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

They never tell you how many times you’ll think something is working… until it isn’t.

That one function you were sure was solid. That refresh button you clicked ten times expecting something new, only to get the same response. That terminal window that just won’t. They don’t tell you how often you’ll stare at the logs wondering:

“Is it me? Is it the cloud? Did I forget a bracket? Did I forget to breathe?”

Building something from the ground up, especially something as personal as Unfold, isn’t clean. It isn’t glamorous. And it definitely isn’t always on schedule.

The quote and prompt should have updated.

It didn’t.

The cache shouldn’t be holding on.

It is.

The endpoint should have worked.

And still… here we are, deep in the trenches of another debug loop.

But this isn’t failure.

This is the part no one posts about on launch day.

This is the part where you keep going anyway.

The Myth of the Smooth Build

It’s easy to believe that if you plan hard enough or write things clean enough, the process will go smoothly. But that’s not how real development works.

Features evolve.

Bugs are sneaky.

Timelines shift.

And no matter how detailed your whiteboard is, and mine’s pretty damn detailed, the journey is never straight.

I’ve pushed deadlines.

I’ve rewritten code I just cleaned.

I’ve stared at a log line that says “cache” like it’s mocking me personally.

And I’ve also learned.

Coding Is Emotional Work

People don’t talk enough about the emotional weight of building.

The silence when something doesn’t show up on the screen.

The adrenaline rush when a deploy works.

The quiet “hell yes” when the insight finally appears.

It’s not just logic and syntax.

It’s patience.

It’s persistence.

It’s refusing to let the hard moments convince you that your vision isn’t worth it.

Because Unfold is worth it.

This app was never supposed to be perfect.

It was supposed to be honest. Supportive. Present.

And that means the way I build it has to carry the same energy.

With care. With reflection. With a willingness to keep learning in public.

To Anyone Else in the Middle

If you’re building something right now and it feels like it’s breaking more than it’s working, you’re not alone.

If your code is messy, your functions are fighting you, and you’ve refreshed twelve times with no new result, you’re doing real work.

Progress isn’t always visual.

Sometimes the win is simply not walking away.

The hard parts are the art. And the beauty of what we’re building? It gets better every time we don’t quit.

– Jared

Father’s Day always brings a mix of emotions for me. Today is the second Father’s Day since my dad passed away, and the weight of that absence is something I still feel. There are moments, especially on days like today, when I wish I could talk to him, ask his advice, or simply share a laugh together. I hold on to the memories we made, but I also feel the loss of the ones we’ll never have.

Still, even with the sadness, I find a lot of light in my life. I get to celebrate with my daughter, and I see myself reflected in her laughter and the small moments we share. Being her dad is a privilege I never take for granted, and it gives me purpose and strength, especially on days that feel heavy.

What makes today special is being surrounded by people who understand—my friends who are also fathers, each of us figuring it out as we go, and my brother, who is carving out his own path as a dad. Knowing that we’re all in this together, honoring our dad’s legacy in our own ways, brings me comfort.

I miss my dad every day, but I know he would be proud of the father I am becoming. I see him in the way I care for my daughter and try to show up for her, even when it isn’t easy. Father’s Day gives me a chance to honor him, appreciate the dads in my life, and make new memories with my family.

If you are celebrating today whether you are a dad, with your dad, or holding on to memories I’m thinking of you. Here’s to all the fathers, past and present, and to the love we continue to carry forward.