Skiing
Cold mountains
Some of my favourite places on earth are at the top of a chairlift. A few of those childhood years up in Canada gave me a soft spot for snow.
Roots
Always in transit
Travelling is probably the thing that's defined me most, and it started early. My mum's Canadian and my dad grew up in Minnesota, so between two sets of family there was never a year of my childhood spent entirely in one country. There was always someone to go see somewhere.
My dad's work pushed it further. His projects ran six months to a year at a time, all over the map, and we went with him. By the time I was grown I'd lived in South Korea, Australia, Canada, and a couple of U.S. states.
The pattern's carried into adulthood. My wife and I spent 2021 digital nomading across the U.S. (Denver, Park City, New Orleans, Houston, Atlanta, Minnesota) before settling back in Palo Alto in 2022. Two years in Chicago followed, and at the end of 2024 we came back to the Bay Area, which is where we are now.
It was a great way to grow up, and it's the way I've kept living. I think it's why I settle into new places quickly, and why I'm slow to assume my way of doing things is the only one. People say a childhood like that can leave you without a real sense of home. Maybe, but I've never felt the gap. Home was never a spot on a map for me.
The constant
Home is the people
Home, for me, was always my family. They were the one thing that came along to every new country and every new city, the familiar faces in a long string of unfamiliar places.
We're close, and I don't take that for granted. They're who I call first with good news and bad, the people whose read on a situation I actually trust, and a big part of why all that moving never felt unsteady. Wherever they were was the place I was from.
It's probably the throughline between this page and the work one: I care a lot about the people around me, and I want them to be better off for it.
Off the clock
What I get up to
When I'm not shipping something, you'll usually find me doing one of these.
Scuba
Underwater
About as close to weightless as most of us get. Worth every bit of the gear and the early starts.
Hiking
On a trail
The simplest reset I know. Give me a trail and a long enough day and most things sort themselves out.
Reading
In transit
A constant, fiction and non-fiction both. All those hours in transit have to go somewhere, and books are where mine go.
Music festivals
A field full of people who all chose to be exactly there
There's a specific kind of happiness in a crowd that all decided, independently, to show up for the same thing. I chase it whenever I can, and Tomorrowland is the one I measure every other festival against. I'll happily plan a year around getting back to it.