Some evenings, when the house has finally gone quiet, I sit on the couch with nothing in my hands. No phone, no laptop, no book. I just sit, and let my mind walk backwards.

It always ends up in the same place: my college days.

I have thought a lot about why. I have had good years since. I have a family I love, work I am proud of, days that are full. And still, if you asked me for the best days of my life, I would not hesitate. It was those. The canteen that was always too loud. The friends who felt less like friends and more like an extra set of family. The small heartbreaks that felt like the end of the world at nineteen, and that I now remember with a kind of tenderness.

The trouble with the best days

Nobody tells you, when you are living them, that these are the best days. You only know it later, from a couch, years away, when the people in those days have scattered into different cities and different lives, and you can no longer knock on a door and find them there.

That is the trouble with the best days. You do not get to keep them. You can only keep what you wrote down.

Where the writing started

The first short story I ever wrote was about friendship, about my college days. I remember that it did not feel like writing. It felt like remembering out loud, with a pen. Every face I put on the page came back a little brighter for it.

I have been chasing that feeling ever since. Not the feeling of being clever with words, but the feeling of bringing someone back for a few minutes: a laugh, a walk home, a sentence that was never said.

The two who changed everything

I have two sweet kids. I cannot imagine this life without them, and I do not want to.

They have changed why I write. Before, I wrote to remember. Now I also write for them. One day, they will be older than they are today, and they will want to know who their father was before he was tired and busy and always saying "five more minutes." I want them to find, in these pages, a person who felt things deeply, who loved his friends fiercely, and who believed that the small tender moments were the real story.

What I hope you find here

I will write about many things on this site. Some notes, some stories, some books. I write about money too, because I have learned a great deal from it, mostly that it is a way of looking after the people we love.

But underneath everything, my hope is simple. I hope something here makes you pick up the phone and call the friend you keep meaning to call. I hope it makes you hug someone a little longer. I hope it helps you say the sentence you have been holding back.

That, I think, is what all the writing is for.

If you would like to begin with a story, start here.