Teach Me

Aka Small Scale Mutual Aid aka Barter With Me

tl;dr

I have at any given time a host of things I would love some help with: to accelerate my learning, to help get some things done that I find difficult or tedious for whatever reason, or maybe because I have self-limiting beliefs that I'm not interested in changing at the moment and it's more expedient to seek help. If you have some of those things, and we happen to have reciprocal gaps, hit me up! I'd love to help and get some help.

Important disclaimer: this page is for individuals looking for a reciprocal exchange of skills, knowledge, and/or labor. If you are here in a capacity as representing a company, you can pay to work with me. More on that over here.

I suppose if you (as an individual) just wanted to pay me to do any of the things below, you are welcome to offer to do that. However, these days it is more likely that you are able to provide a compelling mutual exchange by helping me learn stuff or finish projects I'm stuck on than you are going to provide a compelling exchange with money.

What's going on here (for those interested in reading a bit more)

Like most, I am very good at very few things, but for most things I am completely ignorant. There's lots for which I fall in between. But I am very curious and at any given time have a whole set of things I would like to learn more about, or be better at. As this site is evident of, these interests and curiosities span an extremely diverse set.

Fortunately! There are people in society, and their set of "stuff they know/can do" and "stuff they don't know/can't do" is different from mine! Maybe one of those people in society is you! (I am hoping maybe one of yous is one of those peoples, because this matching problem is a very well known one in the context of economics and life)

Even better news: we can just..like…teach each other stuff. Or freely choose to do things in exchange and assistance of one another. There are some sites (and I suspect apps) that try to do this on the internet. For various reasons I won't get into here, I find them unsatisfactory in their solution to this matching problem. Maybe I will develop a contender one of these days.

Some people call this skill exchange, bartering, or mutual aid. Some people would argue to no end that bartering and mutual aid are not the same thing. Maybe. But I'm of the opinion that mutual aid is a sort of larger scale bartering over an indefinite time horizon, and that many barter economies have historically worked precisely because people live and operate in communities where the exchange is indefinite and "debts" are never called in (or calling those debts in represent a sort of severance of someone from their counterparty, see: Debt by David Graeber for more). Anyway I'm calling this Small Scale Mutual Aid. (mostly because Mutual Aid is typically referred to in organizing basic needs) Call it whatever you like. I've got some stuff I can do, you got some stuff you can do, let's hang.

Things I'm interested in getting some help or education on

• Any Active Project has a good chance of being up for input and being pushed further — see Projects
• This website! This site was created with a combination of Claude and Cursor, using the Astro framework, deployed with Netlify. I am particularly limited as it relates to design thinking (shout out to my friend Jenny.World for being the first semi-witting participant who helped get me unblocked)
• Music production techniques and workflows
  • Especially if you're familiar with Ableton Live and its companion product Ableton Move
  • Especially if you're adept at sampling (both music and live sounds), mixing (across diverse source sounds), and re-mixing
• Learning Spanish — According to Duolingo I am somewhere in A2. I would like to get to B2 in a year or two.
• Learning Arabic — According to me, I was probably a very high B1 / early B2 (in a pigeon combination of aamaya and MSA) when I lived in Cairo from 2009–2010. I am sort of pausing this right now to focus on Spanish because I have a bad tendency to never quite get the proficiency of a language I would like before starting a new one and proceed to jumble everything up. The exception to this would be for Quran recitation.
• Very basic video production — I mean very basic, like taking an iPhone video 1–2 steps up in multimedia production quality

Things I can help you with that may or may not be immediately obvious

• If it's on this site, I've invested time and energy into developing some level of knowledge and proficiency
• Any Active but especially Past projects, or the types of work connected to those projects
• Career and professional coaching — Stuck in a job? Feeling plateaued? Want to do a career change/shift, but are scared to start? Don't know how to get your boss to hear you? I have (apparently) been helping family and close friends do this so much over the last few years that many have encouraged me to charge others for these services.
• Resume feedback — I have reviewed probably 10k+ resumes over the course of hiring dozens of people. This is not the most of any person by a long shot of course, but it is a large sample size. I am only one perspective, but it may be a helpful one. My perspective is also shaped by my career and the types of places for which I have been hired and done hiring.
• Going from Idea → Product → Viable business — This may be better described as first validating if such a journey is worth it, then executing in these early phases of business creation.
• Strategies and tactics for living a successful life as a transient (often referred to unfortunately as "Digital Nomading")
• Photography, especially analog photography — I haven't run a dark room in 10 years, so the specific chemistry I will be less helpful on. Selecting and troubleshooting cameras based on your goals, film work, developing a good analog to digital workflow, etc. are all fair game.
• Writing — If you couldn't tell…I write quite a bit. I was a freelance journalist for a number of years, which sharpened certain modalities for writing. If you'd like to get feedback on some writing, from poetry to essays, I can run the gamut.

Things I can help you with that benefit from being in the same place

Note: I travel extensively, so there's a non-zero chance I may be where you are!

• Cooking — I have helped sometimes over video, but much nicer to be in person. In particular I have an above average experience level with respect to Italian and pan-mediterranean cuisines from my time working in restaurants. Note this is not the same thing as baking where I will be less helpful. Corollary to cooking is home kitchen organization and design.
• Small scale farming and its associated work — Anything beyond a few acres is well and good outside my experience. I'm especially keen on composting management, but can also help with home garden basics.
• Rock climbing and Deep Water Soloing (DWS) — I am not an excellent climber by any stretch, and have only been doing it for ~3 years now. So this will mostly be useful for those interested in it as a newcomer to the sport. For a few years running now I have spent a chunk of May in Mallorca doing DWS. As a result I can help distill some essential knowledge accumulated from locals, guidebooks, and personal experience for those interested in getting quickly oriented into the island and making the most of even a relatively brief trip. (this could be remote of course)

I'll be adding to this periodically. You can always check the Splitting Lines Changelog for the latest updates here.