The person
Designer, writer, herbalist, occultist.
Based in the Mid-Atlantic.
I lead design, research and product teams, generally focused on benefit and service delivery in the public sector. A significant portion of my time is spent thinking about, understanding, and advocating for people who use federal and state systems. I've been working in the public sector for a little over a decade now, and in the design field for almost two decades.
I write as a way of thinking. This blog will be a mess of topics. Outside of design and behavior and what it means to be a citizen, I spend a lot of time working on various hobby projects, playing board and video games, and reading through an ever growing list of books.
I'm a stress baker, always down for a kitchen project, and really into fermenting and preserving food. I'm fascinated by indigenous and pre-industrial foodways, and the ways we fed and cared for our communities before massive, corporate food structures existed. I don't drink anymore, so there will be projects, opinions, and maybe reviews of nonalcoholic drinks.
I grew up around art and studied that through college. Painting, print-making, sewing, embroidery, sculpture, woodwork. I'm interested in and start projects with the audacity of someone who finishes far more than they really do. I'm also particularly interested in growing things, gardening, permaculture, regenerative/restorative practices, and land-based work.
I'm primarily following Western herbal traditions, and am always looking to learn more. I have a deep curiosity about herbal healing practices the world over, and am interested in ayurvedic, indigenous, and TCM modalities, but I claim no lineage to those practices.
I'm fairly eclectic, and focus primarily on astrology, tarot, and grimoire traditions, with some forays into traditional craft, deistic, alchemical, and druidic workings. I don't have a specific lineage, though I am currently exploring Quareia as an overall framework, and am actively looking into my ancestral lines — which cross Wales, Scotland, Germany, France, and Italy — as foundation to build an earth-centered practice from pre-colonial ways of being in relation. I come from an animist lens and focus on local, land-based interactions as the core structure of my work, with ceremonial and grimoire aspects layered on top.
This is a personal website. It's inspired by digital gardens, old blogs, the Geocities/Angelfire era. It's a mess, and that's intentional. The navigation is more organic and topic-clustered, with backlinks and lateral connections. Everything is browseable by topic, type, and vibe, or you can compile an arbitrary selection into a permanent, shareable editorial zine.
This website doesn't serve ads, it is not monetized, and isn't tracking you. There is no commenting, there's no particular discourse. I may add features for participatory interaction in the future, but at the moment this site is selfish — it's a space for me to learn in the open, to write in order to think. I hope you can find some value in it, but I am not trying to build an audience to extract value from, nor am I trying to provide specific value from my writing. All that is here is a glimpse into my life and mind, offered for free, without expectation.
Coffee Not Sleep