I Didn't Know What I Was Writing About
Why I moved my writing off Substack, and what happens when you stop reading your work as individual essays and start reading it as data.
The journal · Theme
Identity & reinvention
Who you are when the title, the age or the tools change. 24 essays, newest first.
Do You Believe in This Thing or Not?
Every company has the same AI. Very few have decided whether they believe in it.
The Flywheel Effect of Structured Learning
Why deliberate learning compounds differently from everything else we consume.
Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens Was Right. I Just Wasn’t Old Enough to Hear It.
A line from Justified, heard again at 62. Aging is accumulation and synthesis, and an economy obsessed with youth is undervaluing perspective just as information gets cheap.
I am who I remember myself to be: What happens when the archive remembers something else?
Identity depends on what memory keeps and what it lets go. An AI that can retrieve everything may threaten reinvention and forgiveness more than privacy.
Thom Yorke Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud. The Creative Industry Should Be Taking Notes.
Thom Yorke's Ivors speech, read through Radiohead's catalogue. The industry's risk-averse habits fail young talent who should be experimenting and veterans whose late work it undervalues.
It's Just Like Paris. How I tamed my Impostor Syndrome.
Calling the feeling of being new impostor syndrome turns it into a condition. A Paris Metro map taught me to read the same feeling as the start of an adventure.
I’ve Lived Through More Than One End of the World.
What repeated cycles of technological disruption have taught me about survival, judgment, and hope.
Why I’m Taking the Cannes Lions Creative MBA (Even Though I’ve Been Critical of Cannes)
I've been hard on Cannes for years. I enrolled anyway, to see how creative excellence is being redefined and how learning gets built to last.
The One Where I say Some Things
My time on The Generalists Podcast
You Can’t Just Be An [insert job role here] Anymore.
AI has dissolved the walls between specialist roles. Frameworks are what let people cross from one discipline to the next without getting lost.
Labor data shows Baby Boomers returning to work. Meaning drives them as much as money, and later life looks more like reinvention than retirement.
What Miles Davis, Sir John Hegarty, and the Epilogue Economy All Know About Creative Maturity
Miles Davis said it takes a long time to sound like yourself. Creative voice and confidence come with age, and people over 50 are the most underused leadership asset in the business.
Transitions: What CMOs Are Missing About These Moments That Matter
Why Transitions Are One of the Most Overlooked Insights in Modern Strategy.
After the We: The Person Left With a Life Built for Two
Widowhood is when "we" becomes "me" and, eventually, a new "us." Brands built for couples rarely know how to design for one.
Generation Jones, my own cohort, proves generational labels are lazy shortcuts. Marketers should target the transitions people are living through instead.
“We Just Decided To”: On Rituals, Responsibility, and Rewatching The Newsroom
My annual rituals tell me what I value. This year one line from The Newsroom reminded me that standards are a decision anyone can simply make.
More Poet than Peasant: A Reflection on Labels, Culture, and L’Oréal
L'Oréal turned me down as more Poet than Peasant. The label is hierarchical, out of step with the company's own values, and wrong about what leadership is.
What Would I Think? Building a Cognitive Twin with AI
When AI moves from being a tool to becoming a container for how you think, you don’t just outsource tasks—you encode judgment.
The Power of Optimism and Generosity: A Personal Perspective
I stopped doing optimism and generosity by halves and started giving away my time and AI know-how freely. It turns out to be a very selfish virtue.
Navigating Well-being in the Epilogue Economy: The Mental Fitness Challenge
Reinventing yourself after 60 carries a psychological cost nobody budgets for. Ignoring the mental well-being of older professionals wastes the very experience organizations need.
My (continued) advice to those over 50. Strategies for Continuous Growth and Relevance
Fifty is the new mid-career. My playbook for staying relevant past it: structured learning, becoming an expert generalist, pruning your network, and protecting real conversation.
On moving, anniversaries, and avoiding conflicts.
I moved apartments days before our wedding anniversary and ran it like a film production. It taught me the client lessons I thought I already knew.
What I’ve Learned at Sixty Years Old.
On the eve of turning 60, the lessons I'd hand anyone: on money, marriage, kindness, curiosity, listening, and starting a company at 59.