PART ONE

I'm the youngest of 4 boys. I don’t think there is an opinion on Earth that my brothers and I all agree on, many of which we are not even close on. I'm used to different opinions and trying to work through them.

Very used to it.

I lived in 7 different places by the time I graduated High School.

In Jr. High I had a Texas accent after moving from Haiti (the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere) to Seattle where I went to a rich private school that my parents got free tuition for because they worked for the nonprofit that owned the school. It was all very confusing.

In High School I wrote these journals for a fun little game two of my brothers were working on called Myst. It turned out the game wasn't so little and ended up selling over 12 million copies worldwide. By the time I was enrolled at University of Washington, my brothers started working on a sequel and I wondered why I was in school, studying something I didn't care about. So I left school and started cleaning bathrooms for Cyan. (We all have to earn our place.) 

I eventually designed worlds and puzzles, wrote histories and characters and dialog, edited sound and videos and images, and created worlds. I also dressed up in a Moiety Scout costume and "acted".  

I helped to create video games for over 10 years. 

PART TWO

During my time at Cyan, my wife — yes, I had met Heidi when I was 19 and we were married at 20 - good god — anyway while working at Cyan Heidi and I had our third child and we needed a birthday invitation for her. I made one. My wife liked it. So, we started a company called Mango Ink that sold invitations to other people who might want them. That was over 19 years ago. It still rocks out holiday cards every fourth quarter and luxury wedding stationery the rest of the year.

While at Cyan and hustling Mango Ink on the side, I wrote some books because I absolutely loved to write and kinda grew up writing. The first was a fiction book (Inkarri) and the second was a non-fiction (The Naked Fruit). I had an agent but no one jumped so I started to publish books myself through Mango Ink. Why not? I wrote a third non-fiction (Everything Breathes) a little later, another (Cleaning Church Toilets) after that, another (Insipid) and then some more (Away to Z, etc...) later — but we're jumping ahead. Sorry. That does cover all the books though.

PART THREE

While making games — yes we’re back to games — in 2008, a church, New Community, offered me a job. Leaving a nice salary for... well a not nice one... made no sense, unless you know a little more. I was a pastor’s kid. My dad loved to move. All that moving also meant I a) ate alone in the cafeteria and b) saw a lot of diverse worlds, met a lot of diverse people, and had a lot of diverse experiences. Oh, I also became a bit addicted to change and challenge.  I was familiar enough with the church world to know it could use a lot of innovation, and familiar enough to not be scared by the religion of it. Not yet. That religion scare would come later.

I took the job and became a leader of a different kind. The chance to be creative in another venue - speaking - seemed fun. My first year  was like being thrown in the ocean and told to swim. I did. I actually loved it. Well, parts of it. 

In 2010, I, along with some other people,  began a different kind of community, Branches. I cleaned bathrooms there quite often (a theme) and also talked about life, faith, humanity, and the metaphor of the mystery that transcends all categories of human thought including being and non-being (to quote Joseph Campbell). I also met and talked to amazing human beings every week from each and every walk of life.

Toward the beginning of that era, I had something as close to a conversion event that I believe exists: I was at a conference and something happened. To this day, I can’t really say what happened but others who were there have confirmed (over the years) that something happened.

I came home and sat on my deck and told my wife something along the lines of “I think I’m seeing colors for the first time in my life.” That’s all that really matters for that story.

PART FOUR

In 2014, I made some wall art - centered around air travel, airplanes, and airports (more things I love) and started 08left. It's been around 10 years and has been featured in Flying Magazine, The Points Guy, among others, and was a design finalist for Martha Stewart a couple of years in a row. 

There's been other projects and passions, but let's get on to the fun stuff.

In 2018, I quit my job at Branches with not a lot of ideas about what was next. That change addiction is for real. And the idea that the expression of church needed some serious evolving was real. In fact, so much change that, well, I mean, how about pour-gasoline-on-the-place,-throw-in-a-match-and-walk-out-the-front-door-without-looking-back change.

I look back at that time as incredibly special and beautiful. And frustrating. And enlightening. And evolving. Branches was a really beautiful place stuck in a really ugly system (like I believe every church is).

I also threw some gasoline on my personal religious experience of Christianity as well. Burn it down, baby. 

PART FIVE

I'll be honest, it took some time to process so much change. My wife and I did it together - quite vocally on a podcast - named after a live event but I can sum it up this way. 

Some liberation, inspiration, creativity, evolution, and wilderness. At one time during the wilderness (COVID didn't help) I told my wife, something along the lines of "I don't want to ever say anything again" and "I don't know why I ever said anything - should I take down everything I've ever said or done or written?"

I'm not saying I'm a hero, but the hero's journey says we "leave", we spend some time in the damn wilderness, we get a gift, and then we return with that gift to share.

I think the part that often gets skipped over is not that we happen to get the gift in the wilderness, but that the wilderness is essential to see or find the gift. 

Here we are. I’m a graphic designer/entrepreneur/ex-pastor/ex-Christian/husband/father/creative who still believes there is all kinds of good and color and wonder in the world and I love to design and create and talk and listen to people so that we can all keep evolving.

THE FAM

I have an amazing wife, Heidi, who I've been married to for almost 30 years (and we still really like each other even though we were absolutely crazy and young and naive and got married when we were 20 :) 

We have 3 pretty astounding kids too.

Isaac is a high school math teacher, Abbey is a pediatric oncology nurse, and Anna is a Freshman at UW who is going to solve climate change if she doesn't become a history professor first. 

I'm Ryan.

I do have two middle names: Seth and James.  

Don't worry, there's more.