A life
in progress.

Learning that the world is bigger.

My mother taught me to appreciate the simple, tangible things in life. Some of my earliest memories are of cooking at home, visiting farmers' markets, crafting, and making things by hand. She could take a few simple ingredients and turn them into something worth sharing. There was a quiet resourcefulness to the way she lived: knowing where things came from, making things yourself, and taking the time to do them well.

One of my chores was to visit a local farmer each week with our milk can. I was fascinated by the cows, but just as much by the machinery around them: the pumps, pipes, and system that carried the milk to the bottling station. The farmer always filled my can and gave me an extra cup of milk, still warm from the cows. It was a small ritual, but one I remember clearly.

Looking back, I can see how much those early experiences shaped me. I learned to appreciate the things people make with their hands, the systems behind everyday life, and the pleasure of understanding how something works. I also learned that some of the most meaningful experiences are not particularly remarkable at the time. They become important because you carry them with you.

My grandfather opened up a different world. We listened to classical music, talked about philosophy and religion, studied chemistry and biology, and translated Latin texts together. With him, a question about nature could lead to philosophy, and a scientific idea could change how I saw the world.

I loved that there was always another layer to discover. Knowledge wasn't simply a collection of facts; it was a way of looking more closely at things. Science, history, philosophy, and the natural world could all illuminate one another. Those conversations gave me permission to be curious, to question what I thought I knew, and to follow an idea beyond its obvious conclusion.

Between my mother and grandfather, I grew up with two different but complementary influences: an appreciation for the practical and tangible, and a fascination with the abstract and intellectual. I didn't think of them that way at the time, but both would stay with me.

Just after turning fifteen, I set off for São Paulo, Brazil, on my own.

I arrived knowing little about the country and without speaking the language. Everything required a degree of adjustment: finding my bearings, understanding people, and figuring out how to make a life in a place that was unfamiliar in almost every respect. Through a girl I met and the friends I made, I began to find my place in the city.

I gravitated toward skaters, musicians, and other young people drawn to São Paulo's energy and openness. There was something liberating about entering a world where I didn't already know the rules or have an established identity. I could explore, meet people, make mistakes, and gradually discover who I was outside the environment in which I'd grown up.

I loved the food, the friendships, and the feeling of discovering a life so different from the one I'd left behind. I remember churrascarias, picanha, and bowls of feijoada shared around the table. Food was one of the ways I came to understand the place, but it was the people who made it feel like somewhere I belonged.

Some of those friendships lasted long after I returned to Germany. That mattered to me. The experience wasn't simply a period away from home; it became part of my understanding of home itself. I learned that you could build meaningful connections across cultures and that belonging wasn't limited to the place where you were born.

Brazil changed my sense of what was possible. Germany remained home, but I understood that where you come from doesn't have to determine where you go. The world was bigger than I'd imagined, and I wanted to see more of it.

I'd started earning my own money at around eleven, delivering newspapers and magazines. Back in Germany at sixteen, I worked alongside school at a design firm, waited tables at a café, and later worked in insurance. Each job introduced me to different people and ways of working. I liked figuring out how things operated, whether that meant understanding a business, solving a practical problem, or learning a new skill.

I didn't have a grand plan. I was curious, independent, and interested in what lay beyond the familiar. For a long time, that was enough to keep me moving.

Learning how things work.

My father owned a specialist classic sports-car business, so cars were part of my world from an early age. I grew up around historic racing events, seeing the preparation, mechanics, and attention to detail that went into getting a car on the track. But the most important part wasn't the cars themselves. They gave my father and me something to share.

It began with Porsches.

One of my first lessons in mechanics came when my father had me restore my first car. We stripped the engine down, replaced the pistons, and worked through the measurements and tolerances needed to put everything back together properly. Bore condition, piston clearances, ring gaps: the details mattered.

Working on an engine demanded a particular kind of attention. You couldn't rely on something looking right. You had to measure it, understand how the parts interacted, and know why a particular tolerance mattered. A small error could have consequences much larger than the error itself.

I became interested in more than what machines could do. I wanted to understand why they worked, how their parts interacted, and what made a well-engineered system feel right. There was a satisfaction in taking something apart, understanding it piece by piece, and putting it back together in a way that made it work as intended.

Working with my father also gave me an early appreciation for the knowledge that comes from experience. Engineering wasn't just theory or a set of instructions. It required patience, judgment, and the willingness to look closely enough to notice what others might overlook.

That combination of practical work and intellectual curiosity suited me. It connected the things I had enjoyed as a child: understanding how the world worked, making things with my hands, and following a problem until I could make sense of it.

That curiosity eventually led to an offer from Porsche to work in the United States. I moved to California, opening a new chapter in my life.

I valued the opportunity and the engineering, but I sensed that cars would be a short chapter. I was grateful for what I'd learned, both from the work and from my father, but my interests were beginning to extend beyond the automotive world.

What stayed with me was the underlying instinct: understand the system, find the problem, and make things work better. I didn't yet know where that instinct would lead, only that it would continue to shape the way I approached new challenges.

A year to go somewhere.

After years of working with machines, I was ready for a change. My partner and I were both at turning points, so we stepped away from our respective paths and gave ourselves a year to see what came next.

We left without much of a plan. For once, there was no immediate destination we needed to reach and no particular outcome we had to achieve. We could decide what to do based on what interested us, what we encountered, and where we felt like going next.

We traveled through Africa, from the Sahara to the southern deserts. We took a camel tour across the Sahara, explored the ancient churches of Lalibela, hiked Ethiopia's Simien Mountains, and went white-water rafting near Victoria Falls.

In Namibia, we rented a little VW Golf and drove through Etosha National Park, along the Skeleton Coast, across the red desert, and into the abandoned diamond-mining town of Kolmanskop. Finding traces of German history in such an unexpected place was a strange connection to home, a reminder that history travels in ways you don't always anticipate.

We traveled with maps, guidebooks, and recommendations from people we met along the way. Sometimes we stayed in a lodge; sometimes we camped. In Egypt, we met fellow travelers and rented a boat together to sail down the Nile.

I loved the freedom to change direction, follow a recommendation, or stay somewhere simply because we liked it. We could leave room for things we hadn't planned, and some of the most memorable parts of the trip came from doing exactly that.

Travel also changed the way I thought about what it meant to know a place. There was a difference between arriving with a list of things to see and allowing a place to reveal itself through its landscapes, its history, and the people you encountered. I found myself drawn to the latter.

Along the way, I discovered scuba diving. I'd always loved freediving, but scuba introduced me to a different kind of stillness and the concentration and control required underwater. I got certified and later put those skills to use traveling through the Philippines.

The trip also introduced me to people who would shape what came next. Through someone I met on the road, I was introduced to web development. At the time, it seemed like a small encounter. It wasn't.

Looking back, the year gave me more than a collection of places and experiences. It reinforced something I'd first discovered in Brazil: that stepping into an unfamiliar environment could open up possibilities I wouldn't have found by following a predetermined path.

We returned without a detailed plan, but with a broader view of how people live and a sense that the next chapter might take me somewhere unexpected.

Turning an idea into something real.

I returned from that year of travel wanting to make a positive contribution. I'd seen different ways of living and had become increasingly interested in how the choices we make every day shape the world around us. I wanted to build something that connected that interest to practical action.

Together with my partner at the time, I founded a refill business in the Bay Area, giving people a practical way to reduce waste and make more sustainable choices in everyday life.

The idea was straightforward, but turning it into a working business required a different kind of thinking. I had to bring together a product, an operating model, and a community of people willing to do things a little differently. I enjoyed the challenge of making an idea tangible and finding ways to make it work in the real world.

The business received a Cool California Award from the State of California and was featured on local television and in San Francisco Magazine. I was proud of that recognition, but the experiences that stayed with me were often much less formal.

Running a neighborhood business meant getting to know the people around it: small business owners, neighbors, regulars, and customers who became friends. Some of my favorite restaurant owners became customers themselves. Relationships developed naturally through everyday interactions, shared interests, and the simple fact that we kept showing up in one another's lives.

I enjoyed becoming part of the fabric of a place, learning its rhythms, and watching familiar faces become part of everyday life. It gave me a different understanding of what it meant to build something. A business wasn't just a product or a set of processes; it was also the relationships that grew around it.

The experience brought together two things I'd always valued: making things work and being part of a community. It also showed me that meaningful work doesn't have to be defined only by scale or recognition. Sometimes its value lies in the everyday difference it makes to the people around it.

Building a business taught me that the work extends beyond the product. It's about people, relationships, and creating something that becomes part of a community.

It was also during this period that I began teaching myself to code. I didn't know it then, but that new interest would open the door to the next stage of my working life.

A different kind of exploration.

When our son was born, life became much smaller—and much bigger. My attention shifted from the next place to go or the next thing to build toward the person growing up in front of me. The world was still full of things to discover, but now I had the chance to discover them through someone else's eyes.

For five and a half years, until he began kindergarten, I dedicated myself to being present for him. I joined a Waldorf-inspired homeschooling group and made the rhythms of everyday life the center of our days.

Some of my favorite memories are almost impossibly ordinary: meals prepared at home, naps, long walks, afternoons outside, lying in the grass, time at the beach, playing in the dirt, and building forest castles from sticks. These weren't experiences we had to travel far to find or plan weeks in advance. They were the substance of our days.

We crafted and baked with the other children in our group. A few times a week, we'd visit the Academy of Sciences or the Bay Area Discovery Museum. We explored Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, the forests of Marin, and the Pacific coast.

Music filled the house, from classical and soul to jazz. On road trips, it was hip-hop and electronic. Our days had their own rhythm, shaped by the weather, the places we explored, the people we spent time with, and whatever captured our attention.

Learning happened everywhere: in the kitchen, on the trail, around the dinner table, and in the everyday business of discovering the world together. I enjoyed seeing how much there was to learn from ordinary things when you took the time to pay attention.

Being present also meant allowing time for things to unfold at their own pace. There was less emphasis on reaching a destination and more room to follow a question, spend longer outside, or let a simple activity become the focus of an entire afternoon.

I had spent much of my life learning by exploring unfamiliar places, taking on new challenges, and moving between different worlds. Fatherhood gave that curiosity a new dimension. I could share what I knew, but I could also rediscover how much I didn't know.

I don't think of those years as a pause in my life or a departure from the things that interested me. They were an education of their own. They changed how I thought about time, attention, and what it means to be present for another person.

I'd spent much of my life looking for the next thing. Fatherhood taught me to pay attention to what was already in front of me.

From engineering to software.

I found my way into software while building my sustainable business, teaching myself to code along the way. What began as a practical skill gradually became a new way to explore the kinds of problems that had always interested me.

I began working with environmental nonprofits, combining my growing technical skills with an interest in sustainability. From there, I moved into startups and eventually contributed to one of the world's leading technology platforms.

Over more than a decade in software engineering, I worked on difficult problems, built things from scratch, and learned from people who challenged how I thought. I eventually moved into technical leadership while staying close to the engineering itself.

What I enjoyed most was the process of making sense of something complicated: understanding how its parts fit together, identifying what wasn't working, and finding a solution that made the whole system better.

Software also gave me the opportunity to work with people who approached problems differently. I learned that good solutions rarely come from technical ability alone. They require communication, perspective, and an understanding of the people who will use what you build.

In that respect, the work connected more of my experiences than I initially realized. There was the practical curiosity I'd developed as a child, the attention to detail I'd learned working on cars, the resourcefulness required to build a business, and the openness I'd gained from living and working in different environments.

The work felt familiar: understand the system, find the problem, build a solution.

The medium had changed from machines to software, but the instinct remained the same. Over time, I came to value not only what technology made possible, but also the judgment required to decide what was worth building in the first place.

Still moving.

Today, I'm traveling and climbing, moving through new places and communities. I still enjoy the feeling of arriving somewhere unfamiliar, finding my bearings, and discovering what makes a place and its people distinctive.

I started climbing partly because I wanted something I could enjoy with my son as he grew older. What began as something to share became a pursuit of its own.

Climbing takes me to places I might not otherwise go and introduces me to people I might never have met. Wherever I arrive, it gives us a shared language. It creates an immediate connection through movement, problem-solving, and the willingness to try something difficult.

Every wall presents a problem. Read it. Find the line. Make the next move.

I like that climbing requires attention without demanding that I have everything figured out in advance. You study the route, make a decision, test it, and adjust. Sometimes you find a solution quickly. Sometimes you have to step back and look again.

It calls for patience, a willingness to be a beginner, and the ability to keep moving when the answer isn't obvious. In that sense, it feels familiar. The same curiosity that once drew me toward engines, unfamiliar cities, and software continues to find new expressions.

Looking back, my life doesn't feel like a sequence of unrelated careers and interests. The places have changed, the work has changed, and my priorities have changed, but there are recurring threads: curiosity, making things, understanding systems, building relationships, and leaving room for the unexpected.

My mother showed me the value of the tangible and everyday. My grandfather encouraged me to look deeper. My father introduced me to the satisfaction of understanding how things work. Brazil showed me that belonging can extend beyond the familiar. Fatherhood taught me to slow down and pay attention.

None of these experiences gave me a fixed destination. They gave me different ways of approaching the world and the confidence to keep exploring it.

I'm not starting over. I'm continuing.