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 and
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 women had
I have just submitted my registration preferences for the first semester of my graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh. I start mid-September at the Futures Institute studying Narrative Futures: Art, Data, and Society. It’s an interdisciplinary MSc that excites me while mystifying most people about what the program
Five weeks into my sabbatical, I’m discovering the archaeology of my former self. The contrast is striking: left my last day at work, middle getting ready for a garden party-themed wedding, right Mucha doing his impression of Garfield with my lasagna. What emerges isn’t just an energy difference,
For the last few years, I have been an unofficial grief counsellor of UX, consoling designers and researchers through countless Slack threads and coffee chats about the tech industry’s sudden personality change. Everyone’s exhausted, either from job hunting, constant reorgs, or just “Making do with less.” Cutbacks are
“We didn’t start the fire / It was always burning, since the world’s been turning / We didn’t start the fire / No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it” – Billy Joel Growing up in Nevada City, California, fires were a constant threat. From summer through
I’ve been thinking a lot about Product Management and Design lately: how they interact, where they clash, and how they might evolve together. The relationship between these disciplines has constantly reminded me of a complex partnership with productive tensions and occasional heated arguments over the dinner table. Like any
Did you miss Part I? Facebook’s motto, ‘move fast and break things,’ could have been written for hydraulic mining companies. Both unleashed unprecedented forces to extract maximum value, ignored downstream consequences and transformed their industries through sheer destructive efficiency. The difference? Hydraulic mining destroyed hillsides; social media plunders people’
Silicon Valley’s open pit mines aren’t visible on Google Earth. There are no scarred landscapes or towering tailings piles, just gleaming, half-empty corporate campuses where algorithms extract value with the same ruthless efficiency that hydraulic cannons once carved through California hillsides. The terrain here is mental rather than
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I have decided to start blogging. No social media hookups. No grand LinkedIn engagement strategy. At least for now. If I were being dramatic, I could tell you the story about what my dad said to me the morning before he went into the surgery which ultimately took his life.