About

Who am I?

Howdy! I’m Denys.

I am a dad, husband, and a Happiness Engineer at Automattic.

In the past 5 years, I’ve had the joy of helping around 34,000 people with their websites, blogs, and stores.

I love photography, exciting experiences, making order out of chaos, continuous learning.

What’s the purpose of this site?

If anything on this site can help, influence, or inspire even one person, it will be a reward I hold dear.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to help other people succeed.

Shane Perrish

Turns out (thanks ChatGPT) my motivations for the creation of this website align with the fundamental psychological needs of autonomy1, competence2, and relatedness3 of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT).

1. Legacy

We should shift as much of our effort as possible from consuming information, to creating new things.
[…]
It can be tempting to wait until everything is “ready,” until you have all the information you think you need, and all the sources have been double checked and reviewed. But as you continually curate and save pieces of content, review and summarize them, create a series of intermediate packets, and then recycle them back into your second brain, you’ll start to realize that there is no such thing as a finished product.
Everything is in flux, everything is a work in progress, and everything you put out there has an implicit “version 1.0” attached to it. This can be tremendously empowering – since nothing is ever final, there is no need to wait to get started. You can publish a simple website now, and slowly add additional pages as you have time. 

Tiago Forte

For years, a dream has lingered in my thoughts – the desire to share something, whether through words or images, with the world. I’ve consumed so much and produced nothing publicly.

I’ve had this unfulfilled need to put things out there for too long. It remained on my list of aspirations, constantly being pushed aside. What held me back, I realized, was the fear of not being good enough to consistently blog. All of my previous attempts at blogging failed.

I regularly take digital notes. It’s a way to capture my thoughts, observations, and ideas, preventing them from slipping away. Yet all of them are private or limited to work environment.

I want to remember how I view(ed) things. If I don’t share certain things or stories, they may be lost to time.

David Allen says that the mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Sometimes we waste more energy worrying about doing something than actually doing that very thing. Lastly, a fellow colleague at Automattic who left the company to pursue new endeavours wrote one phrase that resonated with me:

A habit that I started to form over recent months is to write down my thoughts rather than letting them just float off. It’s changed the way I think, and I think that improving and publishing some of these thoughts could be the next step in that progression.

Finally, a girl from Germany, whom I met on the Camino de Santiago, suggested I revive my Instagram with pictures after a seven-year hiatus. That gentle push was what I needed to start putting things out there.

During my sabbatical in 2023, with no more excuses, I decided to bring this website to life.

2. Growth

I write in order to think

Kevin Kelly

Publishing something publicly challenges me.

It pushes me out of my comfort zone.

It’s my chance to be vulnerable.

I wonder what my future self will think and feel about this website in 1,2, or 3 years.

What lessons will I learn?

3. Making order out of chaos and connecting the dots

My private notes, ideas, work, interests, experiences, and daily life are the wellspring of inspiration for the content here.

I like to think of this website as my own Zibaldone4 (a commonplace or hodgepodge book).

Also, I can think of this website as my my ikigai, although I am yet to define all the elements.

Even more, this website is my attempt at “ordering one’s consciousness”5 to quote the concept from the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

I also love connecting the dots6. For me, connecting the dots means finding links between life events that led to where I am now.

Almost everything that happens in life is the result of a network. Making, or breaking, local links is the way to change.

Deborah M Gordon

Failures and successes, decisions made, missed opportunities, and gained ones—all of it contributed to who I am. Every event, person, and thing played a role in bringing me here, and I’m grateful for each one.

Fast forward to the present day. I am typing this on WordPress.com that belongs to the company I work for.

Ultimately, this website is my wildest attempt at connecting the dots of a life in progress and making order out of chaos.

Last modified:

Footnotes:

  1. My desire to leave a legacy by documenting my views and experiences reflects a need for autonomy as defined by SDT. By creating content, I exercise control over how my thoughts and perspectives are preserved. The autonomy aspect is satisfied by the self-directed nature of content creation, where I have the freedom to choose topics, formats, and creative approaches. ↩︎
  2. The aspiration for personal growth through the challenges of content creation speaks to the need for competence. The creative process involves learning, refining skills, and overcoming obstacles, contributing to a sense of mastery and accomplishment. SDT suggests that when individuals perceive themselves as competent in their endeavors, it enhances intrinsic motivation. ↩︎
  3. The need to make order out of chaos and connect the dots in my life events is closely linked to relatedness as defined by SDT. By sharing my thoughts and experiences through content, I’m not only clarifying my thinking for myself but also creating opportunities for others to relate to my journey. This fosters a sense of connection and shared understanding. ↩︎
  4. We studied it at school and it stuck in my memory. And I remember thinking that I should create something similar myself. So finally, after 15 years, here we go. ↩︎
  5. In the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the concept of “ordering one’s consciousness” refers to the idea of bringing a sense of structure and organization to one’s thoughts and experiences. Csikszentmihalyi explores the notion that individuals often find a state of optimal experience, or “flow,” when they engage in activities that challenge them just enough to be interesting but not so much that they become overwhelming. ↩︎
  6. A while back, the idea of connecting the dots struck a chord with me, though I couldn’t recall where it originated. It became my own, resonating deeply with my thoughts. In 2018, during a grand meetup at Automattic, I gave a presentation about myself titled “Connecting Dots” where I explained how ended up joining the company. A colleague reminded me that the concept was from Steve Jobs, mentioned in his Stanford commencement speech. This revelation brought back memories of my first visit to Silicon Valley in 2011, coinciding with Jobs’ passing. I still have a printed magazine from those days with Steve on the cover. I went back in 2013 to participate in a startup school with an idea of a traveling box that would connect people. It didn’t take off but the experience I gained in Silicon Valley has stuck with me. ↩︎