Husband. Father. Writer. Entrepreneur. Maybe a bit crazy.
For decades, U.S. manufacturing moved offshore in search of lower costs. Cheap labor, favorable tax policies, and globalized supply chains made it financially irresistible for companies to set up shop in China, Mexico, and Southeast Asia. The conversation’s been shifting…
My wife and I took our oldest daughter to one of our favorite restaurants for her 19th birthday. When the waiter took our order, he asked if we were leaving room for dessert. Who asks if you’re leaving room for…
The top snap on my rain jacket clicked shut as thunder grumbled across the sky. I stepped out into the rain. I needed gas and the Costco across town was 25 cents cheaper per gallon than anywhere else —at least…
The morning of May 1, 1852 likely would have dawned cool in Petilla de Aragón, Navarre, Spain, where Santiago Ramón y Cajal was born. Santi was both precocious and rebellious. In 1963, he was imprisoned for destroying his neighbor’s yard…
I don’t identify as a runner, but I’ve done plenty of it in my day. Statistically speaking, I’ve run more distance in one year than 99% of the total population will in their lifetime. In 2023, I set a new…
I rolled over and looked at my clock. 2:42 am. Nobody should be awake at that unholy hour, but I’d been lying there for a while, trying to think of a reason I couldn’t just go back to sleep already…
In the race to be more efficient, workers are discovering that productivity isn’t always their friend. What was once about working smarter has become a never-ending treadmill of optimization that serves the interests of tech companies far more than their…
Grandma Vera wasn’t much taller than the organ she loved to play that sat in her living room. Grandma seated at the organ is a recurrent childhood memory. She’d been playing the organ since she was a young girl, and…
Michael Lim once wrote, “Asking for permission is fear disguised as a question.” October 30, 2024, dawned cold. I woke up at my habitually early hour and sent the following message to my partners at the company I helped found…
“I don’t want to change! I’m happy with how I am!” It was one of the only times in my life I’ve really screamed at someone. During my time in Guatemala, I was assigned a partner, and apart from a…
My kids often joke that the three-toed sloth is my spirit animal. I’ve fallen into the trap far too often in my life that busyness = productivity when in fact busyness is often the enemy of productivity. Bertrand Russell or…
Wilfred Owen was a well known poet around the time of World War I. He wrote: “Light many lamps and gather round his bed. Lend him your eyes, warm blood and will to live. But death replied, ‘I choose him.’…
I think I was eleven or twelve years old when one of my younger brothers and I decided that we could fix our broken lawnmower. My recollection is that it was the first gas-powered lawnmower we owned, and it was…
In recent years, I’ve traveled extensively to a neighboring state for work. I’ve often found myself in one particular rural area. A dirt road passes in front of a house situated atop a small rise. The home, apparently a farm…
I’m certain I’m not the first person to try this exercise, but I found it fascinating. I took a recent article written by Ryan Holiday and pasted the contents into one of those fancy “AI detectors.” I then asked the…
