Articles

There’s a particular freedom in deleting everything and starting fresh. Not because the old thing was bad, but because you’ve changed since you built it.

A website is a statement. Not of credentials — LinkedIn handles that. A website is a statement of what you think about. What you find interesting enough to write down.

I used to have a law practice site. Clean, professional, forgettable. It served its purpose, but it didn’t say anything about who I actually am or what I actually think about.

This version is different. One feed. Tags instead of categories. Running next to AI next to divination — because that’s how my brain works. The interesting stuff happens at the intersections.

Fewer pages, more intention.

I spent twelve years writing software. Ford, Merck, Nike, Compuware, the Hartford Whalers. Then I went to law school, became a patent practitioner, and spent a decade doing something completely different.

Now I’m back in the code. Working at AWS. Building things again.

People ask if the law years were a detour. I don’t think so. Patent law is fundamentally about understanding systems well enough to explain them to someone who doesn’t. That’s also what good software architecture is. And good writing. And good teaching.

The common thread isn’t the domain — it’s the skill of translating complexity into clarity. Code does that with machines. Law does it with institutions. Writing does it with people.

The nonlinear path is the only honest one. You follow what’s interesting. Sometimes it takes you sideways. Sometimes sideways is exactly where you needed to go.

We optimize for convenience. Faster delivery. Fewer clicks. Seamless experiences. And for most things, that’s right — nobody wants a harder way to buy groceries.

But some things benefit from friction.

Running a marathon is nothing but friction. That’s the point. The difficulty is the product. Take away the friction and you’re just… going somewhere slowly.

Learning something deep requires friction. The struggle to understand is where understanding lives. If it goes in easy, it comes out easy too.

Writing is friction. The gap between what you think and what you can articulate — that’s the friction that makes thinking sharper. Remove it (say, by letting an AI write for you) and you’ve removed the thing that was actually valuable.

Even meditation is friction. Sitting still when your mind wants to move. Paying attention when your attention wants to wander. The practice is the resistance.

The trick is knowing which friction to eliminate and which to embrace. Eliminate friction in logistics. Embrace it in craft. The things worth doing are usually the things that resist being done easily.