Werd I/O

Content warning: discussion of body dysmorphia, weight loss.

I stopped testing positive for covid a while ago, but I’ve still been feeling very low-energy. I measure my activity on my Apple Watch - yes, I’m that person - and I haven’t managed to close my activity rings for weeks. Correspondingly, I’m pretty sure I’ve been gaining weight.

I’ve never felt very comfortable with my body: I’ve been much bigger than most of the people around me for most of my life. I’m 6’4” tall and, unlike many tall people, look like I’ve been proportionally enlarged in Photoshop. Over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the trauma surrounding caring for my mother and her subsequent loss, as well as the unfortunate effects of aging, those proportions have been softening.

I wish I could be smaller. Getting fitter and losing weight is at least somewhat within my control, but the overall proportions of my body - that height, the bigness of me - is something I have to live with. I don’t enjoy it. When I was much younger, I wanted to hurt myself over it. Now it’s more of a background discomfort, which sometimes comes into the foreground when I have to go shopping for clothes or catch myself in a full-length mirror. I move awkwardly and look awkward.

Should I be more comfortable in my own skin now that I’m rapidly approaching my mid-forties? Probably. It’s not a place I’ve ever managed to get to. It particularly doesn’t feel great after a long period of illness-related inactivity, but I’m digging deep to try and get over my discomfort and concentrate on the bits that relate to my health.

Covid really sucks; I hope to never get it again. I’m still wearing an N95 mask indoors, and I hope you are too. I’ve checked in with a few friends who are also recovering from it, and most of them are also still in this low-energy phase. Our brains aren’t completely back up and running, but we’re grateful to at least be breathing easily. I certainly feel that it pushed me off-track in a way that I’ll be feeling for months.

We’ve had a ton of interest in the house - more than I could have reasonably hoped for - and although I can’t say for sure if the website helped, I don’t think it could possibly have hurt.

There’s an open house today (Sunday July 17), and another one on Tuesday (July 19). If you’re in the area, you should check it out.

I added some more schema data to the site to emphasize the two open houses (and the offer price). This will allow the open houses to display directly on search results pages, and in other spots.

Each one needs its own code block, which looks something like this:

{
  "@type":"Event",
  "@context":"http://schema.org",
  "startDate":"2022-07-19T10:00:00",
  "endDate":"2022-07-19T12:00:00",
  "name":"Open House: 10:00am - 12:00pm",
  "description":"Open House",
  "url":"https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/ca/santa-rosa/5405-spain-ave/pid_47847622/",
  "location":{
    "@type":"Place",
    "@context":"http://schema.org",
    "name":"5405 Spain Ave",
    "address":{
      "@type":"PostalAddress",
      "@context":"http://schema.org",
      "streetAddress":"5405 Spain Ave",
      "postalCode":"95409",
      "addressLocality":"Santa Rosa",
      "addressRegion":"CA"
    }
  },
  "image":"https://5405spainave.com/images/hero-2000.jpg",
  "offers":{
    "@type":"Offer",
    "price":849000,
    "priceCurrency":"USD",
    "availability":"http://schema.org/InStock",
    "url":"https://5405spainave.com/"
  },
  "performer":"Coldwell Banker Realty"
}

While the “product” (the home) links to my homepage, I haven’t implemented a contact form on my site, so I deliberately pointed the events to our agent’s website for more details.

As part of my role leading technology for The 19th, I’m hiring a web applications engineer:

‌In this role, you will work closely with a cross-functional group of journalists, designers, product managers and engineers to advance our mission to empower those we serve — particularly women, women of color and the LGBTQ+ community — with the information, resources and community they need to be equal participants in our democracy. You will work most closely with our CTO and product engineer to continue to develop our WordPress-based web platform, kickstart our open-source strategy, support decentralized republishing of our content and build tools to support our newsroom.

This is the most equity-minded team I’ve ever worked on, and it’s a joyful, empathetic, kind place to be. If you’re interested, please apply.

If you have any questions, you can email me at ben@benwerd.com, or feel free to book a short phone call.

So, Medium has a new CEO, who happens to be someone I like very much.

I worked at Medium in the publications group for a year. It was a pretty daunting experience: my first time working with the kind of budget Medium enjoyed, and with people who were veterans of all the products I knew and loved. I was used to being an outsider, and found myself on a world-class team trying to build something that promoted positive discourse. Honestly, although I had to level up in all kinds of ways, my biggest challenge there was managing the anxiety of working around so many people I looked up to. Happily, a lot of the people I worked with remain very good friends; if I hadn’t been asked to join Matter as Director of Investments, an opportunity I couldn’t say no to, I would have stayed for a lot longer.

My first real interaction with Ev while I was there centered around the open web. Coming from an indieweb context, I was a bit guarded: I didn’t think Medium probably had exactly my priorities, and I was a little worried that the indieweb community might think I’d sold out. The jury’s out on the indieweb community (I don’t think mostly anyone cared), but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ev cares deeply about the web, was interested in deep interoperability, and believes in the health of the ecosystem as well as the discourse on it.

I’ve known Tony Stubblebine for longer. He was working on Crowdvine while I was working on Elgg; different products, but playing in a similar-enough space that we often found ourselves at the same meetups and in the same discussions. He’s a thoughtful, kind person who is also very analytical, and has always given me good advice. He built a really strong community with Coach.me, both inside and out, and he’s been a really strong champion of Medium’s own community.

So I couldn’t be more excited about two things: Tony taking over as CEO, and Ev going to investigate new ideas as part of a new holding company. I can’t wait to see what they both do next.

Do I know these reminders are annoying? Yes. Am I going to keep posting anyway? Also yes.

Our house went on the market yesterday: offers starting at $849K for a three bed, 2.5 bath home in Santa Rosa with a split-level deck and in-ground pool. There are beautiful, hardwood floors throughout (we installed them when we moved in), vaulted ceilings, and I can confirm that being there is very nice. Maybe you’re sick of San Francisco, or Austin, or New York, and you want a relaxing oasis that is also very close to the action? We wrote about our experiences in the house, and there are a lot of nearby amenities. Did I mention the nearby parks, hiking, and bike trails? I should probably write some more about that.

Anyway, here’s the website, and here’s the Zillow profile. Go take a look.