Obsidian Iceberg

My primary interests — and thus the typical focus of my deep dives — tend to be questions about how non-industrial people live, with a particular focus on the Bronze Age. I try not to spend too much time on well-known stuff like Classic civilizations and post-industrial wars, although I do sometimes dig into science that's relevant for near-future sci-fi, like aerogels. My goal is to surprise and delight readers with new information, not to become another expert in well-trod spaces.

Secondarily, I treat this newsletter as a space to insights into efficiency, because it turns out I am somewhat of an outlier in terms of productivity… and more importantly, I’ve become one of the handful of prominent voices in personal knowledge management & productivity circles whose system is optimized for something other than producing content about how to be productive 😅

Professionally, I used to be a lawyer, then pivoted to teaching history, then pivoted again to software quality assurance — but writing has always been my passion. My non-fiction articles have been published by professional outlets like Tor.com &  SFWA. My fiction has been published in outlets like Corvidae Courier and Worldbuilding Magazine. I'm a First Reader for the pro-rate speculative fiction magazine Diabolical Plots. To support all that, I keep meticulous notes using the Obsidian personal knowledge management tool, the community of which awarded me Content Creator of the Year for 2021 thanks to my notetaking tips & tricks. The Konik Method for Making Useful Notes also won Obsidian October 2022.

They say that authors shouldn’t bother readers with all the background research that goes into making a good story. No matter what the “iceberg theory of writing” says, though, my favorite parts of my favorite books have always been the afterwords that explain the relationship a story has to a real world historical event… and have themes I can take inspiration from to help live a happy, healthy, and productive life. My goal with this newsletter is that sharing some pieces of that will help folks like you learn interesting things that help make your life better — even just by giving you something interesting to talk about at your next party ;)