I spent eight years as a Marine Combat Photographer. I taught photography to public affairs Marines at DINFOS. I built a digital marketing company in Las Vegas. I worked crisis communications during the early days of COVID at Naval Hospital Pensacola. I got a master’s from Georgetown. I now write about VA research for a living, translating the science that keeps veterans alive into language anyone can understand.
None of that is why I’m here.
I’m here because somewhere along the way, writing stopped being a job and started being the thing that makes sense of everything else. The men’s work I’ve been doing since 2012. The grief I didn’t process until I was on the floor in California five years after my mother died. The daughter who stays up until midnight sculpting polymer clay figures and once woke up the whole house because a roach crawled on her. The questions I keep asking myself about what it means to show up fully in the life you actually have.
This is where I work those out.
I write personal essays. They tend to be about craft, judgment, fatherhood, discipline, and what the Marine Corps taught me that I’ve had to unlearn. Sometimes they’re about humidity and silverfish. The throughline is that I’m trying to be honest about what’s actually happening, not what’s supposed to be happening.
I’m based in Pensacola, Florida. I have two daughters, Savannah (14) and Cyrene (12). I ride a OneWheel, roast my own coffee, and read more than I sleep.
If something lands, reply and tell me. I read every one.
Views expressed are my own and do not represent the Department of Veterans Affairs.
