Origin Story

The Short One

Over the course of a decade (2026-2036,) I'll be writing myself brief notes every quarter and sharing them publicly. 40 quarters, 40 notes.

I've been taking notes for years — a note scribbled in the margin of a book, an overheard quote, a bookmarked article, a longer form email (from my now defunct weekly newsletter,) shopping lists, reactions to movies I watched, photos of sunsets, the perfect egg sandwich, unidentified bugs, and asymmetrical moles that I swear looked smaller the previous month.

You get the idea.

Each note is a gentle observation.

Little glimmers of things I've loved or loathed, lost or found.

There are no guidelines. No set format. No expectations.

Just showing up every three months with a digital Trapper Keeper full of breadcrumbs in case I — or we — ever need to find the way back.

The Long One

As I write this, I'm on the cusp of turning 40, and I've found myself — naturally, I guess — reflecting on my life in ten-year chunks. Where I've been, what I've done, and who I've become.

My twenties were marked by transitions. Graduating at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, my friends and I took whatever work we could find. We floated back-and-forth between listlessness and feverish ambition, exploring the seedy nooks and crannies of Philadelphia on the backs of second-hand bicycles. We wrote punk rock music and crammed into basements and living rooms to watch bands play. I fell in love.

At 25, I married my soulmate — really no other way to put it. By 27, we had a son that I adored, and an old suburban house that creaked and leaked more than I cared for. By 30, I was building my career as a marketing professional in tech, we had a beautiful daughter, a new home, and a third child on the way.

My thirties were a blur. The first half was chaos, navigating parenting three kids under the age of 4 while holding it down on a single income. The second half was no better. Shepherding our family through a global pandemic, relocating, and finding our footing in a new community.

While reflecting, I've drawn a few conclusions:

  1. Time is weird. You blink and you're 40. Some years feel like a month, others feel like half a decade. The milk rots. The meat spoils. But also, the sun rises. The cider ferments. Perennials bloom and decompose and bloom again — God willing — in an endless loop.
  2. Everything is chaos. It's Zorba's Full Catastrophe. "Wife, children, house—everything." It's Joseph Campbell's rapture of being alive. It's AI, and pandemics, and war, and loss, and existential crises. But it's all intertwined with the mundanity of everyday life — it's soccer practices, and dance recitals, and flat tires, and 8 AM Zoom calls. It's Jack Kornfield's After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. It's beautiful and chaotic and messy and frightening.
  3. I wish I had captured more. I started writing everything down at age 34, but I wish I started sooner, and I wish I did more. It's a control thing, I think. A last-ditch effort to augment my stubborn brain which is prone to randomly replay uneventful memories in vivid technicolor — like a short evening drive with my cousins in Medford, NJ circa 1993 where my aunt harmonized with the Indigo Girls' Galileo — but incapable of remembering where my wife and I went out for Valentine's Day last year, or what I ate off the menu.
  4. I want to be more intentional about what I leave behind. I know I won't be here forever. Memento mori, as they say. Or, so it goes.

This all culminated in some inkling of an idea to start 40 Notes, which led me to today — sipping coffee, escaping my kids for a rare, brief moment, and trying to articulate why I think this is worth pursuing.

I don't have the illusion that my life is any more or less remarkable than yours. I've lived an average life, so far.

As I've aged, I've chosen insulation over scale. I'm trying to be more open now, not because I believe I have something of value to offer you, but because I believe the human experience demands that we meander together.