What Brennan's Doing Now
This is a /now page, inspired by Derek Sivers. It's a snapshot of what I'm focused on right now—updated regularly to reflect my current work, projects, and life.
Life
"Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted." —Sylvia Plath
I'm 30 years old, currently living in Calgary, Alberta on Treaty 7 territory, and planning to move back to my hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba soon.
I hold myself accountable on a large number of daily tasks and habits with Beeminder: seventeen goals and counting, everything from steps and sleep to word counts and chess puzzles.
I'm trying to start a community and accessible spaces for writers, makers, and learners through my self-hosted server and in-person events.
I recently deleted my corporate social media accounts (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, X, Reddit, and Discord). If you want to reach me, please get in touch.
Work
My biggest commitment right now is my personal site, Brennan.Day. I've been writing full-time for about eight months—over 450,000 words and 200+ posts. I syndicate my work on Medium to make a living through the Medium Partner Program, writing longform essays about tech criticism, culture, and identity. You can help support my work here.
🍓 Berry House is the banner under which I do my web development projects. I often do consultations and help out pro bono when asked. One of our current projects is Calgary Groups, a wayfinder for Calgary organizations.
- Folk Zone: a self-hosted attempt to build the IndieWeb/Fediverse commons myself, running on four machines in my own living space—a federated social community, writing tools, a wiki, pastebin, URL shortener, and more.
- fanfiction.lol: a fork of Archive of Our Own that I host and run—silly, fun, and low-stakes, with more options for archive warnings and relationship dynamic types, no invite queue, and a focus on tag canonization.
- brennan.click: a wiki-linked digital commonplace book / digital garden with auto-generated stubs and pure-CSS hover transclusion and footnotes.
- Web Writers' Collective: I'm an organiser for this loose effort to help writers find each other and build community across the IndieWeb.
I've shelved plans to teach at 🔥 Fireweed Writing School for now, and recently did a public audit of everything I'm running—narrowing my scope to focus on fewer things better.
Writing
Beyond essays, I write 750 words daily, publish technical articles on dev.to, keep a public diary on DreamWidth, and occasionally post new poetry on BK Poetry. I microblog on Bluesky and the Fediverse (@brennan@social.lol), and I'm active on the 32-bit cafe and MelonLand forums and the tildeverse.
I'm writing a book—a memoir focusing on the craft of writing—alongside an imagist poetry chapbook. The working title for both is Poetics of Grace. I'm also helping my Mom write her autobiography.
Education
I graduated in April 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (Honours) from Mount Royal University with a 3.8 GPA. My honours thesis, How the English Degree Will Save the World, examined the transformative potential of literary studies and introduced "bloodwriting" as a bridge between Indigenous knowledge and digital practices.
I'm continuing my technical education through MOOCs and LinkedIn Learning free of charge via my public library card.
Hobbies
- Open-source coding on GitHub (transitioning to Source.tube and GitLab), tracked with WakaTime
- Chess—a couple of bullet games a day plus at least one rapid game and puzzle
- Daily French practice on Duolingo and Clozemaster
- Reading tracked on StoryGraph; movies on Letterboxd
- Daily meditation, 10,000 steps, and 7.5 hours of sleep, tracked with my Fitbit and Apple Watch
- Retro handheld gaming on a Retroid Pocket 2S
Want to work together? Check out Berry House services or get in touch directly.
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