Outside the essays
Life & Rituals
Running, roads, trails, coffee, art, books, film, and music—a few ordinary pleasures and rituals from the rest of life.
Fitness
Running without a fixed finish line.
Running is the simplest ritual I have: shoes on, ocean nearby, and no fixed plan. I usually do not go out knowing how far I will run. I follow the mood of the day, and sometimes an ordinary coastal run from La Jolla toward Carlsbad and Oceanside turns into 30 miles. That private, unforced feeling is part of why Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running stayed with me.
That open-endedness is the best part. Planning the distance too carefully makes it less fun; I like leaving room for the run to decide what it wants to be. Sometimes that means asking for a ride back home, but that is what friends and family are for. The rest of fitness is mostly consistency: lifting, walking, hiking, meditating, sleeping well, and eating plant-forward food with plenty of fish. I especially love salmon.
Travel
Roads, trails, and places that stayed with me.
I love road trips for their randomness and discovery: stopping in small towns, staying long enough to wander, finding local food and coffee places, and letting the day become less planned. The long drives mattered, but the small stops lasted longer: Santa Fe town squares, mountain air near Aspen, fog and headlands on the coast, and island light in Hawaii.
I do not make art myself, but I love being around it—especially visiting the museums around Santa Fe Plaza. The city’s combination of art, landscape, and light is part of why I have returned again and again.
I have driven from Seattle to Cambridge and from Princeton to San Diego, but a trip does not need a continent to feel expansive. The smaller coastal drives matter too: a string of towns, headlands, coffee stops, and redwood shade, each encountered at road speed rather than itinerary speed.
Trails
National parks have become part of the travel ritual too. Great Smoky Mountains, Yosemite, Redwood National Park, and Joshua Tree each hold a different kind of quiet: mist and old forest, granite and water, redwood shade, desert light, and the feeling of camping under a very open sky.
The trails stay with me as sensations first. Angels Landing, The Narrows, Vernal Falls, Nevada Falls, and the paths through the redwoods are memories of exposure, river water, granite, spray, soft ground, and the careful attention of each step.
Coffee
Coffee at home and on the road.
Coffee is one of the small rituals that makes the day feel human: a reason to pause, reset, and notice where I am. At home, it is usually the simple AeroPress cup; on the road, it is the local place that gives a town some texture.
A few coffee places keep turning into part of my personal map. Family, friendship, meals, music, and long conversations often gather around the same table.
At home
The AeroPress ritualThe best cup is often the one made quietly at home: fresh grounds, hot water, a slow press, and a few minutes before the day gets busy. The AeroPress is simple by design and makes a clean, rich cup without much fuss.
San Diego
Lofty CoffeeI first discovered Lofty around 2014, when it was still just the Encinitas spot. They have expanded since then, and the other branches are good too, but Encinitas is still my favorite: bright, coastal, and easy to fold into a walk.
San Diego
Zumbar CoffeeSmall, focused, and serious about the cup without making a performance out of it. Zumbar is a good stop when I want coffee to be simple and precise.
Nearby
Kean CoffeeA Southern California favorite when I am farther north: warm, reliable, and worth the detour.
Big Island, Hawaii
Waimea Coffee CompanyA coffee stop I remember for island air, high-country light, and a slower pace. It ties coffee to travel in a simple, lasting way.
Books & film
Books and films I love.
Not a definitive shelf. Just a few favorites I have enjoyed and returned to.
Murakami: running, memory, and strange worlds
Haruki Murakami
I like Murakami’s writing more broadly. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running turns a daily practice into a way of thinking about attention and solitude; Kafka on the Shore carries that same inwardness into a stranger, more dreamlike world.
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I like its central idea: some things do more than survive shocks and volatility—they can improve through stress, variation, and trial and error.
The Three-Body Problem trilogy
Liu Cixin
A work of imagination at civilizational scale—deep time, strange intelligence, difficult choices, and the consequences that travel far beyond one lifetime.
Miyazaki’s films
Hayao Miyazaki
I love Miyazaki’s films: worlds that are strange and gentle at once, filled with flight, forests, work, food, courage, and characters who rarely divide neatly into good and evil.
Songs
Songs I keep returning to.
Not a definitive list. Just a few songs and performances I come back to often.
Scale
Songs with a big sky
Songs I return to for scale: planets, distance, wonder, and the feeling of being small in a large world.
Return
Songs that bring me back
A few favorites for rhythm, mood, weather, and the ordinary texture of a day.
Side trails
Repeat listens and side trails
The kind of links that start as one song and become an hour of wandering. Not a complete map, just a small window into taste.
Return
The good ordinary things.
Long runs, wandering roads, coffee, books, films, music, meals, and conversations—small parts of life I enjoy and return to.