Mon Nov 18
When will my reflection show // Who I am inside?
But first… What is Recurse Center (RC)
?
My favorite description is that it is a writer’s retreat for programmers. That’s the shorthand I use whenever anyone in my broader community asks me what I am doing.
But the longer version is that it is a self-directed, community-driven educational program where coders like myself take either 6 or 12 weeks (called a “batch”) to grow as developers. There’s no curriculum or instruction. As one member of faculty aptly put it, “RC is a container.” RC provides structure (core hours), community (pair programming, workshops, interest groups), and space (both physical in Brooklyn and virtual) to work on whatever interests you.
The magic of RC lies in its community. Some of my “batch-mates” are diving into computer graphics and operating system internals, some are building HTTP servers and compilers and web browsers from scratch, others are exploring audio-visual coding and pen plotting. One batch-mate said they are making a drone from scratch (!!?! what). Folks here are uniquely invested in sharing and showing what they are doing or thinking about (via check-ins, presentations, reflections, pairings, events,…), which has been awesome for gaining exposure beyond my expertise! For me, I am taking this as a chance to dive into web development after years in machine learning, while pushing myself to code more creatively and collaboratively.
🗯️ Two weeks in, and I am seeing my RC experience shift from theoretical to tangible. This feels good, as I tend to live in the land of aspirational coding, lurking on other peoples’ cool things and rarely building myself.
🧠 Week 1 felt like my brain was full of particles, frantically pinging everywhere. Pinging with ideas about this very website, creative coding, graphics, even hardware adventures. Also pinging with inspiration from the sheer range and brilliance of my batch-mates and their ideas. Week 2 has been about catching some of those particles and teasing apart their merits and essence.
🌐 My most concrete example: this website went from vague ambitions to actual pixels on screen. Sure, this site is more foundation than finished product at the moment, but as someone at RC presented a few days ago, “A working blog today is better than a perfect blog tomorrow” (slow clap). Even if I spent hours fighting with CSS - the struggle is real, but so is the progress.
📒 I have been trying to create some structure in the chaos. Time blocking has become my morning ritual, and I’m finally giving obsidian.md a real shot after forays into Notion and previously OneNote. My memory being what it is (a sieve), I need these systems. But it’s not just about organizing - it’s about making space for the creative work I actually want to do.
🍃 Speaking of creative work - that realization I had at a recent workshop about wanting to be more of an artist-coder? It’s starting to materialize. A book club for The Nature of Code has been a wonderful entry point. From paint splatters to playing with sound, I’m finding my way into making art with code. Still need to figure out what my “ecosystem project” will be (a sort of gradual capstone project recommended by the book), but the joy of making these small sketches feels like confirmation that I’m on a good path.
🫂 The RC community continues to shape this journey in unexpected ways. Week 1 was about coming out of lurking mode. Week 2 has been this energizing cycle of learning and sharing - parsing WebRTC complexity with one batch-mate, getting a decade of self-hosting wisdom from another, explaining the ML in my data visualization to yet another. Each interaction adds another layer to what feels possible here.
😅 Some things had to give. The Zero To Hero course will have to wait (sorry, Karpathy). The Nature of Code readings aren’t happening at the pace I first expected. But these are not failures or even setbacks - they’re just the reality of having more interests than time/capacity. Especially with an 8-month-old child in the mix!
💡 Looking back at these two weeks, I can feel a rhythm building: small concrete wins (launching the site!) balanced with bigger explorations (this whole artist-coder identity shift). Time blocking and home-labbing sessions mixed with pretty plots and natural simulations. It’s not the straightforward path I might have planned, but it feels genuinely and intrinsically motivated.
🪄 Now if I could just figure out how to make CSS feel less like a dark art…