Celebrating Two Years of Writing and What’s Next

Fireworks going off

Amidst the insanity and hubbub that has marked the start of 2021, I hit a personal milestone; it was two years ago that I started publishing my writing. In that time I’ve published 31 articles here on my personal site, including 26 of my own, a little over once a month. While I’m hopeful that I’ll do more in the future, I’m immensely proud of the writing I’ve done over the last two years. My decision at the end of 2018 that I wanted to write more again has been personally rewarding in myriad ways. Thank you to everyone who has tuned in, it means the world to me.

I’ve also been lucky enough to publish some great articles with fantastic sites like The Urbanist, Planetizen, The Puget Sound Business Journal, Coin Review, and more. As we head into 2021 I’ll be working on a few projects:

• Multiple planned articles on sustainability, strategy, and growing the green economy

• I plan to experiment with visual and audio content. You can follow me at:

  • Youtube

  • Twitch (Streams every Wednesday and Sunday evenings)

  • The Growing the Green Economy Podcast

• Drafting a book (I’ve got a little under 10,000 words done so far)

With lots of exciting stuff to come, let’s take a look back at 2020.

2020 Writing in Review

What a hard year. 2020 was immensely challenging for everyone, and while I was lucky enough to continue having a job throughout COVID-19, I faced an intense personal challenge in the split-up of my relationship with my then-fiance as I outlined in my August update. What I didn’t’ talk about at that time, was the darker side of it—the abuse that she had been subjecting me to.

I’m immensely proud of the fact that I was able to later open up publicly and write about the experience. For that reason, it’s the single piece of writing that I’m most proud of from 2020. With her influence removed, I’ve definitely seen an increase in my creativity and happiness, even with the COVID-19 pandemic and political challenges facing the United States. Here are some other 2020 pieces of writing that I’m particularly proud of:

Political Strategy

• How political campaigns can effectively use chatbots & AI

• 6 ways the Democratic party failed in the 2020 elections and the 6 ways to fix it

• How Democrats Must Win Georgia’s 16 Electoral Votes — and Two US Senate Seats (Correctly predicting the sweep of Georgia, including GA-7 and GA-6)

• We must act to save modern media — or risk our democracy. 

• So you've decided to run as a Democrat? Congrats, you're a socialist.

• How Trump Could Still Win (But probably won’t)

Climate & The Green Economy

• Op-ed: Seattle's Talaris campus needs dense affordable housing (Puget Sound Biz Journal)

• To Address the Climate Crisis We Must Incentivize Passive House Buildings (The Urbanist)

• A Bipartisan Case for Mass Timber—Combating Wildfires and Developing Local Economies (also published at Planetizen)

• ST 2040: Expanding Washington's Public Transit With Biden's Clean Energy Plan

• Weatherization: Building the Green Economy with the Biden Climate Plan

• Divesting Washington State's Public Employees Retirement System

I was also honored to be a Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer on the collaboratively developed clean energy whitepaper series covering 40+ clean energy policy recommendations to the Biden administration.

Professional & Other

• Five Tips and Best Practices for Pitching a Story

• What do different Twitter emojis mean? (I made this piece as a very successful SEO experiment that now ranks #1 on Google, I’ll try to write an article about the process down the line)

• How to Subscribe to a Twitch Streamer Using Amazon Prime (If you haven’t already, you can support my work with Jeff Bezos’s money)

I also published several eBooks with Microsoft, detailed on my LinkedIn under publications.

A wayyy back look at 2019

2019 was a busy year as I continued my work with the Microsoft Services Secure Infrastructure team developing and implementing go to market strategy.

I also orchestrated the appointment process for Seattle City Councilmember Abel Pacheco and served as his Interim Chief of Staff to finish out his term. I also began advising Ridwell, a startup specializing in recycling and waste diversion.

Outside of work I published a series of articles, gave talks on cybersecurity and blockchain, and completed more than 40,000 words on a fantasy novel project.