I used to think a blog needed a niche. One clean topic, one clean audience, one clean elevator pitch. Ravensquall doesn’t have that, and I’ve stopped apologizing for it.
What it has instead is one question I keep asking, in a dozen different costumes: what shaped this, and what is it shaping in us? Some days that question shows up wearing a rosary — a reflection on the examen, or why tithing never quite works out to clean math. Other days it shows up in a spreadsheet, poking at money habits, investing, or why crypto keeps eating its own tail. Some days it’s wearing a kimono, curious about a Meiji-era tea master or why a 400-year-old craft tradition still has something to say to me. And some days — no apologies here either — it’s just a Duran Duran music video, because I was an 80s kid and MTV taught me things nobody assigned as homework.
Faith. Formation. Finance. Japan. 80s pop culture. Five doors into the same room. I never promised they’d feel related. I promised they’d all be honest attempts to notice what formed me — and, hopefully, what’s forming you too.
A little about the guy writing this: I’m a husband, a father, an infrastructure services technician by day, and by night (and lunch break, and the occasional 2 a.m. burst of inspiration) a writer, a musician, and a financial educator who’s spent more hours than is strictly healthy explaining Bitcoin mining economics to people who didn’t ask. I write in English, sprinkle in Tagalog when it fits nang better than the English word, and occasionally reach for a Japanese phrase when nothing else lands right. I’m Catholic, and the daily examen — that quiet nightly habit of asking “what happened, what did it mean, what do I carry forward” — is less a topic here than a hidden architecture. You’ll feel it more than see it.
What you won’t find: hot takes dressed up as financial advice, moralizing dressed up as reflection, or a forced “lesson” bolted onto a post that was really just supposed to be fun. If a Rick Springfield video shows up here, it’s allowed to just be a Rick Springfield video.
What you will find: short posts — 400 to 700 words, because that’s about how long a good conversation over coffee lasts before someone has to go pick up the kids. Sourced numbers when there are numbers. Small true stories instead of big abstract claims. And, most days, a closing beat that asks what to carry forward — because examen isn’t just a prayer practice, it’s apparently also how I write.
So: pull up a chair. Bring your own theology, your own portfolio, your own opinions about the 80s. I’ll bring the questions. Let’s see what shaped us.
