About Liv

The Early Years

I've been an elementary teacher in public education for over 23 years. As a kid, I was active, bright, and very talkative—always with a smile. But I constantly struggled through the challenges and quiet shame that come with ADD.

I was never diagnosed as a child. My parents either weren't aware of the condition or decided that Adderall—the drug of the day—wasn't a choice they wanted to make for their son. So I learned to cope on my own.

Two Decades of Watching

Through twenty years of teaching, I watched the stigma of ADD slowly shift. What was once a detrimental label on students (and worse on teachers) began to be understood differently. I sat through thousands of 504 meetings, helping students and parents find accommodations. I watched kids struggle with the same invisible battles I knew so well.

At 45, I finally decided to advocate for myself. I took my concerns to a medical professional and—to no surprise—was validated. The differences I'd always felt between my world and everyone else's had a name.

Finding Control

By the time of my diagnosis, I'd already built numerous coping strategies. Thousands of post-it notes. Early morning hyper-focused cleaning sessions. Systems upon systems.

Medication helped level the dopamine. But I still needed more structure—more support for the daily battles that neurotypical people don't even see.

That question changed everything. I'd always been driven by technology, and AI felt like it multiplied my brain by 100. It was exactly what people with large, creative, scattered thoughts need—something to help organize the chaos and create a plan of action.

Building Liv

I wanted to bring together everything I needed in one place: AI insights, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Fitbit data, and simple state checks on the things eating up my mental processing power.

Things like:

• Is my desk at school a disaster?
• Is my dirty clothes hamper overflowing?
• Are my clean clothes still sitting in a wrinkled pile?
• Whose turn is it to do the dishes?

Simple things. Things that shouldn't take up so much brain space—but they do.

I also needed help with some nighttime drinking decisions. I needed a coach available when triggers hit. I needed something that understood my brain.

The 95%er

95%er

I should have a shirt that says this. ADD people will understand—many of our projects reach just about 95% completion before we find something new, with no intention of coming back.

But Liv is different.

This one will never be "complete" because I'll keep improving it—for myself and for anyone else who might benefit. It's a living system that grows with the people who use it.

Why liv.rip?

The idea was a Life Dashboard, but every domain on the internet with "live" or "life" was obviously taken. Life is a premium word in all parts of our world.

Then .RIP popped up as an available TLD. I checked if liv.rip was taken and... nope! The in-between of life and death. Ha!

Liv.rip isn't here to promise you'll fulfill the greatness you believe you can achieve (though I'll be happy for you if you do). It's here to help you get much closer—and hopefully live longer and happier—as you work toward the thousands of goals, big and small, you have along the way to that distant RIP.