In Pure Form.

I am a storyteller, coach, builder, and teacher. I live what I call a “portfolio life” and show others how. Why? Because there are some things in life that I choose not to let go for the sake of work and an earned living. For me, that’s writing, coaching, building, and teaching.

With that, I flex my writing muscles to share insights gathered over years of working in the trenches of Silicon Valley, growing up in rural Hawaii, the contradiction between those two lives, and the people I interacted with along the way.

In the halls of academia, I became a creative short story writer who happened to study Renaissance literature and deconstructionism. For your eyes only, I ride the lines of a non-fiction author. That’s right, it’s real life with some aspects of fiction because what I share is based on selective recall. This is my style, and it often fluctuates depending on what catches my fancy or what annoys me in the world, but my perspective leans on reality, illuminated by truth and elevated by sunshine.

Sounds corny, but I did grow up in the Aloha State and am a water woman, so there are elements of do-good and live-life between the lines. Plus, I go to church and believe in God. I must put that out there, at the front, just in case the very mention of Him gives you an allergic reaction. It’s my truth, I don’t preach, and the value alignment that is foundational to how I live.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know grit and what went down in the Silicon Valley trenches wasn’t all beach, maitais and kumbaya. It was hard, the post-traumatic hurt, where you feel it between the shoulder blades, deep scar tissue. Remnants of back-to-back all-nighters, the corporate politics knock you from behind the knees and crippling, all of it causing chronic illness, mental breakdowns, and bodies that shut down completely. I could go on, but I’ll let that simmer and will write about it.

Sometimes my version of real life was inherited from my ancestors, my bosses, their bosses’ bosses, coworkers, friends, and our mentors. Sometimes they come from books, from great writers, leaders, and their biographies, memoirs, and often, from evidentiary research. I lean on studies when assumptions aren’t enough to satiate the quest for truth.

With that said, writing places me in the real world, where I can reflect deeply and ask the biggest questions. It is also my practice of revealing truth, which I feel is losing ground to artificial intelligence. AI manufacturers are recycling stories fast, and I am aware that what I publish today can easily be copied, recycled, and reused far from its original intention. That’s why, I choose to write from pure form, edit with minimal AI, and save for light grammatical editing. This maintains my voice and unique style.

By stepping back to old school authorship, I mean to deliver from the gut, a challenge in and of itself. My commitment to writing is a personal push for creativity, and you, my readers, have the privilege of feedback. You either reject what I say or challenge me to do better. It’s frightening, I must admit, but I’m willing to learn. The teacher errs to the audience, giving up speed of churning out pieces for the slow roll.

Like the great authors before me, this is the craft.