虎穴に入らずんば虎子を得ず。If you do not enter the tiger’s cave, you will not catch its cub.
I discovered my love of writing in high school when I was recruited for the school newspaper, the award-winning Gresham High School Argus. My first published article was a profile on a GHS graduate-turned-professional baseball player, who I woke up with an early morning phone call on Opening Day 1995 to get my interview. I worked for local newspapers as a reporter throughout college while also spending two years as editor-in-chief of my college newspaper. However, the dream of spending my days traveling between America’s baseball stadiums and writing about the national pastime lost its appeal after a few months as an agate clerk for a local daily.
So, after college, I decided to make a change and found a job in state government. After a few years in communications work, I joined the agency’s IT team as a web application developer. I worked my way through the ranks over the next five years, eventually becoming a team lead and finally manager of the organization’s application development team.
In March 2014, my wife and I will be switching gears. She accepted a teaching position in Japan for two years and I’m choosing to use that opportunity to get back to some of my more creative callings. I plan on writing about our experiences to exercise the creative side of my brain while documenting our adventure for ourselves, our family and our friends.
As a lifelong resident of the beautiful state of Oregon (i.e. the southernmost territory of the Cascadia bioregion), I wanted to honor the place I will always consider home while documenting our adventure halfway around the world.
Welcome to Cascadian Abroad.
I heard you had started blogging. Hooray! I was afraid I was going to have to join Facebook to keep up with you. Since I’m a confirmed Facebook holdout that would have meant making up an entirely fake persona. I see I have several posts to catch up on, and I look forward to reading about your adventures for the next 2 years.