On Being Uncategorizable

For my last update of '25, I wanted to take a step back and look forward (it will make sense).

“Throughout his career, he evaded easy categorization” - About David Bowie

"What do you do?" It's the first question any gets asked when they meet someone for the first time. For the longest time, I never knew what to say, so I usually mumble some form "computers" or "I write software". It didn't help that I tended to get bored with jobs easily and I moved from role to role after 2-4 years max. That would cause people to look at me with a form of skepticism. "Job Hopper", "Flighty", etc....

I didn't love that, so I spent a good chunk of my 30's trying to land on a label. Something that people could associate with me so I stunk in my head. CTO. Tech Guy. College Football Fan. Event Organizer. Networker. But I had too many interests. I was different things to different people, and it got exhausting to try and meet the "requirements" each person had for what they were expecting. Bleh.

This goes even further back to my childhood: I was a tall, lifted weights and played all sports, but also loved computers, electronic music & hip hop. Not-quite-a-jock-not-quite-a-nerd. Comfortable anywhere, but belonging nowhere.

So I spent a lot of time trying to fit a box in my 20's & 30's. It didn't matter what box, it just mattered that I fit it. But something wasn't right. My 40's hit and I had enough. I didn't want to fit into other peoples ideas of what I could / should / would be. It took me a while to embrace the desire I had to not be One-Thing.

So in 2021, hello No Fixed Plans. An amorphous blob of an entity that I started with the idea of fluidity baked in. More on that in a bit but first, let's come back to The Wire.

This is Idris Elba. He's an English actor whose big break to US audiences was playing Stringer Bell in The Wire starting in 2002. Since then, he's been incredibly busy acting in every kind of property you can think of: Big Budget movies, small arthouse movies, British TV, American TV, prestige TV, Video Games...you name it. Hell of an actor right? But then there's this:

Yeah, turns out he's also an actively touring DJ, DJ Big Driis, spinning everything from latin to afro beats to R&B to hip hop. He's performed all over the world, alongside some household DJ names. There's also his label, 7Wallace, where he publishes music from a variety of artists of all genres. This includes one of my top albums of the year, Victory by Slick Rick, and performing with him on Badman Generation. Also, we can't forget about the tv and movie production company he owns with his wife, his professional kickboxing matches and the fact that he owns part of an Motorsport team. Not bad for "an actor" eh?

So... how does Idris Elba answer the question "What do you do?" I like to think it's some form of "whatever the hell I want to".

And that's the energy I started bringing into to my life as I cross 40 and plan for the next 20 years. How can I evade categorization while having no fixed plans? I had no idea when I started, but it's been working out splendidly since I started.

I'm an entrepreneur, an acquirer, a consulting CTO, a coach, a competitive Netrunner player on top of being a husband, father (but definitely not a communist). What's next? No idea. My wife and I have talked about a little hotel B&B for decades. I have an idea for a kissa that I'd love to do some day. It's all on the table for I am large and contain multitudes.

Onto the updates

FeedGeni: Nothing of note. Flirted with a potential acquirer before letting it die. Going into '26 with a strong balance sheet, profitable P&L and a focus on quality of life improvements across the board. Oh, also, AI. So much AI.

Standard Parts Toolkit: Pretty great start to the whole "being live on Shopify" thing. Gotten some new customers, expanded into new areas and shipped new features.

SPT - Merchant of Record: Something I haven't spoken about is for the last year we've been running a Shopify based Merchant of Record service. It's been going well but this fall I launched a huge update. We're POC'ing a cart checkout that can be integrated into any e-commerce shopping cart. The first customer went live via Salesforce and we processed our first transaction in early December 🚀

Personal: I've been playing more video games lately, especially Silksong. It's an insanely hard "dark souls" type game where the entire point is to die multiple times, over and over again, so that you learn more and improve with each attempt. It's masochistic, there's no other explanation. But I have my own cheerleaders in my two boys and it's a blast to do it with them. 🫶🏻

Have a great holiday season, spend some time with family, but also take some time for yourself. Give yourself the gift of love and make sure you know you're worth it.

As always, if you made it this far, give me a holler and let me know what change you're making today, this week or this month to make yourself just the slightly bit happier.

✌️