The Writing

Sunday Field Notes

Messy, honest notes from building a career and life in public — without pretending I've figured it out. Published every Sunday.

29 notes Jan 2026 → Sep 2026 about 60 minutes of reading 5 weeks I missed, and why

New here? Start with these

If you only read one On being discoverable Field Note #2 · 2 min read The idea everything rests on On the protocol of trust over authority Field Note #4 · 2 min read Where the year turned The Belonging Architecture Recap Field Note #20 · 2 min read

Showing all 29

Arc The Platform of Leadership 9 notes

#29 Peripheral Vision New 6 Sep 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Perception

2 weeks between notes

#28 The Accountability Handshake 23 Aug 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Accountability

2 weeks between notes Summer is slow, and so is my posting.

#27 Architecting the PBOD 9 Aug 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Networking

2 weeks between notes Portugal. Back to the notes now.

#26 The Strategic "No" 26 Jul 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Strategy #25 The Math of Character 19 Jul 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Character #24 The Identity Equation 12 Jul 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Identity #23 The Reactive vs. Creative Mind 5 Jul 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Mindset #22 The Tetris Effect & The Strategic Pause 28 Jun 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Mindset

3 weeks between notes My personal server went offline. A strategic pause.

#21 The Micro-Choice 7 Jun 2026 · 2 min · Leadership · Mindset #20 The Belonging Architecture Recap 31 May 2026 · 2 min · Milestones · Recap

Arc The Belonging Architecture 11 notes

#19 The Post-Mortem — the final node in the series 24 May 2026 · 2 min · Post-Mortem · Leadership #18 Clock Drift & The Exit — knowing when to remove a node 17 May 2026 · 2 min · Clock Drift · Leadership #17 Telemetry & Visibility — making impact visible across the system 10 May 2026 · 2 min · Visibility · Leadership #16 Fault Tolerance — refactoring conflict into empathy 3 May 2026 · 2 min · Conflict · Leadership #15 Removing the Middleware — exposing the nodes directly to the network 26 Apr 2026 · 2 min · Autonomy · Leadership #14 Dependency Injection — passing external context into the system 19 Apr 2026 · 2 min · Mentorship · Leadership

2 weeks between notes The server was under heavy load, so we skipped a cycle.

#13 Overclocking — pushing the hardware to see what it can actually do 5 Apr 2026 · 2 min · Overclocking · Leadership #12 Load Balancing — distributing compute properly across the organism 29 Mar 2026 · 2 min · Load Balancing · Leadership #11 The Target Architecture — defining the North Star before burning energy 22 Mar 2026 · 2 min · Vision · Leadership #10 The Handshake Protocol — establishing a secure connection before any real work begins 15 Mar 2026 · 2 min · Onboarding · Leadership #9 The Boot Process — the hiring manual I wish I had 8 Mar 2026 · 3 min · Node 1 · Hiring #8 On Cultural Debt and the one thing that actually pays it down 1 Mar 2026 · 2 min · Team Culture · Leadership #7 On seniority as throughput, not uptime 22 Feb 2026 · 2 min · Impostor Syndrome · Engineering Mgmt #6 On multiplying the talent around you 15 Feb 2026 · 2 min · Impact · Career Planning #5 On debugging emotions 8 Feb 2026 · 2 min · Psychology · Emotional IQ #4 On the protocol of trust over authority 1 Feb 2026 · 2 min · Trust · Engineering Mgmt #3 On building resistance for the future 25 Jan 2026 · 2 min · Grit · Mastery #2 On being discoverable 18 Jan 2026 · 2 min · Visibility · Community #1 The one that started it all 11 Jan 2026 · 2 min · Self-Awareness · Life Design

Longer answers

Field notes are short and weekly. These three are the long-form versions, one per thing I do.

Field guideSelling software into institutions that were built to say no Field guideGetting an engineering team to be heard Field guideWhat AI-native engineering leadership actually means