My name is Jack.

I am a 24 year old working in the finance industry in Charlotte, NC. In the Summer I will be starting a new buyside role based out of Austin, TX. 

One of my favorite writers is Amor Towles and I adore the biography listed on his Goodreads profile which is simply a collection of things he loves that tells you a surprisingly significant amount about him in a concise way.

So I am going to do the same.

I love 1920s American expat cafe culture, Aretha Franklin high notes, Eric Clapton blues licks, Dave Matthews rhythm guitar, Allman Brothers Band instrumental pieces, David Fincher movies, the Grateful Dead (pretty much any era including Dead & Co. excluding early 90s Jerry Garcia), playing Fender guitars, civil war history, Robert Caro & Ron Chernow & Walter Isaacson biographies, American history during the 60s, Anthony Bourdain, Matt Levine columns, Morgan Housel blogs, Michael Lewis books, Amor Towles novels, Muscle Shoals music, House of Cards, Buffett & Munger, Southern coastal cities, tiramisu, UGA football, and Shelby Foote’s drawl. This is not an exhaustive list.

I’ve been a lifelong reader, regularly devouring 30+ books per year. And as I continued to ingest new ideas and information, I began to have some thoughts of my own that I thought were worth recording. This blog is that effort.

My plan is to write a future post about the “Why I write?” but for now I’ll give a few of the reasons:

1. One of my favorite writers, Morgan Housel, wrote a series of blog posts full of advice to his son right after he was born that he will appreciate as he grows up. I love the idea of giving a glimpse of your mind to other people through your writing and especially love the idea of giving a glimpse of your mind to your future descendants who won’t know you at the age you are now but may come to have an idea of who you were at different ages through your past writing. For them to know that the same problems they have are similar to the ones I had will be pretty cool, I think.

2. Derek Thompson wrote an excellent piece about how isolated people are becoming and it’s certainly true for many. But laying your thoughts bare to the entire internet is a great way to combat that and meet interesting people that you may not have come to know Otherwise. It also allows you to gain new experiences and, hopefully, change your mind about a few things.

3. The further I get in my career, the more I realize how important communication is. You can have the most brilliant ideas in the world but if you cannot relay those ideas in a clear and convincing manner then they have little chance of coming to life and is essentially the equivalent of having no ideas at all. The ability to write well is an excellent way to convey ideas so that they become part of the world and aren’t left wallowing in the caverns of your mind.

4. Writing is fleshed out thinking. There are oftentimes I feel I have a fully baked idea in my mind but when I write about it the flaws in that idea are exposed. Writing is the best way to refine your thinking and determine which ideas are worth keeping, throwing out, or refining further.

So that’s why I write and I hope you come along for the ride.