As one year gives way to the next, many of us naturally start thinking about what we want to do differently. For me, that reflection has been less about resolutions and more about how I want to show up professionally online.
I wrote a LinkedIn post once that flopped so badly I considered apologizing to it. It turns out the flop post revealed a blind spot… I was thinking only about the human reader. I wasn't thinking about the system that decides who sees what.
The best role model for how I want to live in Portugal wasn't a person. He was a 90-pound loaf of bread named Don.
I wasn't planning to write today. Then we had khageena for breakfast, and I remembered something about how we collect our lives through food. How small sensory moments become the stories we carry. How’s that for a philosophical start to the article? I promise to be normal
A lot of senior leaders treat public writing the way my Embassy colleagues treated kumis. They circle around it. Study it. Analyze it. Think about it. But never actually try it.
We were in the middle of an unexpected job loss, trying to figure out what came next, and I was spiraling a bit. Then my wife asked a simple question, "Sweetheart, what if we just move somewhere we know we'd love… and figure it out?"
Apparently the key to a career pivot isn't confidence. It's surrender. My wife broke that little life nugget to me a few nights ago.
At some point during my unexpected career pivot, I realized I was spending an impressive amount of time thinking about… myself. Things changed when I shifted from obsessing over my own situation to helping other people with theirs.
Nothing rewires your idea of "good writing" faster than an Ambassador handing your first diplomatic cable back bleeding red.
For a stretch in 2025, I went unusually quiet on LinkedIn. What slowed me down was not a lack of ideas. It was something more basic. My LinkedIn profile itself. I bored myself reading about myself. Seriously.
The fractional work model is booming in the private sector. How can you make it work for you?
Work will take everything we give it—unless you set boundaries. Burnout isn’t success, and work-life balance isn’t a luxury. It’s time to work smarter, set limits, and prioritize what truly matters.