As I open my laptop to plug back into the world, a world I seem to be fading from. I look over and see my untied shoes lying on the foot of my bed.
Still there from two days ago. On my bed. Still untied.

They’ve become a metaphor for my life.
Not completed. Not tied. Just there.

Do I need another sip of cold brew to focus?
Yes. More caffeine.

There’s a moment in every life when you realize you’ve been rebuilding the same broken version of yourself over and over again. Repeat that…
Swirling down into a deeper thought: What’s next?
My favorite word. Next…

The faces slowly change around me.
The projects quickly to change around me.
The endless goals imagined. The slow grind that’s never ending.
The excitement of the next dopamine hit still lacking.

Somehow, the stains always show up and the cup needs refilled.
Is there another storm building that I don’t see?

That’s when everything I thought I wanted, the “complete life,” the one I always imagined living, the wished for vision, I could see it starting to fall apart.
I could feel it drowning inside. Choking for clarity. Collapse initiated.
It began to unravel as I poured another glass of imaginary motivation.
Again, I looked over at my untied shoes…

And for the first time,
I didn’t try to stop it.

Back when my afternoons started with caffeine and chaos.
Yes, afternoons.

No thoughts. Just fog.
A to-do list I couldn’t even look at.
Success looked good from the outside, but inside it felt like drowning in slow motion.

Each morning, well, each afternoon if I’m being honest, I’d grab a bottle of cold brew.
Slug back a cup straight from the bottle, pour another into a tall glass, toss in a scoop or two of protein powder and collagen just to open my eyes.

My mental energy was gone, body forgotten.
Not the “I need a nap” kind of gone either.
I mean gone, gone. Dead battery, and stuck miles offshore.

It wasn’t ambition I lacked. I was busy doing, the doing thing.
It was internal voltage collapse.

Lightning itself couldn’t jump-start me.
It tried.
That’s another story for another day.

The dopamine hit never ignited.
I wasn’t lazy. I kept moving, just not going forward.
I was miswired inside. Not as we say “Plugged In.”
And deep down, I knew it.

I needed to find my compass again,
and I needed it fast.
Ah, my glass was empty and I needed more.

At some point I realized my body wasn’t asking me to rebuild anymore.
It was past that.
It was asking me to redesign everything.
To unleash the hurricane inside.

Time to stop duct-taping, or in my case, super-gluing, the ruins together and start laying a real foundation for what I wanted.

So I opened ChatGPT. (Shut up…)
I typed one line:
“Help me write about Designing My Perfect Life.”

And for the first time in years, something sparked.
No, it was more than lightning.

An unspeakable pulse gripped my waking mind.
Was it clarity?
Maybe.

What do I do about my untied shoes?

What I didn’t know was that I’d just opened another rabbit hole. Next…

Chapters.
That wonderful word stuck. Chapters…

Once upon a time I wrote. In a somewhat past life.
I wrote a lot.
Mostly ghostwriting. SEO. Reputation management. The like.
Back before anyone called it personal branding.

I helped other people find their outside voice.
Their base story.
Their monetized brand.
Never completing mine.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my own.
My inner voice went quiet too. No inside voices.

Now I was driven to pick up the pen again, or in this case, the dust covered laptop.
Not to sell something. Not to pitch.
I needed to tell myself the truth. Now!

Startup Life
I’d been living in start-stop cycles for years.
Maybe decades. Yes, it was decades.
Momentum. Collapse. Rebuild. Repeat. Do it again.

Everything dropped off just before it mattered most.
Closure always slipped away.
Never a clean ending. No real “Exit.”

So many truly captivating projects started.
So few finished. If they did, it was not planned.
Next…

Next, that was my rainstorm.
My inevitable collapse. Over and over again.

It hit like a mad Category 5 Hurricane.
Always spinning in circles of despair.
Tearing things apart from within.
Never leaving my clouded mind.

Each season, each strong enough to destroy whatever I’d rebuilt.

The worst part?
I didn’t even see how bad it had gotten.

When you live inside the storm long enough,
chaos starts to feel like home. I liked chaos…

Can you relate?

This is the first stable brick set. Solid with a fine mortar.
A line of words in place of concrete, no, granite.
I found my internal plot. My Base.

The moment I decided the next version of my life wouldn’t be another sloppy patch job.
It would be a blueprint. I’ll find the lost architect of words.
Build an infinite mindmap of vision. And complete…

That’s what this chapter, this site, this mission is about.

If you’ve ever looked around and realized the life you built isn’t the one you wanted, maybe this is your wake-up too.

I’m rebuilding from the inside out.
Finding the stable foundation.
The structure to complete.

You can follow along, you can build too.

I don’t want to fix my life.
I want to design it.
And there’s a lot to undo before I can begin again.
Is the delete button now my friend?

Because a life in motion needs direction.
A calibration of the compass within.
And the map starts in your mind.

Start where I did?
No, start where you are.
Ask the first question.

If you would also like to participate in my unraveling.
I have a quest for you. Open your favorite Large Language Model.
Such as ChatGPT or SuperGrok. Input a simple set of questions.

Based on everything you know about me,
what do you think are my biggest blindspots?
How are they holding me back?
Give me the tree top examples.
Be blunt!

I’ve opened the book, setup a timeline, configured a selections of chapters I can share. But it still feels empty. This must be a prequel with lot’s more to write.

Now go tie your shoes.