Blog

Hello, Readers!

Welcome to my blog! Here, you’ll find a mix of topics from intentional living to navigating your career in the age of AI to updates on my various projects. The themes that run through my work are Living the Life You Want, Simplicity, Continuous Improvement, Iteration, Travel, Indie Book Publishing, and Agile Software Development.

If you’re excited about any of these, subscribe in the sidebar on any blog post or join me over on Medium.

Afternoon Tea, ABBA, and Endless Wandering: A Weekend In Milwaukee

The Milwaukee I spent a weekend in recently with my two teenage daughters is walkable, beautiful in places, rich in culture and history, and full of the kind of off-script moments that make a girls’ weekend memorable long after it’s over. If you’ve been avoiding Milwaukee, it might be time to think again.

Retiring Early When You Still Have Kids at Home

Most retirement content (books, podcasts, financial planning guides) is written for people whose kids have left the nest. The vision it sells is the same as the one I had going in: extended travel, leisurely mornings, and complete control over your calendar. You do get some of that. It’s just not the whole picture when you have to get someone to dance at 6pm.

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney Is The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Romney’s book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, is incredibly well-written and eye-opening. Somewhere between her descriptions of the fascinating world of rare book dealing and her excavation of the lives and hardships of famous female authors of the 1700s and 1800s, I realized something that stopped me cold: we have let men curate so much more than just our decisions about what to read. I quickly gave this book five stars. Here’s why you might like to read it too.

How to Shed Obligations When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed recently. What I’ve learned, after years of accumulating obligations and then having to shed them, is that the solution isn’t to be more disciplined about saying no in the future. It’s to do a periodic audit of everything you’ve already said yes to and then make some harder decisions than you made the first time around.

Fall 2026 Capstone Partners: Welcome to CS 620

CS 620, the Computer Sciences Capstone, is a course I developed and have been teaching since its pilot in Fall 2020. UW-Madison Computer Sciences Capstone Projects offer our undergraduates real-world, hands-on experience while learning and using best practice software development techniques and agile principles. Here are our partners for the Fall 2026.

The Never-ending Pursuit of Enough

School is starting this week and there’s a lot going on. And so, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of enough. How hard it is to actually live there and maintain a lifestyle centered around having “enough”. Why American culture makes this almost impossible, but why it’s worth pursuing anyway.

Slow Productivity by Cal Newport: Good Reminder, Not As Good as Deep Work

In Slow Productivity Newport says that our current definition of productivity is broken. Busyness has become a proxy for actual effort, and that history’s most creative and impactful people worked very differently than we do today. I buy into this premise completely. Newport is one of the clearest thinkers writing about work and attention right now, and I always appreciate his thoughts. Here’s a review about what I found valuable and perhaps not as valuable.

Why I Keep Starting New Things in Retirement (And Why You Should Too)

The truth about retirement is, I’m still figuring out which challenges belong in my days and which problems I really want to solve. I’m still learning what it means to do hard things by choice rather than by obligation and how to find the right balance between the ebb of rest and the flow of something hard that I think matters. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far.

The Best Part of Our Viking Rhine Trip Was After the Boat: Switzerland, Lake Como & Milan

Our extension, which went from Basel through the Swiss Alps by the scenic Bernina Express train, two nights in St. Moritz, another scenic train into Italy, a stop at Lake Como, and two nights in Milan, was fantastic. It had everything the river cruise sometimes lacked: free time, fitness centers, beautiful hotels, and the feeling that the pace was ours to explore. Let me tell you how our post-extension to Switzerland and Italy went.

Viking Rhine River Cruise: The Good and The Bad

We went on a Viking River Cruise down the Rhine River this July. The trip was wonderful in many ways, but it was not quite what I expected in a few important ones. The Rhine River was low so we ended up switching boats partway through the cruise. This is my account of both the day-by-day itinerary, what we actually did, and my verdict on whether a Viking River Cruise was right for us (and whether it may be right for you).

A Day and a Half in Amsterdam

Here’s how we spent our day and a half in Amsterdam before we jumped on a Viking Rhine River Cruise.

How I Plan a Trip (And Why the Planning Is Half the Fun)

I am an enthusiastic trip planner. At any given moment, I would rather be traveling (seeing new things, trying new foods, meeting new people) than almost anything else in the world. For me, planning the trip is almost as fun as actually taking it. So, let me walk you through how I plan a trip, from the first spark of interest to the last booking.