My Notes
Over here, the writing is a little shorter and more experimental than in my essays. These are my conversation starters. My digital garden of ideas I’ve planted and am tending to. There are a few common themes in my Notes.
I keep coming back to exploring how people find their people, and intentionally build community. I share a little work I did with Write of Passage on making an online course globally accessible, and look at making friends online.
Writing helped me navigate a difficult career change. I loved the course that taught me to write so much, I ended up working with them for years. In Notes like On Writing and Reflective Practice, and My 12 Favorite Problems, I’m writing about my writing process.
For a long time, travel defined me. I loved walking around a new city, and watching the world go by in an unfamiliar coffee shop. I travel less now that I have an infant, but looking back, my trips to Casablanca, Louisville and the Dubai Expo all prompted me to send a postcard to my readers.
Make yourself at home in these Notes and let me know what you think.
The Science of City Beauty
The evidence is piling up that health benefits are positively correlated with urban design that takes into account green and blue spaces, play, tree cover, and yes, aesthetics. Should we have a right to live somewhere beautiful?
Neighborhood Vitals: An Etymology
Is “Vitals” the right framework to measure the health of a place? Here is my current thinking on why the answer is “yes.”