I’ll be honest. We weren’t exactly excited about another long, winding drive the day after doing the Road to Hana. But our time in Maui was running out, and every local we talked to said the same thing. “You can’t leave without seeing Haleakalā.” So we looked at each other, sighed, and got in the … Read more
I almost quit. After months of writing, editing, sharing vulnerable stories from my life, and getting nothing but silence from literary agents, I sat at my desk and thought, Maybe this is it. Maybe no one cares. But that’s not the whole story. I’ve done everything they say you’re supposed to do. I broke through … Read more
The Sedona Room is my writing oasis. An artist hand painted a sunrise over Cathedral Rock across the walls and ceiling, wrapping the room in warm desert hues, reds and oranges and blues stretching overhead while I sit with my feet kicked up on the couch, air conditioning humming, trying to make sense of fifteen … Read more
It was late September, 1999, and the Phoenix heat pressed against my skin as I slid into my Jeep Cherokee, which had recently lost its AC. Every commute to downtown felt like a slow roast. As I wiped sweat from my brow, I found myself wondering, for the hundredth time, if I made the right … Read more
It was February 1999, and I had just returned to Hingham, Massachusetts, from Phoenix, where my uncle Matt, my namesake, had gotten married. The sun-drenched desert felt like another world. While I had spent the past few days basking in 80 degree temperatures, Massachusetts had other plans. A late-season snowstorm loomed, and I was back … Read more
It was July 15, 1982, my sixth birthday. The year before had been busy for our family. My dad had just finished building our new house in Hingham, and my sister had been born on my dad’s own birthday. Life had shifted in more ways than a five-year-old could track. But that summer, my mom … Read more
On a flight home from Boston, I found myself watching Bill & Ted Face the Music. It was Thanksgiving, and Jocelyn and I had just spent the holiday with my family, catching up with old friends and reminiscing about the past. As I settled into my seat and let the movie play, something about Bill … Read more
The conference room buzzed with tension. We were three days into a company summit in Sacramento, five round tables filled with team members hunched over laptops and printed documentation, hashing out our customer onboarding process. Papers rustled, pens tapped against notepads, and someone let out an audible sigh of frustration. What was supposed to be … Read more
The multipurpose room at Summit School in Ahwatukee was packed. Rows of folding chairs, parents crammed in shoulder to shoulder, the kind of crowd that fills up a gym on championship day but for graduations. The air was thick, humid, smelling like new carpet cleaner and that particular perfume-cologne-deodorant soup that happens when you cram … Read more
It was 8 a.m. and I was late. Again. I’d pedaled across campus faster than I should have, backpack bouncing against my shoulder, still tasting the coffee I hadn’t finished. The lecture hall at Arizona State was already buzzing when I got there, backpacks hitting the floor, notebooks opening, that low roar of two hundred … Read more