About

I’m 33 years old now, currently living in Florida, though I grew up in Minnesota and have lived in six different states along the way. I've been in the startup world for a while, having started my first one when I was 21. For a long time, I approached this strictly from the creative side. I've been a graphic designer since 2010. But in 2025, I finally crossed over and started programming, mostly because I wanted to be able to fully build the things I was imagining. Now in 2026 I'm also a writer sharing my thoughts on whatever happens to cross them. Hopefully you don't mind lol.

I build software everyday, and my goal is pretty simple: I want to make technology that helps people live lives they actually love, and grow a bit smarter and stronger along the way.

I didn’t always believe software should have such lofty goals. It happened slowly, over years of just being a user myself. I kept coming across certain tools that actually shifted how I spent my days. Some helped me make things, some helped me figure out my own head, and others just made life more fun. But the common thread was that they made me feel more capable. They made the world feel a little more open.

That’s what I think technology should do. I’m not interested in tech for its own sake, or building apps that claw at your attention every five minutes. I want to build things that give you something back, whether that is time, clarity, curiosity, or just the ability to do something today that felt out of reach yesterday.

To me, a good tool should make you stronger. It should help you build better habits, think more clearly, and take back control of your limited time here on earth. The best software doesn't make us feel smaller or hook us into needing it forever. It just expands what we’re able to imagine and do for ourselves. I hope you agree.

What I’m building

I build software because I want to create those kinds of helpful experiences for other people. Usually, my projects start with some small, stubborn frustration: a simple task takes way too many taps, a tool I use every day is harder to reach than it needs to be, or a passing thought has nowhere natural to land. I like seeing how much friction I can strip away without losing the core power of the tool itself.

Take CalorieStack, for example. It’s a gram-based calorie tracker designed to use as few taps as possible. Food tracking can easily start to feel like a chore you have to perform before you're allowed to eat. I wanted to keep the helpful awareness of tracking but make the actual act of logging practically disappear.

Then there’s Min, which is a simple, bring-your-own-key AI chat app for Mac. I’ve found that AI is only really useful if it's close enough to catch a question the exact second it pops into your head. Min is built for that immediacy. It uses your preferred models and your own API key, and the Mac's option key as the trigger to start a new chat the second you need it.

And finally, Foxtrot is an outline tool for taking notes with nesting, collapsible toggle bullets. Our thoughts rarely arrive in neat, polished paragraphs. They branch, nest, wander around, disappear, and come back later. Foxtrot is designed to give that natural mess a shape without forcing you to clean it up before you're ready. Then you can collapse everything down to the root ideas and expand the bullets you want to remember more about.

On the surface, these apps don't have much in common. But at their core, they’re all trying to do the exact same thing: get out of your way as quickly as possible so you can get back to your life and goals.

A life shaped by software

If I were trying to sound impressive, I’d tell you my interests are reading, design, technology, and personal growth. But if I’m being honest, my actual day-to-day looks a lot more like listening to podcasts, watching weird YouTubers, catching recap videos of the pilot episode of TV shows I'm too skeptical of, working out, and sweating my ass off here in Florida.

Underneath that slightly chaotic mix, though, are a few core values I always seem to circle back to: curiosity, independence, creativity, growth, and just plain enjoyment.

I’ve never bought into the idea that enjoyment is merely a reward we earn after doing all the "serious" work. Enjoyment is an essential part of a good life, and it’s usually how we end up doing our best work anyway. The tools I love the most tend to respect both sides of that coin. They help me become more capable, but they also make the process of living more interesting.

Over the years, a few of those tools have become real landmarks for me. They shaped how I think about what software can be. This is my "software shelf." It's a collection of products that changed my life in some way. I've arranged them loosely by when they entered my life. It’s not a ranking, and it’s definitely not a complete list. You probably know most of them but they mean a lot to me. And most importantly there aren't many social networks, mostly because they are overridden with toxic people and bots. Or worse, overly addictive algorithms. Highly recommend you take a break from them if you haven't before.

• Amazon: My first real lesson in how a massive, incredibly complex real-world operation could be hidden behind an interface that felt completely obvious.
• IMDb: It took that post-movie curiosity we all get and turned it into an endless, searchable trail.
• Wikipedia: It made getting lost down a rabbit hole one of the absolute best ways to spend an afternoon.
• Google Maps: Changed how I travel. It made unfamiliar cities feel navigable and gave me the confidence to just show up somewhere new.
• YouTube: It opened a portal to the wonderfully weird corners of the internet, while somehow making it possible to learn practically any skill for free.
• Reddit: Showed me the strange, beautiful power of thousands of obsessive people comparing notes on hyper-specific topics.
• Audible: Slipped books into the busy parts of my day when sitting down to read wasn’t an option.
• Spotify: Took an overwhelming world of music and made it feel deeply personal and always within arm's reach.
• GitHub: Showed me that code doesn't have to just be static files on a hard drive; it can be shared, evolving, and alive.
• Pinterest: Gave my visual taste a place to accumulate and grow, way before I had the design vocabulary to actually explain what I liked.
• Sketch: Made interface design feel direct and tactile, convincing me that software itself could be used as a creative material.
• Google Drive: Untethered my work from any single physical machine. Suddenly, my office was wherever I was. Completely dethroned Dropbox based on price. Sorry Dropbox.
• Telegram: Did messaging right and I never looked back.
• Qwant: A great reminder that we don't have to just accept default search engines, and that building alternatives actually matters. Dethroned DuckDuckGo.
• Discord: Turned online communities from passive audiences into virtual spaces people actually hang out in.
• Notion: Made digital information feel like Lego bricks that I could endlessly rearrange into systems that make sense to my brain.
• Sorted: Helped me turn that vague, abstract pressure of a massive to-do list into a realistic plan for my actual day. GAMECHANGING.
• Apple Shortcuts: Showed me that the boring, repetitive routines of daily life could actually be quickly programmed.
• Arc Search: Reminded me that even something as fundamental as browsing the web is still open to fresh reinvention. It's sooo good.
• Spokenly: Made it incredibly easy to talk out loud and dictate a thought for any reason.
• Codex: Brought AI directly into the build process, massively shortening the distance between the initial spark of an idea and working code.

The common thread is not that every product is perfect. It is that each one widened my sense of what software could do. They changed my expectations, my habits, or the shape of an ordinary day. Eventually, admiring that kind of work turned into wanting to make it myself.

What I’m thinking about

I write mostly because living life always seems to leave me with more questions than answers.

The articles here are really just about whatever has my attention at the moment. Usually, that means software, design, personal growth, and finding better ways to live, but I don't like to box myself in. I have zero interest in pretending I have everything figured out. I guess I’d rather just follow an interesting idea far enough to see where it actually leads.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can sign up for my newsletter below. I'll send new pieces of writing your way whenever I finish them.

Peace and love y'all.