I wish I still had the entry I submitted to the local public library's poetry compendium after my first poetry workshop when I was barely old enough to know what poetry even was. I was an extremely amateur photographer and an avid "heartbreak poet" when I was younger, experiencing and writing about all the 80's angst to be expected from one growing up in the equivalent of an East Coast John Hughes film. Fast forward to college and Boston and a series of obscure but important jobs that landed me in my current career.

I'm a closet Nat Geo photojournalist at heart, nomadic blood pumping through my veins most of the year. I'm at my best when I'm exploring or satisfying my curiosity or watching wildlife do its thing. If you get the chance, dive with whale sharks or camp in the Okavango Delta or hike through a Belizean jungle at midnight and close your eyes or watch an osprey grab a fish nearly 2/3 the length of its body and fly off... Nature is magical. Humans, for the most part, pretty much suck.

So I use my Medium page for writing about the serious, life stuff: mentoring and growing and stumbling and creating and finding oneself. And I have a travel blog where I record my experiences and share my love of this amazing planet with whoever will listen. I've been procrastinating my work on a book for years, the file called [title].nearlyfinal.FINAL.draft42.doc sitting in my Dropbox waiting patiently for me to pull the trigger on it. It's a compilation of life and love and yoga and learning. Shameless plug: It's good, so if you're a publisher and interested in something just a little bit outside of the box, please message me.

I work in technology, designing learning programs for users of the fantastically cool software products we make, helping doctors use technology so they can do more doctoring and less paperwork. A good day for me is one where I feel like I've made a difference, small or large, at work or in the world. On a very good day: both.

Some days I dream of ways to support and mentor my team without feeling like I'm as hard on them as I am on myself. Other days, I'm dreaming about elephants or whale sharks or unimaginable landscapes, trying to figure out how to do play all the time but still keep my job because I love my work.

I'll close with one of my all-time favourite photos, taken on the Chobe River in Botswana. Before the world went sideways.