It all started across the pond… for me, at least
I was born in the small, rural town of Nibe, Denmark (that’s pronounced “nee-beh”). My mother was Swedish and my father is Danish. We lived in the town of Brønderslev until I was about 9 years old when we moved to the United States (with a 6-month stopover in Bermuda while we waited for our US visas to be granted).
I have pursued many different careers in my life so far; so, I bring a broad range of skills and sensibilities to the table. I graduated from Boston University with a degree in film & television production, then went on to work in that industry for about five years. An amazing experience as a long time “film nerd”, but it burned me out. I then moved back to Europe and ended up working at a computer tech support call center in Belgium for a year before deciding to pursue a master’s degree in film archiving. After graduating, I worked as a cataloger for a British newsreel archiving project for about a year, before landing a job as a film and media instructor at an arts college in the South of England.
A couple of years later, I decided to move back to the US and ended up in Portland, Oregon, where I did a two-year stint as an Americorps volunteer at a vocational-ed school teaching media production and computer refurbishing to teens. However, my wandering spirit urged me to move on again. I first made some attempts at becoming a police officer before deciding to… finally… make my lifelong passion for cooking and baking into a career. In lieu of going into debt with culinary school, through a few swings and roundabouts, I ended up joining the US Coast Guard Reserves as a cook because I saw it as an “easy” and FREE way to get myself a culinary qualification.
After boot camp and three years of serving in the Reserves and working as a chef/baker in Portland, I decided to make the commitment to active duty military service, so I re-enlisted as a full-fledged, full-time military member. The ten year military career that followed had me cooking and managing shipboard kitchens in ports far and wide. Alaska! Ireland! The Caribbean! England! Madeira! Up and down the US East Coast and West Coast! A long, rewarding career that taught me countless life lessons, practical skills, and an indefatigable level of endurance and resiliency.
In 2023, I decided to finish out my contract with the US military and set to reinventing myself again. I left the service in August and took a month for a much-needed break to travel Europe with my fiancée and our 1-year-old. The Netherlands! Denmark! Norway! Sweden! London, England! Porto, Portugal!
When that vacation came to an end (rather than open a food cart business, as I had originally planned), I started my first civilian job since 2015, working for a local brewery and beverage distributor—which has been my favorite employer and job in a long while. In the background, I was percolating… composting… brainstorming… pondering how to carve out an opportunity to work remotely and have the freedom to work wherever I happen to be. It wasn’t an immediate conclusion, but I found myself dusting off my old “writer’s quill” and that is why you are now reading this.
