FYI this bio is a personal essay

I’m from Kaysville, Utah. I wasn’t born there—we moved around for a while—but that’s where my parents built our home. West of the freeway, on the edge of a young neighborhood that gave way to undeveloped fields.

The move into that house marks my earliest solid, distinct memories—I remember what it was like to sleep in my still-bare new room upstairs that I shared with my brother. I remember renting ClayFighter 63 ⅓ from Blockbuster and playing it on our N64 in a framed-and-carpeted-and-that’s-it living room, TV on the floor.

I was bored easily, and I hated to be bored. I found several very effective weapons against it. The first: books. My mom used to take me and my siblings to the library, and I remember feeling intoxicated by the idea of the functionally infinite store of stories, information, and Dave Barry books it contained. The second was the piano. I remember hearing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on, of all things, the soundtrack to the video game Earthworm Jim we had on CD-ROM. I was entranced by the sounds and the feelings those sounds gave me. My father showed me where to put my fingers and I learned to play the first page. Thus began a lifetime of musical devotion.

I also fell in love with people. I enjoyed collecting the interesting peers I met at school, at church, and in my neighborhood as friends. I found that it was impossible to be bored in the presence of an fascinating person. Plus, you can play basketball with them.

And thus I spent my childhood: practicing the piano, composing, or reading the James Herriot books over and over. Or with my friends, playing night games, exploring the new construction sites surrounding my neighborhood when the workers weren’t there, and scheming businesses to extract my neighbors’ allowances.

It also bears mentioning that I was raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith that I still love with my whole heart. From this, I learned principles like: Be good. Love others. Prioritize church and family. There’s a plan for you. Things will work out.

All told, it was a lovely way to grow up, and I emerged from childhood with a sense that the world was good and was eager for someone to come do something great in it. And really, everything that has happened since then has been an extension of that childhood. My body grew, I accumulated experience, but I have always had the distinct sense that I am—and indeed, all of us are—just children making our way through the world in bigger and worn-out bodies.

Anyway, since then:

Adolescence unfolded for me as adolescence does, and I wound up a Young Man. I decided to fulfill the responsibility to my church to serve a mission, and I was called to New York, New York, Spanish-speaking. I served for two years.

When I came home, I returned to BYU, where I studied English, a major that I loved, then hated, then loved again. Then, I went to law school at the University of Chicago. I love both these institutions fiercely, for very different reasons, and I would be happy to tell you all about them any time.

Right after graduating law school, I married a remarkable young lady named Michelle, whom I had met at church shortly before she converted from another faith. She and I spent a few years as a dual-professional “power couple,” me as a lawyer and her as a consultant. I job-hopped, as is fairly normal right out of law school, working at a firm in Salt Lake City, then a clerkship there, then another clerkship in Indiana, then a different firm in DC—each for a year.

While at the firm, we had our first child, a girl. Michelle and I decided that the thing that made the most sense for our family was if I quit my job and stayed at home with her. So that’s what I did. We continued moving for my wife’s career, and we continued having children. Now we have three, and we are established in the Baltimore area. I am still at home full-time with my growing babies.

Now, my life is filled with the things that I value the most: my family, my friends, writing, music, creative work, church service. I’m happy to report that, for the most part, the world is good, and it’s eager for us to do something great in it. I’m still working on that; I’ll keep you posted about how it goes.