Writing

Letters from abroad, field notes from farms and building sites, and photos from the years I spent learning how things are made.

I wrote a lot in those years. Then building took every hour I had. This is the record, kept for anyone curious and for my own memory.

Start here

Where to begin: nine posts I would hand you first, and eight more to read beside them.

2007Letters from abroad
Kenya: The most challenging summer of my life
My first summer abroad: an internship that did not exist, a stutter, and Mount Kenya in running shoes.
2013Lessons from the Río San Juan
Lessons from the Rio San Juan
A rented canoe, no guide, and a jungle river. I had paddled twice before and never steered.
2014Experience Institute
The Art of Storytelling
I spent most of my life with a stutter. Then I found out I come from storytellers.
2013Permaculture Design Course, ten days
Permaculture Design Course Day 10: Strategies for an Alternative Global Nation
On the last day of a permaculture course, I realized money behaves like water.
2014Essays and field notes
Chasing Surf in Life
Learning to surf with a scraped belly, a rogue set and a fear of water from childhood.
2015Seven days of the Your Turn Challenge
How to Be the New Guy
How I went from the late guy at a Tulum beach potluck to learning my first guitar chord.
2020Arrested for Chocolate
Arrested for Chocolate
A field test said my chocolate was a drug. It took a lab to say it wasn’t.
2013The 2013 photo stream
“I think I’m beginning to understand why dog is man’s best friend”
Petrified of dogs since I was a kid, until the free-roaming ranch dogs changed that.
2012The Buy Positively years
Find Balance
A resolution from the year after I left my job: ask every week, am I balanced?
2009Letters from abroad
Ecuador
Ecuador, where a French family kept turning up and Spanish was our only common language.
2013Essays and field notes
Travel and Experience is the Mother of all Education
How a Costa Rica farm and one French word, permaculture, set up my next year.
2015Experience Institute
Lessons that Keep Learning from Experience Institute
Three things a year of designing my own degree taught me, including that structure creates freedom.
2013Permaculture Design Course, ten days
Permaculture Design Course Day 1
The first day of a permaculture course at Zaytuna Farm, and what buffalo and wolves have to do with soil.
2015Essays and field notes
Hope for One More Block
Three of us, a Sunday night in Matagalpa, and a hunt for a real Nicaraguan dinner.
2015Seven days of the Your Turn Challenge
Belief is something that’s important to me
Sixty kids laughed at my stutter in Kibera. I kept showing up, and each day I stuttered less.
2013The 2013 photo stream
The cook and the ax
The cook at Project Bona Fide took the ax from me, then taught us to make chocolate.
2012The Buy Positively years
Holstee “My Life” submission
What it felt like to leave a well-paying job with no business model and no dollar coming in.

By series

Start at the first post and read on.

By chapter

Filed by the chapter of my life they were written in.

2007
2008
2009
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2017
2020

2006 to 2011

School, AIESEC, Nairobi and Muscat, then PwC.

2011 to 2013

The Simple Good, Buy Positively, Rancho Margot, Ometepe and the Río San Juan.

2013 to 2014

The Experience Institute, a permaculture certificate in Australia, and the Windship build.

2014 to 2018

Casa Oro Group, from one hostel to five guesthouses, a café and a farm project, and the book drafts.

2018 to 2020

Bamboo, earth, then chocolate.

Writing

Start here

By series

Letters from abroad

Lessons from the Río San Juan

Experience Institute

Permaculture Design Course, ten days

Essays and field notes

Seven days of the Your Turn Challenge

The book

Arrested for Chocolate

The 2013 photo stream

The Buy Positively years

By chapter

Illinois and the world

Exploring

Experience Institute

The builder in San Juan del Sur

The pivot