About Me — Chester Beard
Hello World
My place is the Pacific Northwest. Just north of Seattle. Actually currently on an island in Puget Sound or now called The Salish Sea. Some are now calling it the Southern Salish Sea. I enjoy it there. A bit quieter than living in a larger city.
Surrounded by water, bald eagles. Some Orca visit by now and then, and I am surrounded by rabbits and some Douglass Squirrels. It is fun being closer to nature living here. Nice seeing more trees than people on a regular basis.
At Whitworth University — it was just a college when I went there — I studied philosophy and religion as a double major. So you could say my mind tends to the abstract and esoteric, or maybe the concrete and the sublime. Religion has always fascinated me even before I studied it formally at college. It still does. How we motivate ourselves to be better internally and we express that externally is an interest, and how we as humans seek to live best together in community is the basis of religion, I think.
For many years my occupation was retail. It was a shoe store that specialized in special fit situations. I had those hard-to-find sizes in stock all the time.
Many years back I traded in my Brannock device for a laptop and became a software developer which had been an interest of mine for many years back. I used to rewrite programs from a magazine titled Nibble for the Mac II. (That should date me pretty clearly) Being a software engineer was a dream I had to pursue. Kept thinking about it while I was managing my retail business, so I had to make the move or always regret not taking that step.
Getting started in tech was a little more difficult than many claims but eventually, I found my way. I worked for many startups during this time. That is a hard business building a startup. It is difficult to get proper funding for a startup and you need funding to get anywhere.
Some of the positions were more corporate at Cambia Health Solutions and Microsoft mostly. Did some contract work too. And I worked a lot in blockchain/crypto development projects too. Learned a lot about that kind of business. DX_dao was one project I worked on. Most of my blockchain work was in dOrg a consultancy firm where I worked on many different projects over the two-plus years I was there.
In college also I volunteered as a DJ at the campus radio station KWRS 90.3. Jazz Freaks was the show I hosted with Paul Spencer. That was a time when the Seattle Sound got big, really big. I was a roadie for bands like The Indigo Girls and Camper Van Beethoven and others. Played music by The Trashcan Sinatras, The Ministry UK, Soup Dragons, and Peter Gabriel.
Took that experience — in college radio — and couldn’t get enough of spinning records, or later CDs, out of my system and volunteered for a time at KSER, 90.7 FM. At KSER I played Brenda Weiler, California Guitar Trio, and was introduced to Pearl Django. Even produced a CD for the station. Now for music, I listen to Tidal(not an affiliate) and mostly electronica music such as Sigur Ros and John Hopkins. Sometimes Led Zeppelin as well.
In the summer of 2021, I started writing on Medium. Around July/August is when I started to take writing here more seriously. I now devote several hours per week to creating content for Medium. I am enjoying this more than anything else I think I have done. While in college I wrote many, many research papers. It was the most enjoyable part of my college career. I hated taking tests.
I also started working as a freelance writer/author in the summer of 2021 too. My learning for that was as a member of Sarah Turner’s copywriting course and Meredith Noble’s Unicorn Grant Writing community. Both have been super helpful in my career development and advancement.
When I have time playing guitar and violin(fiddle) are two other activities. And have a large collection of bonsai and books.
If you want you can catch me on Twitter too at CBeardWrites.
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My business site
