About Me

Hey, I’m Bob, and welcome to my blog.

I grew up in small towns on the coast of Washington state. I graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in accounting and later earned an MBA from Arizona State University. I worked as a CPA in public accounting for ten years, serving clients in Seattle and New York.

I spent most of my career as head of strategy for TrueBlue, a publicly traded, multi-billion-dollar industrial staffing and recruitment process outsourcing firm.  I helped grow the business from a regional provider of on-demand labor to one of the world’s largest human capital firms, with operations in more than 60 countries.  I led the completion of more than twenty acquisitions during my tenure, which by the end represented the majority of TrueBlue’s revenue and profit.   It was a privilege to help connect over a million people with jobs over my 24-year career.

I retired from corporate life in 2021 to explore life at sea aboard Indiscretion, an ocean-going Nordhavn 43 trawler we kept at Shilshole Marina in Seattle. After our son passed away in a motorcycle accident in 2022, we relocated to Arizona to be closer to our daughter in Los Angeles and escape the gloomy winters of the Pacific Northwest. In retirement, I split my time between reading, writing, investing, and travel. This year, my wife and I will celebrate thirty years of marriage. 

Why a Blog

This blog grew out of a lifetime practice of journal writing. I’ve kept a journal for most of my life and have written more than two million words (so far). For me, journaling is both a meditation practice and my way of making sense of the world and my place in it. 

In 2014, I took a year-long sabbatical away from work and a hectic life of travel. I squeezed a lot of memorable experiences into those 12 months that I could never have accomplished while tied to an office: I taught my daughter to drive. I built a go-kart from scratch with my son and coached his robotics team.  I learned to cook.  I spent a summer traveling through Europe with my family.  I connected with friends. I read a lot of books.  I became the person I imagined I’d be when I was younger. In the middle of this sabbatical, I noticed a change in the quality and tone of my journal writing.  A new voice emerged from my pen, capturing the life around me with more vividness and clarity. I began looking at the world like a writer might.  I remember feeling euphoric after finishing an essay about our family’s time in Spain.  I had never written anything so good, and it made me feel optimistic and excited that a real writer might yet exist somewhere inside me.   I posted Valencia of Childhood Dreams here on this blog as my first public essay.

Since that first essay, I’ve written more than a hundred posts on a range of interests. In the process, I’ve made priceless connections with readers and other bloggers who share a similar viewpoint on life. See Why Blogs Matter for more about why I do this.

Selected Essays

Selected Posts

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