I originally started this blog in 2012. I posted for a few years, then deeply convinced myself that nobody was reading it, and in 2019 I quietly turned the whole thing into a landing page.

I told myself I was too busy, and that was partly true. But what was even more the case was that I didn’t think anyone would care about what I was working on or what I thought about it.

Here’s what I was working on while I was busy not writing about it:

In 2012, I started as a consultant at NutritionFacts.org, a nonprofit founded by Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM to provide free, evidence-based nutrition information to anyone who wanted it. In 2015, I became the first employee as CTO. In that time, we’ve grown from a small video site with seed money from The Jesse and Julie Rasch Foundation and a simple mission into an organization with thousands of videos, a Daily Dozen app, New York Times bestselling books, and over a million YouTube subscribers.

I built the things that made that possible. Infrastructure, tools, workflows, and systems. Interesting problems with real constraints—a nonprofit budget, a very small team, and no margin for the kind of technical debt that larger organizations can afford to carry. I didn’t write about any of it.

And that was incredibly stupid.

It wasn’t end-of-the-world stupid because the work got done regardless. But there’s a specific kind of stupid in spending (almost 30) years building things, not just at NutritionFacts.org, and then deciding none of it is interesting enough to document if I was writing it. The lie I was telling myself, that nobody would care, was fear wearing a logical-looking disguise, and I bought into it. And, truth be told, as much as I love the internet, I’m still very much an introvert here, too. I let my second-guessing, perfectionism for the “right” type of content, and the fear of judgement stop me from sharing what I loved most: building and solving problems.

Most of what I wrote between 2012 and 2018 is outdated enough now that resurrecting it wouldn’t be useful. This is a clean slate, and I’m excited to finally start sharing again.

What you’ll find here are honest (read: blunt) takes on software, systems, and what it actually looks like to build things that last. Big things are coming in my main role, but also with some of the side projects I’ve been cooking up in the shadows, including all of the growing pains and lessons learned. I’ll likely include some of my fitness and bodybuilding journey, because I train seriously and have made it an integral part of my life in the past few years. Reading will be included, of course, and even some gaming, because I have a deep love for Dark Souls/Bloodborne/souls-likes, RPGs, and FPS games, and it’s one of the ways I enjoy my free time.

…that and whatever else I’m thinking about that seems worth throwing into the void.

Enjoy the ride.