spencer's paradoxes

welcome in, make yourself at home, and i’ll grab you a glass of tea :)

This newsletter is about joy, gratitude, and dreams. It’s about appreciating every moment of life and dreaming of better alternative futures and sometimes feeling like you can’t do much of living or dreaming but struggling to do so anyways and loving yourself and the world around you even more because of it.

This newsletter is separated into two sections:

1. spencer’s paradoxes (unfiltered thoughts in the form of personal essays): An experiment in semi-public intimacy through sharing a journal for the things I’m struggling with, obsessing with, and caught in wonder by. I try to make this a vulnerable space by baring my feelings, so I hope you’ll respond in kind and share with me how you feel or if my writing reminds you of anything. I’m happy to listen.

2. tiny internets (lab notes & project announcements around my computing/art/tool explorations): A running log focused around a human-first future of computing, an alternative imagination from where we are and where we’re headed with the current state of technology. I imagine a relationship with computing where, as a medium, it is as accessible as writing, an everyday magic. It is a material that people can shape according to their needs, and as a space, it makes people feel safe to play, express themselves, and make homes. My explorations center around how creative tools and digital spaces can be used to make personal, home-cooked software that empowers everyday function, emotional resonance, and playful imagination.

Much like myself, this newsletter is a messy assemblage of dreams, semi-processed emotions, provocative questions, wonder appreciations, gratitude, and creations that answer what ifs. I called this newsletter my paradoxes partially for this reason. I find it hard to focus on one thing at a time and often drift between opposites. I find that the truest things lie somewhere in both of the opposing extremes.

Who am I?

Hi, I’m Spencer, a creative technologist, developer of poetics, and dream researcher. I use this space to share my explorations into more human-oriented, communal, agencyful technology and share a public journal around my thoughts. I work as a software engineer on creative tools and am a creative at heart. Creation always manages to help me find some extra wonder and joy in all the little things in life whether it’s experimenting with new combos for food, outfits, software, writing, dance movements, walking, and more. I’ve lived in San Francisco for the past 3 years and find myself drawn to planting roots in places, people, and objects.

All my work is available on my website and my mostly unfiltered thoughts land in twitter.