When people ask what I do for work, I often have to pause before answering.
Sometimes the answer is that I’m a digital marketer who can send millions of emails in a day. Other times I’m teaching viticulture. At various points I’ve worked as a GIS professional, a farmer, an agricultural consultant, a sustainability coordinator, and even a long-haul truck driver (briefly!).
It never seems as straightforward as saying, “I’m a teacher,” or “I’m an engineer,” or “I’m a truck driver.”
For a long time I viewed my career as a collection of interesting but unrelated experiences. Looking back, I think I was missing the bigger picture.
The common thread isn’t the industry or job title. It’s systems.
I’ve always been fascinated by how things work together.
In marketing, I design automated systems that connect people, information, technology, and timing to create a meaningful experience for a specific audience.
In viticulture, I think about how soil, water, climate, equipment, plant health, labor, and economics interact to create a functioning agricultural ecosystem. You quickly learn that you can’t drive an eight-foot tractor down an eight-foot row. Every decision influences another.
Years ago, I built a straw bale home on a piece of undeveloped land. At the time, I thought I was building a house. Looking back, I was really building a system.
The home sat at the center of the property and was designed to be efficient, functional, and beautiful. One simple decision was separating the plumbing into two major drainage systems: one for septic waste and another for greywater. The greywater was directed to trees and plants surrounding the house.
Just by living in the house, we were irrigating part of the landscape and supporting a growing food forest.
A small design decision connected daily life, water management, food production, and the surrounding ecosystem.
It was a system.
The more I look at my career and personal projects, the more I see this pattern repeating. Whether I’m working with software, vineyards, communities, buildings, water systems, or educational programs, I’m drawn to the same questions:
- How do the pieces fit together?
- Where are the bottlenecks?
- What creates resilience?
- How can a system become more regenerative and less wasteful?
- How do small decisions influence larger outcomes?
I’ve started to think of myself less by job title and more as a systems thinker who happens to work across many different applications.
This site is a place to explore those ideas.
Some posts will be about sustainability. Others may focus on agriculture, technology, education, community design, or projects around my home and property. What connects them is an interest in understanding how systems work and how they can be improved.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. I’m simply curious about the relationships between people, technology, ecology, and the built environment.
My hope is that by sharing observations, experiments, successes, failures, and questions, I can connect with others who are exploring similar ideas and continue learning from the communities around me.
After all, every interesting system begins with connections.