About

Hi, I'm Nathan (Linkedin). 👋 Thanks for coming by. 😊

This blog is where I share my thoughts on a wide range of topics, ranging from health & well-being, social issues, emerging tech, regenerative living, mindfulness, philosophy, intentional community, and more. It's really just to share my experience of navigating life in the 21st century.

For most of my professional career, I was a research engineer at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley. I also had a four-year stint as the CEO and lead designer of a game development startup. And if you go back far enough, once I was a sandwich artist. (Actually, I'm still a sandwich artist — you never really lose it. 😜)

My academic background is in psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, and computer science, but that was more than 10 years ago now, at what point is it no longer relevant? 😆 That said, those subject areas are still some of the most fascinating to me today and I do keep up with the latest scientific and academic knowledge as best I can.

These days I'm most interested in personal growth, exploring what it means to live a good life, connecting with other like-minded folks, and broadly doing what I can to make the world a better place in all my actions.

I write for many reasons: I write to connect; I write to collect and organize my own thoughts; I write because I believe what I share can offer helpful insights to others and ultimately improve their lives in some way; I write to share what's going on with my life with friends and family; and I write to create for a record for those who come after me.

Thanks for reading — I'm truly grateful to have you here. There are a million blogs out there and you stopped to check out mine, and for that I'm deeply honored. I hope you find something of value here. 😇

My approach to writing

In my opinion, I am not particularly good at writing. For me, in general what constitutes being a great writer — or a great anything, for that matter — is to be able to do that thing with effortless effort. It's kind of a high bar I set for myself, granted, but ultimately I want to be able to produce work that is eloquent, articulate, accessible, and beautiful without having to spend ages to do so. I'm just not there yet with writing.

What's more, in an ideal world I also want everything I claim to be backed with citations to academic literature, which means doing a lot more research and reading for every topic I write about. I used to also spend a lot of time creating detailed outlines so I could craft the clearest and most persuasive message possible, in addition to many hours of editing and making revisions.

However, I've found that holding myself to such standards is exhausting and I end up only writing a fraction of what I would like to write about before burning out.

To avoid this, my approach now is far more organic. Ideas come to me in the natural flow of life, I take a few minutes to mindfully observe how I feel about them, and I just start writing. I put the most emphasis on crafting a message that is accessible — one that's easy to follow and understand by a wide audience — so I remove technical jargon, I use a conversational tone, and I'll often repeat things in different ways to ensure I'm understood correctly.

You'll notice I also like to use emojis because I think they add an important aspect of communication (body language) that would otherwise be missing, though I grant there is some potential risk with people interpreting emojis differently than I intend... 😅Such is life; I can only do my best and hope the overall thrust of what I am trying to convey is understood.

Unfortunately, this new, less structured approach does mean I can get a bit wordy sometimes, and maybe my arguments aren't perfectly laid out so it might be hard to follow at times. Sorry about that... but I hope between proof-reading and having a friend offer suggestions before publishing that I can still offer something helpful, even if it's not as optimally crafted as I prefer.

Lastly, regarding citations, in general you should be able to assess how certain I am regarding the factual accuracy of claims I make based on the language I use. I readily acknowledge when I do not know something and generally I will only assert something as a fact if I believe there is substantial evidence to back it up. That said, I encourage you to fact-check me if you are ever in doubt.

factcheck.org | snopes.com | politifact.com

That's all for now. I deeply appreciate you taking the time to read my blog. ❤️ Feel free to sign-up to stay notified of new content and to comment on any given article if you have any questions or thoughts you want to discuss. 👍