Inspired by Joel Hooks, I’m thinking about this website and the things I put on the internet as my digital garden.

It’s a garden in the sense that it’s always growing, evolving, never finished. Like life itself, it’ll be a constant work in progress. And the things I plant might often just be beginning to sprout—something doesn’t have to be perfectly polished to be on display here. Things may well change and grow and adapt over time, as I grow.

And it’s my garden in the sense that I’m writing primarily for my (current and future) self. It’s publicly available because I’d like anyone who passes by to be able to enjoy looking, and help themselves to any of the produce—but I’m working to my own standards and expectations, not what I think other people’s are. If passers by want to suggest new things to plant, or different ways to plant them, that’s great! If they just don’t like what I’m planting, that’s cool, go find another garden.

I’m sure I’ll look back at some things and cringe that I thought they were good at the time. That’s good. It means I’m growing. Maybe I’ll make improvements. Maybe I’ll keep them cringeworthy as a reminder of my own growth. I can rest safe in the knowledge that a “bad” article doesn’t translate to a flaw in me as a person.

What I’ll be planting

There are some topics in life that I think are best suited to family and friends, and won’t typically be displayed in my garden. But there are lots of topics that might be. Things I’m focusing on at the moment, or enjoy talking about, that might find their way into the garden:

• I cofounded a SaaS company called RightMessage a couple of years ago. We’ve hit $250k ARR, next milestone is $500k. I’ve built a few other online businesses, too. I might write about business and some of the more interesting growth challenges.
• Designing software products, UI, writing code. My background is in software; I’ve been coding apps since I was 4 years old & they weren’t called apps (in BASIC on an Acorn Archimedes), and spent a long time working/freelancing as a web designer → software engineer → technical consultant.
• I’m interested in the intersection between software and marketing. So when there’s software than can help make marketing better, or when I teach marketers how to code (or automation, Zapier), I might share some of that here.
• More recently I’ve been fascinated by how the human mind, thoughts and emotions work, the role mindfulness and meditation and other things can play, as well as spiritual and philosophical ideas about the self when unobscured by the mind.
• Learning Spanish
• Playing piano
• Travel, flying, travel hacking

My intention is to plant something new in the garden 5 days a week from now until the end of the year. It’s a lot, but I think it’ll be a good way to train my ‘writing muscle’. Then I’ll reevaluate.

The garden will always be here to visit, but if you’d like to be emailed when there’s something new you can do that here: