About This International Life
This is a space for documenting a deliberate approach to living. A pursuit of intentionality across cultures, design, philosophy, and craft.
In a world of infinite choice and constant distraction, there's something profound about choosing constraint. About building things with care. About learning a language not for utility, but to understand a culture more deeply. About spending time with a stereo system, not as consumption, but as meditation on sound and craftsmanship.
This International Life chronicles that pursuit in real-time. It's not a finished narrative retrospectively told, but a living document of thinking, learning, and creating as it happens.
What You'll Find Here
Essays and reflections organized around several interconnected themes:
- Japanese Culture & Language: Reflections on learning Japanese (JLPT N3), exploring Japanese aesthetics, philosophy, and the discovery of meaning in cultural practice.
- Stereo Systems & Audio: The pursuit of sonic fidelity, the decisions behind building a system, and how intentional listening becomes a form of presence.
- Retro Technology: Pre-smartphone technology as a model for design, intentionality, and human-centered innovation. A nostalgia not for the past, but for principles we've lost.
- Interior Design & Space: How your physical environment shapes how you think and live. The philosophy of curation and constraint in domestic space.
- Philosophy & Ideas: Broader reflections on living well, the meaning of craftsmanship, the value of slowness, and what it means to be deliberate.
- Process & Documentation: The thinking behind the doing. Photos, iterations, decisions, and the beauty of unfinished work.
Each essay explores a specific experience or project, but uses it as a lens to examine larger questions about how we live and what we value. The goal isn't polished conclusions. It's an invitation into the process of thinking and creating.
Why "International"?
Because intentional living isn't provincial. It draws from everywhere: Japanese minimalism, Scandinavian design, Italian craftsmanship, pre-smartphone innovation, the ethos of publications like Monocle. The "international" perspective means taking what resonates from anywhere, without pretension, and weaving it into something personal and coherent.
It's also a commitment to curiosity. To learning languages. To understanding cultures not as tourists, but as students. To building a life that benefits from global perspective.