I don’t think people really see what goes on behind the scenes.

They see the posts.

The apps.

The progress.

But not the days where everything feels heavy

and you still have to show up like it’s not.

Lately, it’s felt like a lot.

Balancing work.

School.

Being a dad.

Trying to build something real out of nothing.

And at the same time…

dealing with things I don’t always talk about.

There’s this pressure that comes with building something.

Like you always have to be on.

Always improving.

Always moving forward.

Always figuring it out.

But the truth is…

some days I don’t have it figured out at all.

Some days I’m just trying to keep everything from slipping.

And I think that’s the part people don’t talk about enough.

You can be building something meaningful

and still feel overwhelmed.

You can be making progress

and still feel stuck at the same time.

You can be strong for everyone else

and still have moments where it all starts to catch up to you.

I’ve had to learn how to sit with that.

Not fix it right away.

Not ignore it.

Just be honest about it.

Because avoiding it doesn’t make it go away.

It just makes it louder later.

That’s honestly where Unfold came from.

Not from having everything together.

But from needing a space to slow down

and actually process what’s going on in my head.

And Spark…

That came from realizing how hard it is to say what you actually feel

even when you want to.

I’m still figuring it out.

Still building.

Still learning how to handle everything that comes with it.

But one thing I do know is this:

You don’t have to have everything together

to keep going.

Sometimes just showing up is enough.

If you’re in a season where things feel heavy

but you’re still pushing forward…

I see you.

You can be building something great…

and still be going through it.

There’s a version of me that used to chase people.

Not in a desperate way. Not in a dramatic movie scene kind of way. But in the quiet way. The overthinking way. The checking my phone way. The replaying conversations way. The proving myself way.

And if I’m honest, it wasn’t really about them.

It was about validation.

When you chase people, you’re chasing confirmation.

Confirmation that you’re wanted.

That you’re enough.

That you matter.

But here’s the truth I had to learn the hard way.

Chasing people shrinks you.

Chasing growth expands you.

When you chase someone, your energy bends toward them. You adjust your pace. You soften your standards. You wait. You wonder. You pause your own forward motion hoping they’ll catch up or look back.

Growth doesn’t wait.

Growth wakes up early.

Growth studies when it’s tired.

Growth builds when no one is watching.

Growth goes to therapy.

Growth opens the terminal even when it’s scary.

Growth ships the app even when it isn’t perfect.

Chasing people is reactive.

Chasing growth is intentional.

One depends on someone else’s decision.

The other depends on yours.

And here’s the part nobody talks about.

When you stop chasing people, two things happen:

1. The wrong ones fall away.

2. The right ones feel the shift.

There’s something powerful about being grounded. Not cold. Not closed off. Just steady.

You don’t beg.

You don’t force.

You don’t compete for attention.

You build.

You improve.

You become.

The irony is that when you chase growth, you become more attractive to the right people anyway. Not because you’re performing. But because you’re aligned.

Aligned people do not chase. They choose.

Growth teaches patience.

Chasing teaches anxiety.

Growth builds confidence.

Chasing builds insecurity.

Growth makes you fulfilled even if no one is clapping.

Chasing leaves you empty even when someone texts back.

I had to learn that my time, my energy, my focus are finite resources. Every ounce spent chasing someone who is unsure is an ounce not invested in becoming undeniable.

And undeniable does not mean famous.

It means grounded.

It means self aware.

It means knowing you are building a life you would be proud of whether someone stays or leaves.

There’s peace in that.

There’s power in that.

And here’s the real shift:

When you chase growth, you stop asking,

“Why aren’t they choosing me?”

And you start asking,

“Am I choosing the version of myself I’m capable of becoming?”

That question changes everything.

Because growth compounds.

It shows up in your discipline.

In your health.

In your business.

In your fatherhood.

In your friendships.

And one day you look up and realize you’re no longer trying to convince anyone to see your value.

You’ve built it.

If someone wants to walk beside you, they can.

But you are not stopping your forward motion anymore.

Not for confusion.

Not for maybe.

Not for almost.

Chasing people is exhausting.

Chasing growth is liberating.

And once you taste that difference, you never go back.

“The moment you stop chasing people is the moment you start becoming someone worth walking beside.”-me 

New Year’s Eve alone is loud, even when it’s quiet.

I didn’t want the year to end like this. I pictured warmth, people, a countdown, dogs causing chaos, my daughter laughing in the background while making some foolish joke. Something full of life and noise.

Instead, the night ended with silence and emotions that finally found space to speak.

My dad died alone in his home. No one around. No goodbye moment. Just a quiet ending to a peaceful life. Seeing that kind of loss up close doesn’t fade; it changes you. Ever since, I’ve had this deep fear of repeating that ending, not because of death itself, but because of a life without connection. Without someone there to say goodbye. Without anyone to hand the remote to while you still can.

Tonight, that fear sat heavy in my chest again.

I miss them. I miss the everyday closeness that most people never post about. The ordinary rhythm of family life. The unplanned conversations. The mid-sentence check-ins that don’t need context because you already shared it. The invisible glue that holds people together without needing a reason.

Losing the ordinary hurts more than losing the dramatic. The dramatic makes sense. The ordinary hits like, “Oh, you needed that more than you knew.”

It feels like rejection, like emotional static, like someone trying to turn down the volume on connection because it hurts too much to hold right now. And yeah, it stings. It feels personal. But it’s not about me being unlovable. It’s about someone else being unable to hold the weight of connection right now.

So tonight I’m holding the weight, but I’m not sitting in silence anymore.

2025 gave me both sides of the coin. Another semester of school is done. Another version of Unfold is closer to launch. More dreams sketched than executed. More lessons than comfort. More nights spent debugging life than celebrating it.

But it also gave me a daughter who still needs me. Dogs who think I’m part of the couch. Business classes pushing me toward ownership. Hardware that freezes at the worst times. And a heart that aches because it actually knows what love felt like before it hurt.

Pain doesn’t cancel love. It confirms it existed.

Good doesn’t erase bad. It balances it.

Silence doesn’t mean you’re alone if you choose to speak into it.

So here’s the truth I’m carrying into 2026, whispered into a quiet room lit by a screen, because I owe myself at least this much honesty:

I’m not done becoming someone worth hearing. Not for applause, but for connection. For my daughter. For breaking cycles. For building a life that doesn’t end unwitnessed.

That’s the story I’m carrying into the new year.

Results rarely show up on your timeline. You put in the hours, fight through the errors, patch the bugs, and sometimes it feels like nothing’s moving. But that’s the trap; progress is almost always invisible until it isn’t.

Working on Unfold Daily has been the clearest reminder of this truth. Some days it feels like you’re pouring energy into a black hole, testing features, fixing bugs, and wondering if the effort is actually moving things forward. Then a moment comes where everything clicks, and the progress that felt invisible suddenly shows itself. That’s when you realize the small, patient steps were stacking up the whole time.

Patience isn’t passive. It’s not sitting around waiting for good things to fall into your lap. It’s showing up consistently, even when it’s frustrating, even when the results aren’t instant. That’s where the real payoff happens.

Now, I’m carrying that mindset into new opportunities, like entering a hackathon with my brother. It’s another reminder that steady work opens unexpected doors. Sometimes the rewards aren’t just in what you’re building, but in the people you build with and the challenges you’re willing to take on.

So here’s the takeaway I keep circling back to: hard work will get you far, but hard work plus patience will take you places you never imagined.

“Some wins take a minute to show up. Stay patient, stay moving.”

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of headlines that make it feel like AI is slipping into some kind of sci-fi dystopia. Articles claiming it’s going rogue, people spiraling into fear, and a whole lot of misunderstanding being passed around like fact.

I get it. AI sounds scary when you don’t know what’s actually happening behind the scenes. But as someone who’s been building an AI-powered wellness app for the past year, I want to offer another perspective. One that’s not based in panic, but in reality.

AI isn’t magic. It’s not a person. It’s not sentient, or scheming, or trying to take over your job or your life. It’s math, language patterns, and code. And like any tool, what matters most is how it’s used and who is using it.

When I started building Unfold Daily, I didn’t see AI as something to fear. I saw it as a way to make self-reflection more accessible. To help people journal, check in with themselves, and feel supported, even on the days when talking to another human feels too hard. That’s the kind of AI I believe in. The kind that’s thoughtful, personal, and here to help, not to manipulate or mislead.

Why the Headlines Are Misleading

A lot of the fear lately comes from media stories that leave out important context. For example, that now-viral story about AI “going rogue” came from a controlled stress test in a research environment. It wasn’t a real-world app, and no one was harmed. But once the story hits the public, it turns into something unrecognizable. Headlines run with the most extreme angle, and the public is left thinking AI is one step away from turning on us.

It’s important to ask: Who benefits from that fear? What is the actual source of the behavior being described? And more often than not, the truth is far less dramatic than the headline.

What AI Can’t Do

Let’s be clear about a few things AI still can’t do:

• It can’t think or feel. It doesn’t have emotions, beliefs, or intentions.

• It doesn’t act on its own. Every action comes from a prompt or command given by a human.

• It doesn’t understand context the way we do. It recognizes patterns, not meaning.

• It can’t replace real human care, creativity, or ethics.

Yes, it’s powerful. But it’s also limited by the way it was built, trained, and deployed.

Choose Curiosity Over Fear

Instead of being afraid of every new AI headline, I hope more people choose to ask questions, learn how these systems actually work, and understand what they can and can’t do. Fear doesn’t move us forward. Education does.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful. We absolutely should. But we should also give space to the other side of AI — the one that helps people, builds things, and makes hard days just a little bit easier.

That’s the AI I’ve been building with. And I think that story deserves to be told too. people should want to keep up with this its gonna change the world and lives for the better in the words of Sam Altman “The ground is shaking”. 

-Jared