They say life is a journey. After 22,819 days, I decided to stop for a minute and describe the view.
My story did not begin in a boardroom. It began on a loading dock. Like many people from my generation, life was built one transition at a time: hard work, uncertainty, layoffs, reinvention, long hours, and learning how to adapt long before “reinvention” became corporate branding language.
I eventually built a career in engineering, technology, and finance during a period when the digital world was transforming everything around us. I witnessed the rise and collapse of companies that once looked untouchable. I lived through the DEC years, the acceleration of computing, the expansion of corporate finance, and decades inside organizations like Fidelity and JPMorgan Chase, where technology and pressure moved at roughly the same speed. It was rewarding. Exhausting. Educational. Occasionally ridiculous. And like most long careers, it passed faster than expected.
The Great Rewiring
Retirement arrived not as a vacation, but as a complete rewiring of identity. After years of schedules, meetings, deadlines, restructures, and corporate language that somehow managed to say everything and nothing simultaneously, I found myself searching for a different rhythm. That search eventually brought me to Brazil.
Now I live in Rio de Janeiro, learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, and trying to understand life from the outside looking in. Some days that means navigating the realities of the Carioca experience. Other days it means reflecting on artificial intelligence, reading history, questioning modern culture, or writing satire about automated phone systems that somehow turn simple tasks into emotional endurance tests.
- This blog became the outlet for all of it.
- Part journal.
- Part intellectual wandering.
- Part therapy for a cluttered, crazy head.
Why I Write
I write because retirement creates space, and space has a way of forcing reflection. For most of life, motion keeps people distracted. Work becomes structure. Structure becomes identity. Then one day the structure disappears, and you are left sorting through decades of noise trying to figure out what still matters.
Writing helps me make sense of that. Sometimes that means serious reflections on history, aging, technology, and culture. Sometimes it means a sarcastic rant about modern communication collapsing into meaningless buzzwords and automated scripts.
What You’ll Find Here
Practical Expat Advice
Real-world guidance for living in Brazil from someone actually doing it—not selling a fantasy version of it.
History & Literature
Book reviews, historical analysis, biographies, and deeper examinations of the ideas and events that still shape modern thinking.
Technology Through a Seasoned Lens
Observations on AI, digital culture, and modern technology from someone who witnessed the computer age evolve firsthand.
Weekly Satire, Humor, Quote & Gripes
Because if you cannot laugh at the corporate and cultural absurdities of modern life occasionally, you are probably taking the whole thing far too seriously.
“There is a fine line between observing the world and arguing with it. I intend to walk directly down the middle of it.”