Just a curious soul
trying to figure it out

I'm Stephen Barrios — born and raised in Los Angeles, California. The kind of city that gets in your blood whether you want it to or not. I've always been drawn to two things that seem opposite but aren't: technology and human connection.

By day I'm a software engineer, building the kind of digital experiences that people (hopefully) don't think too hard about because they just work. I've spent over a decade writing code, solving problems, and learning that the hardest part of software is almost never the software itself.

But there's a lot more to a life than a job title. I'm the kind of person who can spend an hour going down a rabbit hole about John Coltrane's modal period, then spend the next hour watching game film from a Cowboys loss I'm still upset about. I used to dream about being a DJ and host on KCRW — the kind of person who connects people to music they didn't know they needed. That dream didn't happen the way I imagined, but the love of music never went anywhere.

I'm also a husband — thirteen years and counting with someone who is my anchor, my sounding board, and my favorite person to disagree with about restaurants. And I'm a dad to two kids, 8 and 6, who are somehow already their own complete people with opinions about everything. Watching them grow up is the most humbling and awe-inspiring thing I've ever been part of.

I started this site because I've been through some things recently that made me want to write. Not to perform, not to brand-build, but to actually say something true. Life is a lot. It's also a lot of good. I want to hold both at once, and this is where I'm doing that.

If you're here, I'm glad. Pull up a chair.