From palm trees to pines and back again…
Once upon a time, I was a zookeeper. I even have a graduate degree in exotic animal management. But when my body decided that shoveling shit wasn’t a long-term career plan, I pivoted hard, left my hometown of San Diego, and moved to Portland, Oregon. In 2012, I finished my Masters in Writing at Portland State University and began working as a writer-editor for companies like Saga City Media (publishers of Portland Monthly and Travel Portland), Nike, and Kaiser Permanente. It was a blissfully creative decade for me.
I also dove deeply into Portland’s food and beverage scenes, where I eventually picked up a camera and learned how to capture all of the city’s liquid color and local flavor. I created content for bars and restaurants, fell in love with cocktail creation, and have attended press tours with Fortaleza Tequila, Silvies Valley Ranch, and Pyramid Global Hospitality. I truly loved my job.
But like many Portlanders, the pandemic hit me hard. The city was struck with a triple threat of apocalyptic fires, city-wide destruction from protests and vandalism, and a record number of business closures. By 2021 the pandemic was ebbing, but my rent kept rising and my workload kept shrinking, which is when I made the hard decision to trade pine trees for palms and move home to San Diego—and start over, again.
Today, I share my childhood home with my mom, which where I spend my spare time shooting macro photography in our garden (you can find my macro work at Tiny Life, Big World), learning to sew my own clothes, or tinkering with cocktail creation and dessert baking. I also run a Substack called Boozy Baker Cocktail Maker, where I share recipes for boozy desserts and cocktails to drink while you wait for your dessert to bake.
