What Matters to Me

Presence

I have a three-month-old son. Before he was born, I thought I understood what paying attention meant. I didn't. There's a difference between being in the room and being in the room. He taught me that.

I want to be the kind of person who's actually here for the people around me. Not half-listening while I think about something else. Not physically present but mentally somewhere else. Actually here.

That's harder than it sounds. My brain runs constantly. It wants to solve problems, make connections, follow threads. Learning to quiet that and just be with someone, without an agenda, without multitasking, is an ongoing project.

Family

My wife is a family medicine doctor. She spends her days taking care of other people. I try to make sure someone's taking care of her too. Our life together is the thing I'm most proud of, and it's the thing I'm least interested in optimizing. Some things should just be lived.

Meaning over motion

I don't care about being busy. Busy is easy. You can fill every hour of the day and accomplish nothing that matters. I've done it. It feels productive and it isn't.

What I care about is doing work that connects to something real. Building something that helps someone. Solving a problem that was actually worth solving. When the work matters, I can go all day. When it doesn't, I'd rather be doing something else.

I built my business around this. I pick the projects I work on. I say no to things that don't interest me. That's a privilege, and I know it. But it's also intentional. I designed my life so the work and the meaning overlap as much as possible.

Craft

I like making things well. Not perfectly. Well. There's a difference. Perfection is a trap that keeps you from shipping. But "good enough" as a default is depressing. I want the things I make to feel like someone cared about them.

This applies to everything, not just work. I brew beer. I cook. I like hobbies where the process matters as much as the result. Fermentation teaches patience. You can't rush it. You set things up, then you wait, then you find out if your instincts were right.

Curiosity

I read constantly. History, technology, psychology, economics, random Wikipedia rabbit holes at 1am. Not because I'm trying to learn something specific. Because everything is interesting if you look at it long enough.

The best ideas I've had came from connecting things that didn't seem related. A concept from behavioral economics applied to product design. A pattern from medieval history that explains how open-source communities work. The more I take in, the more connections I see.

Quiet ambition

I'm not trying to build the next big thing. I'm not chasing scale or press coverage or a legacy. I want to do good work for people I respect, be present for my family, and keep learning. If something bigger comes from that, great. If not, I already have what I want.