Xavi Smith

Experienced Professional | Transitioning from Tech to Education

Author: Xavi Smith

  • When I first realized that I might’ve been raised in a cult, I immediately wondered, “How can I be the only one in my family to see this?” I was the fourth generation in my family to be stuck in this cult, and only a few had decided to ever leave.

    Almost three years later, I know that I’m just a pattern breaker. And that’s an extremely difficult role to play. It means being ostracized by people who claimed to love you. It means accepting new truths and new information, no matter how much it completely shatters your sense of reality.

    Religion was ultimately an empty sense of security. I thought I knew why humans existed, what my purpose was, and what happened after death. And now I don’t. And interestingly, it’s actually super freeing to not know the answers. Because I’d rather have questions that I can’t answer, than answers I can’t question.

  • I sent the following message to some of my mother’s family and select old friends:

    Howdy y’all. Just wanted to let you know from the horse’s mouth that I’ve decided to [no] longer be a Jehovah’s Witness. I encourage you to do some objective research into your beliefs. I was certainly surprised by what I found. Sending love and hugs. If you ever need me, you know how to reach me. May the force be with you ❤️

    It feels incredibly freeing to finally send this message. I haven’t had contact with much family in the past two-ish years. When I first debated leaving the cult, it was incredibly scary to think about how my family would react or how they’d treat me.

    In case you didn’t know, leaving the Jehovah’s Witness organization means essentially saying goodbye to everyone you’ve ever known. Members are instructed to shun people who leave the religion, even family. It’s quite nuts. My research led me to conclude without hesitation that this religion is false and for some reason that means I don’t get to have a family anymore. The only reason I got to do this on my own timeline is because the pandemic turned out to be a fantastic cover to leave this cult under the radar. Which I guess is something to be grateful for?

    But what used to be scary, I’ve now come to accept. I mean, my family has shunned me before, so what does it really matter if they do it again? Like, ultimately, people that actually care about you don’t emotionally blackmail you into being part of their religion 😘

    So this feels like closure. I hope to have left things open for any of them to reach out if they ever wake up from their indoctrination. Till then, it feels good for people to know where I stand, and I think it’ll help me start writing the next chapter of my life.

  • Kiana Ledé Understands the Messy Pleasure of Liking “Ur Best Friend”

    Ledé is no stranger to exploring juicy yet convoluted relationship dynamics in her youthful R&B. In 2018, the Los Angeles-based singer and actor broke out with her first hit, “Ex,” a song about getting back together with a past lover that showcased Ledé’s powerful, sultry vocal runs. Last year, she released her debut self-titled studio album, Kiki, a coming-of-age project about romantic entanglements and sexual liberation, which solidified her status as a contemporary R&B star. Now, with “Ur Best Friend,” Ledé writes about having a queer love interest for the first time, weaving a complex tale that shows queer relationships can also be nuanced and messy.

    Kiana Ledé and Kehlani are two of my favorite singers. Not only are they incredibly talented vocally, but I love to see more queer stories in music. I was excited when I first listened to the song because of the collaboration, but this music video just takes it to a whole other level. The sexual tension and chemistry between them is seductive and provocative. And that neck grab at the end?! 🥵😍

  • A great column from @freedomrideblog for Black Agenda Report:

    Donald Trump was blamed for the poor response in 2020 but it is clear that Americans are in trouble regardless of who occupies the White House because profits determine the response to a health care crisis. Joe Biden declared that there is nothing he can do about the disease trajectory and blithely stated that an additional 200,000 deaths are inevitable. His pre-inaugural promise of a $2,000 stimulus payment is now null and void. The sum of $1,400 is now on the table and no one will see that amount until March or April.

    The failed state continues failing the people. It cannot do otherwise. The government does the bidding of the billionaire donor class, just as it did before COVID-19 struck.

    Capitalism is quite literally killing thousands of people in the US every day. A people-first economy that could be achieved under socialism is a better path forward.

  • On Implementing Pull Request Feedback: A Short Story

    You should never be so antsy to get your pull request that you skip the all important task of testing any changes you make. Even if the change is tiny and seemingly inconsequential there is no excuse to not quickly test that everything works as expected. This anxiousness of getting your code into master is the sign of an immature developer who would skip steps to make things go faster.

    This will be a relatable story for many developers, but this part especially stood out to me. When making changes to a PR, I’m always worried about the time (and budget) those changes are taking up. But frankly, the work takes the time that it takes. Implementing and testing those changes are an essential part of that process, and skipping steps so as to not go over time on a task will only create more problems later.

  • The latest episode of Left Bitches with @ggreenwald is a must-listen. I found the conversation about bringing people together across different ideologies to be incredibly hopeful. It’s a vital conversation to listen to given much of the discourse around censorship and coalition building that’s been happening on Twitter.

  • It Wasn’t 2020, It Was The Ruling Class Trying to Kill You

    What needed to happen here in the US was the immediate implementation of a system of national healthcare, a campaign to guarantee widely accessible and free testing, and the deployment of a trained army of contact tracers tracking infections and helping people into paid, catered quarantines. There should have educational campaigns – not just television ads and official announcements but brigades of doctors, nurses, and medical students going door to door nation-wide, explaining the basics of the situation in language the people could understand just as Cuba was able to do. There should have been rent and bill freezes, massive free food distributions, and recurring monthly survival payments. There should have been a comprehensive long term plan to control the spread and make sure that people could stay home and social distance without bringing down economic and emotional devastation upon themselves and their loved ones. That is, of course, not what happened.

    Basically every other country has the pandemic under control. We’ve had a whole year of our lives stolen, and yet there’s no end in sight. Will Democrats pass the bold type of legislation needed to get out of the hellhole we’re in? I’m not particularly hopeful. It’s more important than ever to organize and participate in direct action.

  • The study, which was published in the journal Preventive Medicine, concluded that men who scored at the high range were up to twice as likely to be at risk for suicidal or depressive tendencies, and up to 5 times more likely to engage in sexual harassment, cyberhassment, and physical or verbal bullying.

    This article from them makes it clear men need to urgently unlearn toxic masculinity. Personally, I’ve decided to detach who I am from my gender. I don’t care about being “a good man.” I want to be a good human, and that means a commitment to self-improvement, growth, kindness, and above all, infinite and unconditional love.

  • Ok, so I just pushed some pretty awesome things to my site and wanted to tell you about them! I am feeling the love of development again and you bet your ass I’m riding this high.

    First up, I added a better archive page. You can now browse by topic and series. Notes are separate from articles in the archive for better scan-ability. I hope this helps people better find valuable content that I wrote a while ago. I’m slowly migrating what I consider to be the “best” things I’ve written over the years and giving them a final home on my personal site. You may have noticed that I’m not writing Bright Pixels anymore and as such, I’ve decided to keep things simple by housing it all here.

    This is stuff that I feel no one else worries about, but I think this is the neurosis that goes with the fundamental belief of owning my own content. I’m giving myself a bit of freedom and letting go of how strict I’ve been about this though.

    I used to think that I should never break links. That it was my responsibility to keep up everything that had ever been put on the web. I notice a lot of web people tend to host their archives from more than a decade ago. This sounds nice as an idea, but it’s a nightmare in actual practice. And I get that this has been my fault too. I lack any sort of creative contentment and I seem to constantly create new projects just to fucking quit on them later when I’ve realized I don’t have the bandwidth to actually do them. inhale. Look who’s therapy copay is paying off.

    Everything I’ve ever written is a lot of stuff and frankly not all of it is great. But some of it is meaningful to me. Like this post I wrote about my depression. I’m so grateful I have posts like this that preserve who I am and what I’m feeling in that moment. I’m a thoughtful person who loves to revisit who I was and reflect on things I can improve about myself. In this particular case, it’s interesting and heart-breaking to read how I was feeling about my depression, yet I feel excited and relieved to feel far away from the despair of before.

    And that’s what owning my content is all about. At the end of the day, it’s a record of me and my life. That I existed. That I lived. That I loved. That I was passionate and excited about things. That I was sad and sometimes couldn’t see the light at the end of a very long tunnel. And I think it’s insanely valuable to have that for yourself and for people who love you.

    This is all to say that all will live here from now on and if I want to delete something because it no longer aligns with my current values, I’ll do that too. It’s owning my content, but’s it’s also owning my content on my terms. And I think that’s an important distinction.

    As I was saying, there are more cool features I added! I added a coding section to the homepage that displays my coding activity, code editor and operating system, and even shows the top four languages I’ve been writing! I’m pretty hyped 😎

    It’s all brought to you by the Wakatime API which I’d been wanting to use for a few weeks. Then I saw Jacob Herper’s GitHub Profile and was inspired to create my own little statistics section. Check out the homepage to see it in action. I’m so proud of it 😍 and hope you like it.

    Oh! I centered the content area too, because the left aligned look from before was bugging the hell out of me. I can say I tried something different than my usual and learned I didn’t like it 😂

    That’s it for now. I hope you’re as well as possible during these tough times. May the force be with you, always ❤️

    Fri, Jul 31st, 2020 at 2:23 pm

  • ‘Create What You Want’

    This video from Peter McKinnon really inspired me today. 2019 was kind of a bummer for me creatively. I didn’t post videos, and for a large portion of the year, this blog was silent.

    For too long I’ve worried that my interests don’t all really fit in one place. I—like most humans—have a vast array of interests, but I had this nagging feeling people wouldn’t be interested in my stuff because of my lack of focus. That’s nothing but a creative barrier, and I appreciate Peter helping me realize that.

    I’m a creative person and what brings me joy and happiness is to create, and that’s what I plan to do.