Early life

I was conceived and born in Santa Barbara, CA to liberal, atheist parents. My family moved briefly to Denver, CO, Brno in the Czech Republic, where my brother Edison was conceived, back to Denver, and back to California, where my brother Viktor was conceived, before settling in Racine, WI for several years. My parents sent me to public school for one year before pulling me out of the school system and deciding to homeschool and eventually unschool me. My brothers had no taste of the school system.

At about nine years old, I became a vegetarian on my own accord, when my parents explained to me that chicken, the animal and chicken, the food were the same thing. From that moment on, I became horrified and disgusted by the thought of eating meat. At about twelve years old, I became a passionate environmentalist after watching David Attenborough documentaries, being enthralled by the beauty of nature, and horrified to learn that it would all be gone in twelve years unless we could reverse climate change.

I became depressed, angry and often violent, and developed several addictions in my teenage years. Besides for climate doomerism, I think this had to do with loneliness, especially after my family moved to East Providence, RI, away from my only friends, another unschooling family we'd connected with in the Racine area. My only friend at that time who lived in the same state was the neighborhood crazy cat lady, Barbara, or "Babs".

At fifteen, I got involved in politics and went door-to-door canvassing in my East Providence neighborhood to support the Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein in 2016.

Ideological development

About the time I had my epiphany moment with God, I began to learn about nuclear energy and became convinced that it was one of the keys to reversing climate change and saving the world. I shed my green party affiliation due to their anti-nuclear party platform, which I realized was harming the cause rather than helping it, and I began to learn about the downsides of renewables and the many ways in which they actually hurt the environment.

In the crowded 2019 Democratic presidential primary election, I joined my dad in supporting the moderate democrat Amy Klobuchar, who was pro-nuclear. I created a Twitter account to debate people online and try and convince them to vote for Klobuchar in the primary. It was on Twitter that I was convinced to go vegan, and learned from the vegan community all about how the meat and dairy industries were harming the environment, and how the federal government was propping up these evil industries with subsidies.

I learned that those awful fossil fuels and renewables were also propped up by government subsidies, and I increasingly began to see the State as the issue and the cause of most of the world's problems. I made libertarian friends on Twitter who convinced me to oppose not just subsidies, but other government programs, as well. Public education was an easy sell, since I was unschooled. Regulations, as well, since they hurt small businesses. My dad was a small business owner. I was even convinced of the importance of the Second Amendment, and, as someone who had many minority viewpoints, the First Amendment was a given.

Eventually I was convinced on Twitter to become pro-life — not that I was ever strongly pro-choice; it just wasn't an issue I cared about or gave much thought to before — but I realized the hypocrisy of caring for animal lives yet ignoring the human pre-born. If meat was murder, how could abortion not be? If I were to be a voice for the voiceless, the human pre-born were voiceless, too. Thus, when Roe v. Wade fell in 2022 and every single federal-level Democrat towed the party line and refused to even acknowledge any nuance to the issue, I fully cut ties from the Democratic party, as well.

Through some online friends who taught me a lot about philosophy, especially secular normative ethics, I became convinced of positive utilitarianism as an ethical framework and slowly began to distance myself from mainstream vegan and environmentalist philosophy, which was based in negative utilitarianism. I became an eco-modernist and remained strictly vegan for a few years, but distanced myself from that community.

Early College Years & Career

At nineteen, I took a one-year online course with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and became certified as a health coach. After realizing I couldn't make a career for myself as a health coach without marketing skills, however, and being unmotivated to learn them at the time, I decided to enroll in college. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to study — maybe nuclear physics, maybe political science, maybe philosophy — but I wanted some independence from my parents.

I started at Worcester State University in September 2022 without a declared major, but settled on environmental science by the end of the semester. That first semester, my roommate Gregory helped me to come out of my shell. For the first time in my life, I began to develop close friends I could hang out with practically every day. I fell in with the LGBTQIA+ crowd, partly because as a non-conformist in many ways, I think I naturally gravitated towards other non-conformists, and the queers were the most obvious group thereof on campus.

I knew there would be ideological disagreements on matters such as abortion, freedom of speech, and gun rights, so I mostly didn't talk about politics or philosophy unless prompted, and even then, I'd generally try to be careful with my words. As far as homosexuality and transgenderism themselves were concerned, as a libertarian, I saw no issue with them. Let adults with informed consent do whatever they want, I thought. It's not like straight people aren't doing basically the same things. Through hanging out with that community, I even became convinced that I was in love with my bisexual best friend Ben for a couple of weeks. I caught the stomach bug and distanced myself from everyone for a week or so, and the infatuation faded.

In autumn of 2023, my now-close friend Elianna was tabling on campus for Young Americans for Liberty (YAL). The table was hidden behind a bush and invisible from three sides, and it had just started to rain. I walked past the table without even noticing it, but I overheard Elianna talking to another student about liberty and decided to turn back. We talked while she packed up her table and got lunch afterwards. At that point, I had already switched my major to political science. A few months later, Elianna invited me to a Grassroots Action Training which took place over my spring break, and that summer, I was recruited to canvass for YAL's sister organization, Make Liberty Win PAC, in South Carolina.

Coming to Christ

It was also in the spring of 2024 that I began to grow close with my friend Michael Eagan, an Irish Catholic hailing from a traditionalist, Roman Catholic homeschooled family. We started having conversations about his faith and I often found myself struck by how much sense Catholic philosophy made. For the ideas I struggled with, he encouraged me to pray about them. I often did and understanding later came. Mike took me on a couple of occasions to experience the liturgical worship of a few different traditions of the Catholic Church — first the Maronite tradition, then the Melkite, Ukrainian Byzantine, and Traditional Latin Mass.

I made the firm decision to enter the Catholic Church on June 5, 2024, my will moved by the Holy Spirit. I didn't even understand at that time why I was so motivated to convert — understanding would come later. I continued to explore on my own, both intellectually through books and podcasts and spiritually, by praying different devotions such as the Rosary and going to Mass on Sundays when I could. I tried out the Syro-Malabar and Novus Ordo traditions on my own.

I returned to college that autumn with a conviction to be more vocal about my beliefs, especially the pro-life cause. Unfortunately, my college friends were not too pleased about that, and many of them ended up blocking me, ghosting me, or icing me out. I arranged that semester to transfer to UMass Amherst in the spring, along with my best friend Janelle, a former Protestant who was also interested in the Catholic Faith.

I had been waiting to start catechesis so I could do it with Janelle, but she wasn't yet as convicted as I was and eventually it seemed imprudent to wait any longer, so I tried to see a Ukrainian priest whom Michael had recommended to me about entering the Church. Every time I'd try to talk to him, however, something would get in the way — my car engine died, my bicycle tire popped, I got distracted and missed my bus stop...

I dropped out of college that summer, as I'd hit a point of diminishing returns and I needed to take a sabbatical to find some direction in my life — I'd already switched my major another two times; first to English, then to psychology, but I wasn't much closer to graduating. I moved out of state again that summer for more political work — this time to Virginia. I went on a mission trip to Peru with FOCUS Missionaries, then returned to the Richmond area for more political canvassing.

I began to attend Sunday Mass consistently for the first time in my life at St. Joseph's in Richmond, an FSSP parish. In September, my family followed me down to Virginia, moving to Arlington for my dad's new job as a US diplomat, so I began to visit them on weekends. The first weekend, I visited an FSSP parish in Arlington for Sunday Mass, but it was disappointing compared to the Richmond parish, so the second weekend I looked into other options for a reverent Liturgy in northern Virginia. I discovered Holy Transfiguration Greek Melkite Catholic Church in McLean, which was only a 20-minute metro ride away, so I decided to try it out.

From practically the moment I set foot in 'the Holy Fig', as it's endearingly nicknamed by Melkites around the country, I fell in love with the Melkite tradition and knew it was my spiritual home. When I returned to Massachusetts after spending a couple weeks with my family when the election was over, I started frequenting Our Lady of Perpetual Help Melkite Church in Worcester. I convinced my best friend Jason, a former Protestant whom I'd met during my time with YAL, to enter the Church with me after the Feast of the Theophany (Epiphany) on January 6, and we both underwent catechesis and became Melkite Catholics on Holy Saturday, April 4, 2026.