About

General:

• My name is Joel Christiansen.
• I'm 43 years old.
• I live in Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A.
• I'm happiest when I'm on a trail, bike saddle, or water.
• I work, very happily, as a computer programmer. I changed into this career after 11 years of practicing law. The main thing I love about programming is the opportunity to bring ideas to life and to bring together people from across the world around shared values. I think of writing code as building and maintaining universes where it's possible to experience ideas in tangible, interactive, and collaborative contexts—as opposed to abstract, theoretical, and individualistic ones (which is how ideas are too often experienced, in my opinion).
• I've been a loving partner to Sarah for 9 years. We're packmates with two rescue dogs, Gus (husky/herding dog mix) and Namgil (jindo mix).
• I'm a "med spouse"—i.e., a significant other of someone in the medical profession. I didn't realize until recently that there was a name for this, but I'm not surprised because it's a unique experience.
• The written word is one of my favorite things in this world. I read voraciously, mostly non-fiction books. My favorite book in the last several years is "Working" by Robert Caro. I prefer audiobooks to physical books lately, because coding requires lots of reading with my eyes and audiobooks free me up to get out for walks, gym, gardening, etc. I also love when authors narrate their own audiobooks because it brings the stories to life in a unique way.
• I write a lot, though I share very little of it and feel perfectly comfortable with that. Lately most of my writing has been reflective writing, purely for myself, and editing for non-fiction writers. I've also been into translating Japanese poetry and shorter books, especially paper books and bunkoban (文庫判).
• I'm naturally curious and love learning. I like to build, tinker, and do things to understand the world and myself. I treasure encountering new perspectives, being surprised, and the feeling of awe. Lately, I've been really into the work of Seymour Papert, which has helped untie some of my longstanding knots around my own learning.
• I'm internet-positive. I think the internet is a force for good and I'm optimistic about its future. I believe we're still in the early innings of the internet and that a lot of the things people loathe about it are simply growing pains. I'm an advocate for an open and accessible internet (vs power/capital-controlled internet), which is why I feel compelled to keep a personal presence on my own website and engage lightly with social media.
• Even though I live in a small remote corner of the U.S., I try to keep a global perspective. It makes the world a more wonder-filled place for me and makes me feel like a better human. In practice, this means that outside my small group of local family/friends, I seek out experiences, insights, and relationships that engage me with new perspectives.
• Politically, I'm socially progressive but also not very confident in government's ability to take bold leadership on the kinds of policy that I'd personally like to see (addressing the climate crisis and enforcing antitrust laws are two things at the top of my list). At the end of the day, this translates to me being politically independent and focused on doing real things for causes I care about.
• I try to do almost all of my transportation without a car. 95%+ of my regular trips are on foot and bike. I do this less for sustainability reasons and more because I love the physicality of moving through space on my own power and the feeling of slowing life down. I wonder a lot about what life might look like if our society was designed around walking, biking, transit, etc. Practically, I don't see this happening in the U.S. in my lifetime (outside of progressive urban pockets) because America is a big country with a car-centric culture and physical infrastructure. But it's fun to imagine.
• In the last couple years, I've been into plant-based cooking/eating, primarily because of how it helps me feel more connected with the natural world and thoughtful about what I eat. I'm neither strict nor preachy about it, but it's something I've really enjoyed. I also prefer eating with chopsticks to eating with a fork about 90% of the time.
• I grew up in an alcoholic + co-dependent household. I used to be ashamed of this and hide it, but then I came around to owning it.
• I do not have or want to have kids. Much love to all the parents out there, and please know that I'm here to support you every way I can. But I'm also happy to have the freedom to make my own personal life decisions that work for me.
• I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. I grew up in a relaxed Lutheran-ish setting but did not continue with any form of church after I completed the required classes that my mom insisted on. I don't anticipate getting involved in socially-organized religious practice. If I had to pick a flavor of spirituality that speaks most to me today, it'd be Zen Buddhism.
• Ethnically, I'm 3/4 German and 1/4 Czech. Even though I was born and raised in the U.S., I was fortunate to have lots of time with my great grandparents who grew up in Europe. I have wonderful memories of speaking with my great grandmother in German (which was taught in all the schools I attended in Wisconsin).

Places:

• I was born in San Diego, California to parents from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (mom) and Oyster Bay, New York (dad). Having parents who grew up in different places and met/had me on neutral ground gave me a sense of not truly belonging to any specific place. I used to be insecure about that but have come to value it as an adult.
• When I was young, my parents decided to leave California because they couldn't afford it and didn't have any family support system there. So, after a little moving around, I grew up in Wisconsin (West Bend and Milwaukee). I'll always have good memories of my Wisconsin childhood, but I also knew from a pretty young age that I wouldn't stay there.
• I moved to La Jolla, California after college in 2005 and have stayed out West ever since. I've lived in La Jolla (3 years), Portland (12 years), Walla Walla (3 years), and now Bellingham (3 years). The last couple moves have been in connection with my partner's healthcare job and I'm grateful for the experience living in smaller communities in the northwestern U.S.
• I've studied abroad in London and Germany.
• I've traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout the U.S. I'm not a prolific traveler these days and don't feel the need to travel as much as I used to.

Work:

• I currently work as a computer programmer. I've been coding since I was ~14 years old, but only started doing it professionally in 2019 when I changed careers from law. I've been meaning to write something about my path from there to here, but it's a story I keep putting off. Short version is that I love code and could not avoid its pull. I find it to be a great way to make ideas tangible, bring people together, and make a difference.
• My current job title is Senior Software Engineer at a Boulder, Colorado-based, global company called Unreasonable Group. Our company helps support the work of growth stage climate entrepreneurs through a fellowship program that provides mentorship, strategic and substantive business support, fundraising connections, and wellbeing resources in partnership with large institutions (corporations, governments, etc.). I work as part of a very small team that builds a custom digital ecosystem and other information technology projects to support our fellowship program.
• Previously, I worked at a legal tech startup called Legalpad based out of Seattle, Washington that worked for clients across the globe. We worked on innovating the business immigration process for international workers, with a focus on helping entrepreneurs and startups. I worked on technology projects focused on reimagining the immigration process for businesses and workers.
• Before doing coding full-time, I practiced law in Portland, Oregon for 11 years. I passed the bar exam just as the market was tanking in 2008 and, given the job market, went into solo practice. I represented employees, executives, and some small businesses in employment-related matters (e.g., contracts, wages, civil rights, etc.). I later got into helping companies and their workers with business immigration matters. Due to confidentiality and the nature of my work, I can't/don't say much more about it. I found legal work to be rewarding on an individual level, but not on a systemic level. I am still licensed to practice law, but I voluntarily transitioned out of the practice of law because I started to lose faith that the legal system was working for the people it was supposed to serve. I didn't have the drive to navigate the level of red tape, politics, and everything else that I felt were required to make the kinds of impact I wanted to see in the world.

Education:

• Before summarizing it, I want to disclose that I have mixed feelings about my "formal" education. Despite my privilege of getting a college degree and advanced training, I look back on my education with some dissonance. I loved everything I learned in school and felt like I got a very strong education. I didn't go to prestigious schools and don't have any of the network benefits that are associated with them (despite the very, very high costs). As I get older, I value self-guided learning so much more than anything I learned in school. Combine all that with how polarizing educational status has become in modern society, and I'm not sure how to feel about my formal education. At the end of the day, I'm grateful for school because it helped me learn how to learn on my own—something along the lines of the frequently-quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupéry passage, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea".
• I went to high school in West Bend, Wisconsin. Academically, I wasn't very engaged in high school. My parents got divorced, not at all amicably, when I was 15 and didn't get along with each other very well in the years leading up that. In hindsight, the turmoil at home made it pretty tough to be very inspired or focus at school. I worked at a local Greek family restaurant and started a 90s rock band with friends who I'm still close with today. I graduated a semester early, took a full time job at the corporate office of a regional bank, and moved away from home ASAP until college started.
• I really loved college because, unlike my high school experience, I was given space to explore. After exploring a couple other potential majors (business and philosophy), I got a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. My focus within my major was political theory and the European Union. My senior thesis was about farmer attitudes toward EU agricultural policy in Poland and the Czech Republic (TL;DR, it was a mixed bag and Czech farmers generally viewed in more favorably than Polish farmers, though both were deeply concerned about regulation and competition). I helped on a project to review environmental regulations in preparation for Malta's admission to the EU. Outside my major, I soaked up classes in language, philosophy, computer science, and economics. I learned to code in the 24/7 computer lab on campus. And, I also somehow managed to hold down a few part time jobs to help keep myself afloat. I didn't sleep much, but I have great memories of college.
• After college, I went to law school. I took a year off after college and debated between a law career and going full time on computer programming, which I had been learning on my own for years. Ultimately, I decided to go to law school. I got a Juris Doctorate from the California Western School of Law in San Diego. Law school was an exceedingly practical experience. I worked part-time at a law firm, really gelled with several of my professors (many of whom are true badasses), and overall devoured all the reading, writing, and technical aspects of law. Really though, law school was a means to an end for me and felt much less curiosity-motivated compared with college. San Diego was excellent and I loved being able to work surfing into my study rituals.
• I did ~7 years of old fashioned, on-the-couch psychoanalysis that I very much consider part of my education. My therapist was a hip older woman from Chicago who had moved to Portland in retirement to be near her son. We met every week in her condo in Portland's Pearl District. Our conversations were far-ranging and, ultimately, life-changing.

Hobbies:

• Japanese translation.
• Weightlifting.
• Living a walking/bicycle-centric lifestyle.
• Hiking and spending time in nature.
• Sailing small boats.
• Coding (even though it's my job, I still consider coding a hobby).