Husband. Father. Writer. Entrepreneur. Maybe a bit crazy.
It was June 2017 when Alex Honnold free soloed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. The New York Times described it as “one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind, ever.” Mr. Honnold became famous for succeeding. It is…
I was seventeen years old. I was in my bedroom yelling at my dad. He was seated on my bed. I don’t remember the reason. I do remember I’d been on my tirade for what seemed like a long time…
Back in 1995, when I was in high school, my friends and I wore it as a badge of honor when we could consume an entire fourteen inch large pizza alone. In one sitting. For teenage boys who played a…
James Clear popularized the idea of one percent improvement in his book Atomic Habits . It’s a concept that makes a lot of sense when you start at ground zero. Take pushups, for example. Suppose on January 1st, you do…
“Don’t you ever feed him?” It was the kind of question people asked my wife frequently because I was so skinny. Then, when my wife became pregnant with our first child, I outpaced her weight gain two pounds to one…
Eight days before Christmas 1995, I said goodbye to my family as I entered a training center for volunteers bound for countries all over the world. In my group, there were 12 young men. 4 of our group didn’t speak…
It was a warm June morning when I laced up my running shoes. One of my good friends signed up for a 50-mile back-country race and asked me to pace for him the last 26 miles. The race course changes…
I could feel the sweat beading up along my hairline as I stood before Ms. Giles for my oral book report. It was my 7th grade English class. I had selected Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light for that…
The snow outside our apartment was deep enough that I was concerned our little car wouldn’t be able to get out to take my wife to the hospital. She had just passed her due date for our first child. We…
I sat across the room from my grandfather, my mom’s dad. Mom had only been gone a few years, and now that I had my own car I could visit her parents whenever I wanted. Grandpa Joe served in the…
It was perhaps the twentieth time I’d put my running shoes on, unlocked the door, then decided against the run. Instead, I’d retreat into the dark of the early morning, sit on the floor, and watch TV, or do nothing…
When I was six years old, my older brother and I were determined to see Santa Claus in action, putting presents under our tree. We sat awake in our dark bedroom, listening intently for any sounds that might tell us…
One morning, I arrived at my office at 3:45 am to continue working on a project that has been a thorn in my side for a long time. For 14 hours, I labored on the project. Several times during the…
I’ve spent nearly my entire life living in Utah, USA, where the winters are cold, so when I stepped off the plane on February 19, 1998, in Guatemala City, the warmth immediately told me I wasn’t in Utah anymore. I…
In High School, my best friend and I knew that in order to increase the likelihood that girls would want to go out with us we needed to do two things: learn to cook and watch all the Anne of…
