My interests cluster around a few themes that have shaped much of my life: embodiment, nature, storytelling, and curiosity. These aren’t discrete hobbies so much as recurring ways I engage with the world.
Embodiment and Discipline
For many years, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was my central physical practice. I earned a purple belt, competed twice, and took home a silver medal at the Subleague Tournament in 2015. What kept me committed was the mix of complexity, problem solving, humility, and camaraderie. Injury and the pandemic interrupted that routine, but the lessons stayed with me. BJJ taught me to stay present, accept feedback quickly, and adjust to reality instead of my preferences.
These days I rely on functional training, interval work, long walks, and yoga to stay healthy and grounded. Physical activity helps me maintain the emotional balance and mental clarity that make the rest of my life more intentional.
Nature
I spend time outdoors whenever I can. Hiking, camping, and long walks help reset my perspective. Nature has a way of reminding me that the world is wide, that ambiguity is normal, and that most problems are smaller than they feel.
Story, Imagination, and Meaning
Stories have always been a core part of how I understand people and the world. I enjoy novels, essays, films, television, and games that combine imagination with insight. Shows like The Good Place, Fargo, Mindhunter, Station Eleven, and The Wire appeal to me because they explore identity, ethics, agency, or the tensions between people and the systems around them.
I also enjoy games, both tabletop and digital. RPGs, strategy games, and puzzle games are especially compelling because they allow you to experiment with choices, constraints, and consequences in ways everyday life doesn’t always permit.
Reading, Reflection, and the Life of the Mind
Reading is one of the constants of my life. I move between philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, mathematics, history, science writing, speculative fiction, and literary fiction. Many of the authors who have influenced me—Le Guin, Borges, Nabokov, Twain, Chabon, Stephenson, Vinge, Zelazny, Pratchett—combine intellectual depth with humanity. They helped shape how I think about ethics, identity, meaning, and the complexity of social life.
Writing is a natural extension of reading for me. It’s how I work through ideas about cognition, mathematics, philosophy of science, politics, identity, and the often messy terrain of everyday reasoning. It helps me refine my views and test my assumptions.
Curiosity and Lifelong Learning
If I have one defining hobby, it is learning. My personality assessments describe me as a philomath and a thinker, and that’s consistent with how I experience the world. I follow questions wherever they lead: into evolutionary theory, cognitive psychology, social identity, network science, epistemology, machine learning, the history of ideas, or whatever has caught my attention that month.
Learning is how I stay connected to the world around me. It’s also one of the ways I practice the values I care about most: clarity, empathy, and good judgment. Whether I’m reading a paper, exploring a mathematical concept, digging into a tool or model, or trying to understand a social or political phenomenon, learning keeps me engaged and grounded.