--- title: About layout: page.jade --- Hi, I'm Gwen. Gwen is short for Gwendolyn. I'm not sure who named me, but I think it was my mom. She died when I was younger and that shaped the way I've turned out. Which is pretty grab-the-bull-by-the-hornsy. I('ve) train(ed) myself to be still with yoga, meditation, stoic & buddhist practices. ## Five Fast Facts + I ride bare metal Linux, use Git for version control and pacman Syu multiple times a week. + I travel with [@ev](http://evbogue.com). + I have a degree in English Lit from UNC Chapel Hill fwiw. I now work on the command line (node, git, arch, markdown, etc.)daily -- I'm a self-taught entrepreneur and technologist. + I've held down two full-time jobs. Teaching English in an elementary school in Japan and working as a bartender in America. Beyond that, it's been 100% entrepreneurship, 100% of the time. My first business was a yoga studio in Yokohama, Japan. + I was born in the States and have lived a lot of my life abroad. ### About Life in MX In 2006 I landed in Puerto Vallarta, MX to co-lead a yoga retreat in [Los Naranjos, Yelapa](http://www.yelaparetreat.com/retreats) from November 11th through the 18th. The taxi driver, an eldery gentleman, suggested that the two of us might sleep together. I pointed out that I'm about two feet taller than him. While stopped at a stoplight he retrieved an index card from his pocket. He drew a short person and a long person and said that in bed, height is not an issue. Aghast, I said a tiny prayer that I'd make it to the city center, laughing and crying at the same time. Somewhere in that week I emailed everyone I knew email addresses for in the States and Japan to let them know I intended to stay in Mexico. As in forever. I'd found a place I belong. *** I spent half of December 2006 in Ajijic, Mexico. Lake Chapala in Ajijic is a retirement village of sorts for _gringos_ who are old(er) and more hang-out-with-other-gringos-ish. It wasn't a good fit for me so I made short work of it and got out of there. But I could have just backpacked around a bit. And in retrospect, I wish I'd stayed on in Mexico. My paternal grandfather was from [Zacatecas, Mexico](http://www.visitmexico.com/en/heritage-city-zacatecas). My maternal great-grandmother was of Spanish descent. I dig it. After 2006 lots of things happened. Many of them alright, some of them just plain awful. In 2009 I was in Mexico and got an email inviting me to go to the O'Reilly sponsored Social Web Foo Camp. I taught some [laptop yoga](https://www.flickr.com/photos/artificialignorance/3456948837/in/pool-1042032@N25/), met some tech folk, played some werewolf. After that I was given some recognition by Fast Company for being a woman in tech but I was a long way from where I wanted to be as a technologist at that point (I still have a long way to go). In 2011 I went to Sayulita and stayed at a hotel that has since closed/re-opened under another name. It was called La Casona in November 2011 -- I lived in the hotel for a month and accidentally made some internettermies by doing writing and taking photos of the place. Incidentally, internettermies is the reason I now [track issues](https://gitmx.com/%25sa%2FOgrHPhHCw8V0x2wrIgadRJANxQAKY6V9AP%2FF4iyw%3D.sha256) now, so people can bring things up early and often. I moved to Mexico for real in 2013. I rented an apartment here for the first time and began studying the language in earnest. My life in three words: **Yoga. Spanish. Tech.** On repeat until I die.