As I sat down on the train in Figeac on the way back from Camp Chateau on Sunday, I opened a text edit file and put on my We Can Do This playlist on shuffle and the first song was “Fear the Future” by St Vincent, which was a bit
If you are interested in my more constructive business writing, check out AI made building cheap, but it made clarity expensive. Otherwise, stay for the existential meander. In February, I asked whether I should stay or go. In June, I got my answer from the Home Office. This one is
If you look at LinkedIn these days it is like a holographic print. If you hold it one way, you see a beach party on a hot summer day. But if you hold it another way you see the people in the waves screaming and blood in the water. Working
Below is a personal update on my visa situation in the UK. If you’re here for the tech and design writing, you can also subscribe at Thoughtful Apes, where I'll publish my business articles. My most candid takes on WTF is happening in tech will still be
In February of 2022 the core leadership of Trello all gave notice on the same day: the CEO, Head of Product, Head of Engineering, and Chief of Staff. In the meeting where we discussed communications plans, how all 300 employees would learn about this announcement, one of those leaders said
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the 1973 Disney animated Robin Hood. Specifically with Robin himself, that improbably charming fox who could split an arrow at impossible distances even disguised and wearing stilts. I was enthralled by him, but I did not want to be Maid Marion.
I have been thinking a lot about this article from McSweeny’s in 2020, “I TURNED MY PASSION INTO MY DREAM JOB AND NOW I SELL SMALL HATS TO IGUANAS ON INSTAGRAM.” Mostly it comes to me after a LinkedIn check-in session, where it seems 50% of the people
Today was my return to Pilates after a few weeks away: travel, a spring cold, the usual disruptions. I knew it would be tough before I even walked in, but I groaned when I saw the Pilates rings waiting on each reformer. The studio has a mix of Scottish and
I remember the first time I heard “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash. I was on a school bus somewhere between Ashland, Oregon and Redding, California, heading home from a Shakespeare festival field trip. My yellow Sony Walkman picked up a valley radio station I couldn’
The first time I approached a beehive, I was nineteen, dressed in a crisp new white bee suit at Cal Poly’s apiary, smoker in hand for my beekeeping class. Dozens of stacked brood boxes stood out in the orchard on the northwest corner of campus. The roar of a
In spring in Seattle, bulbs were my March lifeline. During the greyest doldrums of winter’s wet retreat, my vast collection of daffodils and jonquils would appear first, like little sunshine bombs about to go off. Their bullet-shaped heads would nod down as they filled in before bursting up
Crossing the Threshold When the bus entered the Ardtornish Estate, I felt head-to-toe goosebumps: not from the Highland cold, but from the unfamiliar sensation of arriving somewhere I didn’t need to mask my fantasy fanatic self. I had landed one of 45 coveted spots that 4,000