A snapshot of what I’m up to right now. Inspired by Derek Sivers’ nownownow.com. Last updated May 28, 2026.

Work

I’m about four months into running Two Bit Consulting — IT support, fractional technology leadership, and web design for individuals, non-profits, and small organizations doing meaningful work. Six active clients at the moment, which feels like the right amount of busy. I’m also actively looking for the right full-time IT director or CIO role in Kansas City or remote. Currently building a website for a student scholarship foundation and rebuilding parts of a gallery’s existing website. I’m also constantly tweaking my own site and the one for Two Bit Consulting

Writing

I published my first personal essay here in February — “Building Something Out of Nothing” — and I’m trying to keep the momentum going. Writing is the thing I find simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, which probably means it’s worth doing. A book idea keeps surfacing, from multiple directions. I’m not ready to say more than that yet.

Reading

Working through several books at once, which is my natural state. You can see what I’m currently reading and what’s on deck on the books page.

Albums on repeat

  • Better Dreaming by Tune Yards
  • Who is the Sky by David Byrne
  • The Mountain by The Gorillaz
  • 7 by Sault
  • Wild God by Nick Cave

Around the house

Maura and I are in a doing well. Maura’s excited about her Summer with the Spring semester recently coming to an end. The dogs are healthy and silly. Kansas City in the spring is genuinely beautiful, which I’m trying to pay attention to instead of just noting in passing.

This website

jakefowler.com runs on Hugo, a static site generator, deployed to DreamHost via GitHub Actions. The publishing workflow:

  • Blog posts: Write in Bear Notes, tag `, run the “Bear Publish” script — it extracts the note, builds front matter, copies images, commits to GitHub, cross-posts to Mastodon and Bluesky, and removes the tag when done
  • Books: Tracked in Hardcover, synced automatically to the site on every deploy via a Node script that hits their GraphQL API
  • Photos: Added to PixelFed and synced automatically via a GitHub cron job
  • Everything else: Edit relevant Bear Notes, run the “Publish Now Page” script — it overwrites the pages and pushes
  • A few people have asked, so I made it happen… I just launched a newsletter for the blog at jakefowler.com. Subscribe at jakefowler.com/subscribe or grab the RSS feed if that’s more your style.