And even if it is, hello and welcome!
I’ve always had trouble introducing myself to others. I can tell you my name (Cody), what I do for a living (Site Director of a Camp and Retreat Center), and how that can help add value to your life (all I can promise is something to read sometimes). But that script doesn’t really fit who I am¹. I don’t think it fits who anyone really is.

So, here goes an attempt to sum up the author behind this blog. I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon² where, aside from a brief stint at Corvallis, I lived until 2024 when I moved outside of Sisters. Like many Oregonians, I have a deep commitment to environmental justice and support efforts to combat climate change. In 2020, I lived in a hotel for two months during the historic wildfire season and saw first-hand what our excessive emission of carbon dioxide does to society. Unless we take drastic action NOW, things will not get better for the planet. But, we can make different choices.

There are other issues that I care about: LGBTQ+ rights, racial equity, improving literacy, gender equality, strengthening local communities, and promoting religious tolerance are the causes I believe in most strongly. I support a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine and demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu be tried for his crimes against humanity. I’ll probably write about these issues from time to time, but the only promise I will make is that there will be something new to read every sometimes.

I am the biggest Taylor Swift fan you will ever meet. I have been a diehard swiftie since the beginning and have been a fan through every album release, complaint that she “only dates guys to write new songs,” and the Kanye drama. I recognize that she is not perfect³, but her music makes me happy and the Eras Tour was a masterpiece.

I am a proud nerd. I play Magic and D&D (though not as often as I would like). Star Wars is an old favorite, as is Trek and Stargate. I’ve read around half of the Honor Harrington books and can spend hours reading through TV Tropes and Atomic Rockets. Although I enjoy hard Science Fiction, I don’t see an issue with the softer fare and enjoy popular fantasy⁴ just as much. The joy of SFF is that it is not the real world.

At the start of this blog, I was in the freefall of unemployment, waiting to “land on my feet,” as many told me I would. In December, I found out on a cold and gray Tuesday that my dream job was eliminated to reduce costs in the organization. For seven years, I served the organization in various capacities and, in April of 2023, I was offered a full-time, year-round position. This fulfilled a childhood dream on mine and was far more challenging than I expected. I learned a lot in my tenure there and am grateful for the opportunities I had. I was able to make an impact on the lives of thousands of youth and watch some grow up from being a camper in my first summer to becoming one of my staff in my last (and other variations thereupon).

This news was devastating to say the least. I am still processing these feelings, but that journey will not be a primary focus of this website. I will update you on how my life and work changes over time, but we will not wallow in despair or indulge in manufactured positivity. Sometimes, things happen to us because they happen to us. If you have to leave something you love behind, I recommend shaking its hand and focusing on what comes next.

After two months of searching for a new role and experiencing rejections or ghosting from my applications, I decided that the idea I had to start a blog wasn’t a half-bad idea. I have always loved to write and to read. My childhood days were filled with stories: mine and others. A good piece of writing can transcend the medium itself and live long after the reader has forgotten the exact syntax used to describe a point.

In every transition point, I have turned towards the written word. My Google Drive is filled with poetry, my hard-drive with stories, and my heart with four ventricles. In times of stress, the neglection of the written word is a sign of my building levels of cortisol.

And that is why I am returning to this after 2 years of inactivity. I love my job, the people I work with, and that I get to be a positive influence in the lives of others. And, the job only gets more complex. Regulations change, the economy is constantly manipulated by the decisions of old white men and techno-fascists, and life never stops. We cannot keep living like this.

And so, what better way to feel like I am contributing to the world again than to rely on the written word. In “Contact,” you can find my Storygraph page⁵ where I track what I am reading and my progress on my reading goals. On this website, you can find a selection of my writing. Every sometimes, I will post a new article. I cannot guarantee any topic or niche. I will not guarantee that you will like it. I shouldn’t even guarantee that there will only be articles sometimes. But, thank you for coming along with me as I try to find the right words.

1. No, not just because I try to find balance in my life. It’s actually more of a Latourian philosophical belief, but I can see why you’d say so. ↩︎
2. Technically, I was born in a city-suburb near Portland and was raised outside of an unincorporated rural city whilst commuting for everything in said city-suburb, but “Portland-native” sounds better for a website for strangers to see. ↩︎
3. Flying for thirteen minutes in a private jet is excessive. I can understand her need to fly private; she has far too many stalkers for commercial flights. But, surely you can take an armored SUV between states on the Eastern seaboard! ↩︎
4. Yes, I am referring to A Court of Thorn and Roses and Fourth Wing. ↩︎
5. You can also find it by clicking on the word “Storygraph” in the footer, but I heard that intersite connectivity is good for SEO. It’s not all that accurate, but it’s something. ↩︎

One Day I Will Find is a collection of blog posts written by Cody A. Roberts. Posts will vary in topic and scope with a new article posted every who knows when.

The advice I read online for starting a blog implores writers to “find their niche” and stick to it. I think that a niche would be too boring to keep me engaged, so my niche is that I don’t have one.

In my freshman year of High School, I had an Algebra 2 teacher who would, every Wednesday, host a lesson on how the math we were learning in class can be applied to the real world. For some reason I cannot recall now, we were discussing the Millennium Prizes in mathematics. After class, I found a video on the P vs. NP Problem that succinctly described the problem and what the ramifications would be if it were true. At the end of the video, the author quoted Jack Kerouac

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”

Jack Kerouac

That quote has stuck with me all these years. It’s probably no shock that I was not the most popular person in my youth. I wanted to fit in and belong. But in this video, I saw a reason for uniquity. If P=NP, then there is no need for creative and different leaps. If you can read, then you can write a book worthy of a Pulitzer. But, if P≠NP, then the thing that requires creativity for solving complex problems is still of value. If P≠NP, then I can turn my differences into my strengths.

When it came time to making this idea of writing a weekly blog into reality, I spent only a few minutes deciding on a name. All writing is a quest to find the simplest way to express the unnamable that resides inside the author. With that, One Day I Will Find came as the natural name for my blog.

I use WordPress hosted through Bluehost. It has a variety of plug-ins to help with the process. Currently, I have Elementor, Jetpack, Ultimate Blocks, and WP AutoTerms installed to help with the process.

The theme is Twenty Twenty-Two by WordPress with some modifications by yours truly to make it mine. The color palette was generated using coloors.co and Canva’s Color Wheel tool.

Years ago, I learned how to code in HTML and built a rough website (read: collection of html pages in my file browser) for one of my earliest writing/worldbuilding projects. In college, I had to build a website to present a topic and I chose to use Wix because using the resources at your disposal is the key to managing time effectively. At my previous job, I was responsible for managing our website content and the WYSIWYG editor was a blessing.

I thought about hand coding this site, but I liked the ease of using someone else’s code in these past experiences compared to writing the HTML by hand.

Professionally, you can find that on LinkedIn. I have bachelor degrees in Business Administration and Religious Studies, spent many years working in youth development programming, and am the jack-of-all-trades that your non-profit needs to improve its impact.

When it comes to writing a weekly blog, I have none. Sure, we can say that my experience in writing pages every week in college is transferable or that my experience in managing website content at the Y has uniquely prepared me for this endeavor. But, this isn’t LinkedIn. I am doing this because I want to share something I wrote every sometimes. I am doing this because I was in a creative draught for most of the past 4 years and am tired of it.

There will be a new article every whenever.

Tough.

For 7.5 million USD, legal fees related to the contract, and covering the estimated tax payments for the transfer of the sum, you can buy my silence permanently. This is also what it costs to bribe me or to get me to shill for AI.

For 250,000 USD and same terms as before, you can buy my silence for the next year.

For 60,000 USD and same terms as before, I will remove any 1 article you want for three years.

If that’s outside of your price range, tough.