My name is Nick Brosnahan.
I have many identities, but the primary one is probably that I’m a parent. I have two adult children that we worked very hard to keep alive until they could fend for themselves. That job never ends.
Next, I’m a husband to my wife Anne, which is a continually dynamic dance. She’s my best friend and we are each other’s biggest supporter. That job should also never end.
For work, my identity has been software engineer for over 30 years. I’ve had many jobs in Silicon Valley since I started way back in the summer of 1992, skipping every few years from company to company like Frogger, but for some reason I keep coming back to Apple, because it’s both a known quantity and very hard to beat. I’ve spent almost half of my career working in one division or another at the fruit factory.
Today, my identity is “software developer at large”. Escaped and on the lamb, so to speak. But, even though I’m not working, I am still fascinated by technology and I’m currently attempting to learn Rust to keep my brain sharp. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what’s next and how I can be of service.
Beyond work, I’d say my biggest identity is cyclist. Possibly aggravated cyclist. I ride my e-bike for going grocery shopping, my road bike for long rides, and my mountain bike for flying down trails up in the hills. I’ve been spending some amount of my time and effort trying to help Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition get better cycling infrastructure built in all the cities up and down the peninsula. It’s slow going and frustrating, but the community is strong.
Maybe tourist is next on the list of identities. A lot of identities seem to jumble together here: Traveler, Photographer, Foodie. I adore traveling and seeing new places where people are just different and do things very differently. As part of my trips I always attempt to photograph as much as I can to capture the feeling. And of course, foodie comes naturally when you’re visiting places like Paris or Rome or Tokyo or Taipei.
Among the big pillars that define my identity, there are half a dozen other other half-formed or broken-down identities that are strewn around including guitarist or reader or polyglot. I hope my list of identities keeps growing and shifting as I continue on. It’s really the only way to truly live.
Here’s my resume if you’d like to take a look:
You can also find me in many of the usual places: