In 2008, I found myself at a crossroads.

Me hanging out under an overpass on the west side of Detroit

I had just finished my undergrad and had rehabilitated myself back to health from a knee injury. I found myself working in my field (a rarity among the collegiate class of 2008) with a full time job and a career ahead of me.

But my heart wasn’t in it.

As it turns out, my dream job at age 17 was different from my dream job when I was grown up. At age 22, my outlook on life was different. My life was different, and as such my priorities were different. It was time to move in a new direction while it was still easy to do so.

I started to think about the things that mattered to me, and it was the experiences we share as people that led me to where I am today. Life is about adventures, and to have adventures you need people to share them with and places to have them at. The places were where I felt most at home, and I realized that my passion wasn’t for making the internet a better place for users (it’s done a fantastic job of that on it’s own) it was in making places better for the people that interacted with them in real life instead of the virtual world.

After a lot of thought, I decided to go back to school to major in urban planning, and enrolled at the program offered by Wayne State, which is where I’ve been since fall 2009 (48 credits part time is a lot) and I should finish up my degree this year. During this adventure I have learned a tremendous amount about myself and about what I truly love doing.

And that’s how I ended up here, with The Urbanist Dispatch.

In my spare time you might find me playing my guitar or my saxophone, enjoying a nice cigar or hookah break, wondering the urban landscape, being involved in some instance of political activism, snapping photos to sell on RedBubble.com, or sipping a drink while watching Boardwalk Empire.

You can get in contact with me by emailing john [at] urbanistdispatch [dot] com or head over to the contact page to shoot me an email.

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