kid, standing in a schoolyard, getting mocked for what I was wearing. Back then I’d lash out—or withdraw. Now I try to laugh. Not dismissively, but compassionately.
People project their own stuff. Unless my shirt’s actually unbuttoned (which—thank you), I let it go.
Balance, emotionally, isn’t about always being calm. It’s about choosing the right energy for the moment.
I use tools to stay centered: – 10 minutes of meditation each morning – Journaling each night – Morning dog walks to absorb their pure joy – Classical music at dinner to slow things down
These little rituals help me stay aware of where I am—and where I need to be.
Over-Giving, Pulling Back, and Showing Up
In relationships, balance is one of the trickiest dances.
I tend to over-give—especially at the beginning. Friends, partners, colleagues—I show up. And sometimes, the other person doesn’t.
That realization stings.
In romance, it’s heartbreak. At work, it’s a wake-up call. In both cases, it’s an invitation to reevaluate.
I’ve had to learn to step back. To let others meet me in the middle—or not at all. Sometimes the healthiest thing is space. A little distance to reset, recalibrate, and then reconnect.
Work That Feeds Me
Right now, I’m in a good place professionally.
About 90% of what I do brings me joy—and I know how rare that is. I get to connect with people. Host meaningful conversations. Create. Grow.
Joy at work is a gift—but like anything else, it needs support, alignment, and structure to stay balanced.
I’ve got a manager who helps me stay grounded. They push me into the discomfort that leads to growth—like speaking more and owning my voice.
Still, I’ve got room to grow. I want to get better at communicating what I’m doing and syncing up with others. I like working solo, but I know I’m stronger when I collaborate.
Tuning In, Every Day
Balance isn’t a finish line. It’s not something you achieve and lock in forever.
It’s rhythm. Some days, a steady beat. Other days, a jazz solo that barely holds together.
But I trust I can come back to it. Pause. Adjust. Tune in.
Like fine-tuning a photo until the colors pop. Like shifting my weight in Warrior II. Like making a sundae—not for nutrition, but for joy.
So here’s my question for you:
Where do you feel off-balance right now? And what’s one small thing you can adjust—today—to bring it back into tune?
I grew up around food. Not in a Michelin-star kitchen or a trendy farm-to-table bistro, but in my mom’s deli store—where we sold everything from stacked sandwiches to Beluga caviar. It wasn’t fancy, but it was serious about quality. We catered to some high-end tourists, and I got exposed to ingredients most kids didn’t know existed. Brie, Camembert, Muenster—you name it, I tried it.
It’s a bit ironic now that I’m vegan, given how much cheese was part of my early palate, but that upbringing gave me an appreciation for good food and the craft of making it.
The Chef That Wasn’t
That appreciation followed me for a while. I worked in kitchens during college and even considered culinary school. But after enough shifts in hot commercial kitchens—sweating over fryers, sprinting through prep lists, getting burned both literally and metaphorically—I realized professional cooking might not be the dream. Hard work, low pay, and not enough creative spark for me.
Much later, I flirted with the idea of becoming a vegetable farmer. That dream wilted too, once I understood how truly hard farming is. Again, deep respect. Again, not quite my path.
Why This Matters Now
So why bring all this up on a blog about media and technology?
Because every experience we have—failed careers, childhood snacks, prep shifts in hot kitchens—builds the lens through which we see the world. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how large language models like ChatGPT fit into that lens. And one answer I keep circling back to is this:
They’re most useful when you bring something to the table.
The Art of Prep (and Prompting)
Let me explain. I’ve been using ChatGPT to help me with meal planning. Not just one-off recipe suggestions, but complete weekly meal plans: multiple dinners, tailored to our diet (vegan), with full ingredient lists, caloric targets, and bulk prep checklists.
Last week it gave me five solid meals: zucchini fritters, a butternut lentil shepherd’s pie, a Thai-style curry, a stir-fry, and something I’m now forgetting—but all delicious. I gave it the ingredients I had on hand, asked for meals to serve four, and it generated the full plan, shopping list, and prep workflow.
I spent Sunday doing all the bulk prep—chopping, steaming, roasting. Just like a line cook in a restaurant. The biggest difference between home cooking and restaurant cooking is preparation. Once you have things chopped and portioned, making a meal on a Tuesday night takes 20 minutes instead of 60.
The Festival Twist
This week was different. Kate and I are heading to a bluegrass festival halfway through the week, so I had ChatGPT help me create four one-pot meals we could reheat easily in a trailer. We froze some, packed others, and just like that, festival food was solved.
Was it perfect? No. The shopping list still takes some cleanup. Getting it into Apple Reminders involves a little copy-paste dance. But the value is there—and it keeps getting better.
Experience Still Matters
Here’s the key point though: this works because I know how to cook. I’ve been cooking for over 40 years. I can glance at a recipe and tell if it’s going to work—or not. I’ve chopped every vegetable under the sun, cooked rice a thousand ways, burned things and salvaged them. That experience matters.
LLMs don’t replace knowledge. They amplify it.
If you don’t know the difference between sauté and simmer, it won’t matter how good the recipe looks. If you can’t taste for salt, AI won’t help you. But if you’ve got some knowledge—just enough to see patterns, evaluate options, and tweak where needed—then these tools can be transformative.
The Tools Are Here. Use Them.
There’s a lot of debate out there about AI tools. Some people think they’re going to take over the world. Others think they’re glorified spell checkers. I live somewhere in the big, messy middle. They’re not magic. They’re not junk. They’re useful.
You don’t need to be a technologist to try them. Just be curious. Give them something to work with. Treat them like a very fast, mildly unreliable intern. And then—like in cooking—trust your taste.
Why I’m writing, what you’ll find here, and what “The Hard Easy” means to me
I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by media. Books, magazines, TV, arcades, music, the web—I’ve consumed and created across nearly every format. And over time, I’ve come to see media not just as entertainment or information, but as a mirror. A mirror of who we are, what we want, and where we’re going.
This blog is my place to explore that—personally and professionally.
Roger Williams Media is part archive, part notebook, part digital campfire. I’ll be writing about:
The tools and platforms that shape how we work
WordPress, open-source, and the tech community I’m proud to be part of
Communication, content, and the ethics of digital marketing
Leadership, career shifts, and choosing your own path
My personal journey with things like health, training my dog, and walking trail half-marathons in the desert
And bigger themes like media addiction, clarity, purpose, and building a meaningful life in a noisy world
Underneath it all is a simple idea I call The Hard Easy.
It’s the philosophy that guides how I live and work:
If you do the hard thing now, life often gets easier later. If you avoid it, things usually get harder.
It shows up everywhere—from building websites to building habits. From answering that one awkward email to launching the project you’ve been avoiding for months.
I believe in making things, in helping others, and in sharing what I’ve learned—even when I’m still figuring it out.
So whether you’re here for a practical tip, a perspective shift, or just to see what I’ve been thinking about lately, I’m glad you stopped by.
