About Todd Gehman

  • Contact
    Write to me at
  • Stalk
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  • Home
    Ballard, Seattle, WA
  • Popped Out
    Ephrata, PA on August 16, 1970. Apparently it was a very good year for Bordeaux. I would like to pretend that that means something.
  • Favorite Things
    William Eggleston, The Beatles, popcorn, e.e. cummings, Charlie Kaufman, KEXP
  • Bio

    I was just a kid when my childhood began.

    [Years pass.]

    Escaping my little hometown in Amish Country for the somewhat more liberal pastures of State College (actual name of an actual town), I tried dropping the math nerd schtick, studying the liberal arts, growing out my hair, and so on. I got so adept at critical thinking while at Penn State that I eventually turned a critical eye on state school liberal arts education. Skipped town, headed West.

    I settled in Seattle, planning to resume nerdhood by studying the cold, hard sciences at Shoreline Community College. While pursuing chemistry and physics, a series of menial jobs eventually lead to a menial job at a Homebrew Shop, where I was able to chit-chat microbiology and teach myself web development by building their online store. The website-building lead to a life-altering and all-consuming job at Amazon.com, for which I gave up night school entirely. Six years on, I left Amazon to join some other ex-Amazonians at the Robot Co-op, helping to build the goal-oriented site 43 Things, by which I was inspired to skydive, write and record my own songs, and take up night school again. That time it was photography. Just as I got a proper visual arts orientation, the web progressed beyond flat, ugly, barely usable interfaces, and my next step was into the design world, where I now work as a developer for Urban Influence, a small but mighty design/branding firm in SoDo.

    [Years pass.]

    I have yet to settle on an epitaph, but here are three contenders:

    • Made it the whole way through without therapy.
    • I would rather be here than in Florida.
    • I had a lover's duel with the world. (A riff on Robert Frost's)