Introducing Field Notes

Why I Started a Blog in 2026

Two weeks ago, without any fanfare, I launched Field Notes, a public notebook for reflections on what I’m learning in this stretch of work and life. I’ve already published six notes, and I’m finally ready to share it beyond friends and family.

Here’s what drove this decision. I’ve published only two essays on Where the Road Bends (WTRB) this year. Each one runs about 2,500 words and asks a lot of the reader and of myself.

They often undergo three or four drafts and take weeks to finish alongside my long-time editor, Rachel Jepsen (she is awesome). This publication has been a labor of love and one of my greatest teachers, but it’s also become a big lift at times.

I’m also in one of the fullest seasons of my life, as a husband, father, and coach. I’m working on a new venture I’ll announce in the fall, investing in my marriage, raising two young girls, studying Hakomi and the dharma, and tending my health. It’s meaningful, but a lot.

In a life this full, when every creative seed has to clear that high a bar, most thoughts get captured in my journal but never see the light of day. I still love to write and express myself, so the Buddhist in me went looking for the middle path.

Field Notes is that middle path: short, rough notes, written in one sitting and published a few times a week. The opposite of the essays you read here.

Many posts will be half-formed and a few will be flat-out wrong. Some will be a few sentences, some will have just images, and others will be hundreds of words. I’m not working with an editor, following a lengthy creative process, or applying a playbook. That’s the format.

The raw material for these notes is simply my life right now: my new venture, my coaching practice, my family, my health, and my spiritual practice. I’ll share what I’m noticing, questions I’m living, learnings from my practice, and experiments that produce results and ones that don’t.

This isn’t my first blog. I launched that one back in 2010 and called it Schlaf Notes. This is a return to it, with much more time behind me now and more wisdom earned. I also miss the days when the internet felt like a small neighborhood and blogging was just expression.

So why Field Notes this time? Partly because that’s what these are: notes from the field, written where my work and exploration is happening. But there’s a more exciting reason, which I’ll share after the summer. Stay tuned.

The blog lives on my site and is delivered by email or RSS, with no algorithm between us. I built it in Ghost alongside Claude Code, with no likes, no comments, and no reposts. Every notification is off. There’s no scoreboard.

I could have moved the WTRB email list (including your email!) over to the new blog, and you’d already be getting the notes, but that didn’t sit right with me. I respect your inbox, and don’t want you to feel like I violated your trust. You subscribed here for essays, and I’d rather ask than assume.

So this is the ask, and the only one. If my writing has meant something to you and you’d like more of it, more often, subscribe here:

If not, nothing changes whatsoever. You’ll still receive future essays here.

If you’d like a sample, start with The Balls You’re Juggling Don’t Exist, my favorite so far, The Day I Became a Coach, or When Nobody’s Watching, on what it’s like to publish without an audience.

WTRB isn't going anywhere. Expect a handful of longer essays a year, plus updates like this one. I bet some of those essays will start as notes.

For now, though, most of my writing will live at Field Notes, short and in step with the season I’m in.

One more thing I feel called to express. You’ve read these essays, commented, written back, and followed along for years now, and I’ve never taken that for granted. Thank you. Your attention means more than you know.