About

I live in Austin, Texas, with my wife and two middle-school-aged kids. You can call me Nic. (Or Nicolás if we're talking in Spanish.)

You'll see me write about a number of topics here, but they tend to gravitate back towards Christian faith and philosophy. I haven't put my master's degree in theology to use in my professional life much in the almost twenty years since I obtained it. However, some of the ideas that have been in embryonic form in my head since then are finally ready to start coming out. Some of my interests that you may see come through in these writings include:

Sacramental theology. Continental philosophy, especially deconstruction. Latin American history. History in general. The English language. The Spanish language. Ethics. Coffee. Race and ethnicity. Mysticism. Church. Movies. Batman. Cooking. Dungeons & Dragons. The French, Mexican, Russian and Cuban Revolutions. The crisis of masculinity. Hitchcock. Latin American literature, especially Gabriel García Márquez. Politics. Sex. Existentialism. The music I make (as Viasa). Venezuela. My spiritual diamond dogs: St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross. Guys being dudes. Baltimore accents. Parenting.

A word about AI. Like many, I'm ambivalent about it. I don't like its environmental impact or the way AI companies profit from our unpaid labor, and I find its aesthetic contributions both ugly and boring. But I also recognize that it's increasingly just the world we live in. It's been a useful tool for fact-checking my claims before publishing, but I'm too proud to let it do any of my writing. Be assured that every word you read in my essays came from me.