about me

live curiously. seek answers.

I’ve always wondered what was outside the United States. Yet growing up in the forested confines near Lake Tahoe, I settled for scenic hikes, competitive swimming, and picture atlases. Then at 18, I relocated to study at The University of Texas. I attended an excessive number of university athletic events by playing trumpet in Longhorn Band while I studied engineering in my free time, assuming that degree would lead to a steady career and hoping it might take me abroad.

That was 2011.

After six years of regurgitated professional buzzwords, multiple moves for multiple jobs, and climbing at least one hundred wind turbines, I surrendered - newly debt-free, yet constrained and unsatisfied. My boyish yearning persisted: there has to be more to life out there. So I shelved my comforts and career (thinking I might dust it off somewhere new…someday). I moved to New Zealand with an overweight backpack, insatiable curiosity, and no bed. Without realizing it, I became a vagabond.

By ambling beyond the States in the years since, my goal is to learn a bit about the world’s many people and ideas while also learning about myself and sharing ideas of my own. I seek new friendships and interpersonal cultural understanding amidst the myriad challenges that beget the joy and frustration of being a foreigner, all so we humans might become a little closer. My path is delightfully uncertain. Yet whether it’s urban complexity or rural resourcefulness that showcases our bizarre and beautiful human behavior, I remain fascinated. Cycling and running balance my bookish lifestyle, and I love to prepare dinner with new and old friends over conversation awash in wine.

To be a vagabond is liberating and provocative; an absurd yet powerful way to live. As I grow along the way, I hope to inspire growth in others near and far. This is my modest global meander. Come along!