Stories and Thoughts

Today I’m thinking through every way I enjoy spending my time, naturally leading me toward considering how little time there really is. I’m incredibly fortunate to work in a meaningful, interesting, and lucrative field, where I spend nearly half of all awake moments. As far as normal life goes, I’m really lucky in this regard (and in many others). I love spending time with my girlfriend, my friends, and my family. I love spending time running, working out, meditating, reading

A few years ago I attended a wedding for a friend of mine at a vineyard on the coast of France. It was a beautiful ceremony, and I had an amazing time. Following the wedding was two days in Paris with a few friends that preceded about four days in London with some other friends. All wonderful. Post London I took a train to Wales where I caught a ferry to Dublin. I felt home as soon as I was alone, feeling lighter on the train. The ferry ride was full of wonder that accompanie

Last year a younger professional asked me if we could spend some time together talking about career advancement. We’ve had many sessions since then, and it’s fair to say the insights and perspectives go both ways. He feels that I could be more forward in my convictions, once saying to me, “don’t be afraid to cause a problem”. He wasn’t wrong to some degree. I’m not a karma guy, but I do believe people are less likely to throw me curve balls when I’m not causing problems. In a

My friend with the deepest understanding of classical philosophy texted me recently stating that he himself probably isn’t self aware, statistically. According to my favorite search engine, 95% of people believe that they are self aware while only 10-15% actually are. That 10-15% of people are supposed to hold an accurate representation of themselves inwardly and outwardly, knowing accurately how they actually are, how they impact others, and how others actually see them. In

I open my eyes and I’m standing just beneath the summit of a large basalt mountain facing a white painted wooden crate on four wheels with castors. I use a drill to take out the four screws securing the lid to the box. I remove the lid, leaning it against the empty crate. My personal laptop is stacked on top of my work laptop, and I set them both in the crate. There’s no work I need to be doing right now. I set my phone, keys, and wallet in the crate. I don’t need to talk to

If you want to send something to space, it’s typically three different teams that are responsible for: Verifying the engineering of the thing meets “sendable to space” requirements Getting the thing into a rocket Flying the thing once it’s in space I was fortunate in my last aerospace role to have responsibilities in all three facets, and it was another reminder that everything is just people. I worked with NASA mission managers to figure out what sorts of things we would sen

I assume many of us have heard some variation of, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” The phrasing implies that we are responsible for whatever comes out of our mouths. I also assume many of us weren’t taught to take full responsibility for our thoughts, and I wonder why this isn’t a common point of teaching. Maybe it feels invasive, abstract, or difficult. Maybe we wouldn't feel safe to be vulnerable within our own minds. We do register every

I hadn't ever felt called to explicitly identify my core values until a friend asked me what mine were. Through an exercise within a Brene Brown book, she identified two core values for herself. Discussion helped me realize that one benefit of knowing ourselves in a few words included better decision making. When between two decisions, we can lean on our core values to show us which decision best aligns with ourselves. How should we spend our limited time when we don't know w

The first time I left the country was to visit Kenya when I was 19. A friend from Sri Lanka invited me and another friend to visit his father, a man who lived in Kenya doing tea trade. The friend who invited us lost his passport in a mosh pit after we bought our tickets, so we went and winged it for three weeks without him - only seeing his dad briefly for lunch one afternoon. I have many thoughts about this trip, but what’s on my mind today is related to an experience walkin

The first time that I visited the Buddhist Vihara I didn’t know what to expect. I took off my shoes on the front porch and left them with the others in some cubbies. The door was locked, so I knocked and rang the bell. Eventually a monk in a robe opened the door for me, asked if I was there for meditation, then led me into the main room of the temple. He gestured to a pile of mats and then the floor. The mat I picked couldn’t have felt less designed for comfort. It felt like

There are many artists in my life, people that I love dearly. One of them, a professional in their craft, recently told me a story about meeting a younger person who claimed to have similar aspirations for advancing professionally in their artform. The acclaimed aspirer eventually told my loved one that they felt publishing solo work was self-indulgent. It was immediately apparent to me that the aspirer would likely never persevere in what they thought they wanted, and their

The most memorable Uber ride I’ve ever taken was from the Orlando airport to Kennedy Space Center in 2025. As soon as I got in the car the driver asked me if I was in town for work, which I was. He asked what kind of work, and I said aerospace engineering. His response was, “Oh nice – my family has a long history in the aerospace industry. Have you heard of the Wright brothers?” He went on to explain that his last name was Patterson, a family name that has a long history inte

I have a difficult time saying anything is true. I often add minor disclaimers to what most people consider facts as a result: I believe that... (I accept a thing to be true and understand others may not) I think that… (this is my current belief, but it may change by the end of the sentence) I feel like… (I’m being gentle by insinuating that if we disagree my claim may not be rational) To my understanding… (I have evidence to support a belief, but I’m open to being wrong) I r

My second venture to a Buddhist temple was two nights ago, where the doors are open once per week for community meditations. My meditation practice has gone from weekly to daily over the last two years, and the goodness it has brought me is notable. This pulled me toward a book called, The Science of Enlightenment – How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young. To my understanding, Shinzen was a PhD candidate in Japanese studies in California, and his thesis took him to Japan to st

I've been feeling called and motivated to do everything, and I wish I could identify where the beginning was. The truth is that every action ever performed was the result of every moment before it, so to explain why I decided to begin a nonprofit or why I'm journaling publicly today feels like a futile endeavor. My objective had been my career since starting college in 2015, though then I really thought I would work with high energy gamma ray blazars at Goddard Spaceflight ce