What makes me me? After much soul searching I came up with the following…

Square peg. Everywhere I go. Eternally. Abnormal.

A systems thinker. This means I look for opportunities at the deepest level possible, instead of focussing on the apparent symptoms.

A free agent who speaks his mind rather irreverently, although genuinely.

A friend and mentor who loves working with individuals to define and reach their goals. I know how easy it is to lose a decade or two.

An adventurer known to take a leap of faith or two.

A multidisciplinary creative.

Failures:

I’ve always found it hard to get moving, unless I get hooked into a great creative beat or idea. This has been my strength, but also weakness which led to give up too often.

OK, there are no failures. This is a fact. But when you string enough of them together without any successes it sure feels like it.

• Spent a few years learning music production but didn’t keep it up.

• Invented a vegan cheese cheese and produced it for national retail and food service. Could not scale up and ended up giving it to my ex wife as a parting gift.

• Ran a freelance web and design business for small/micro businesses. Could not scale up or transition into brand strategy.

• Completed a design degree at university but couldn’t land a job – my path was too weird?

• Landed a freelance gig with a hot design firm but didn’t get called back – no explanation.

• Landed and worked web design and digital media role at small b2b IT company but was very frustrated and more or less fired myself.

I’m still writing my story. After all, we have no course other than to try our best with the cards we’re dealt.

Other things to note…

• I become nauseous in competitive scenarios. In fact usually you simply won’t find me in a competitive scenario because everyone tricked into competing has lost.

• I’m vegan going on 20 years. Bring it up with me, I dare you.

• My age determined that I should prefer late 90s music, but I tend to get on better with nowave grunge. In any case I don’t think we are improving on the 90s.