I’ve never considered myself a writer.

Though for as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with words and the craft of storytelling.

As a kid, hanging out in the park reading novels or sitting in empty movie theaters watching the classics over and over when I was supposed to be in school.

Scribbling self-indulgent thoughts on paper, typing them up in my parents basement.

In retrospect, the endless stream of activities that anchor my career were similarly bolstered on my ease with words and my obsession with a story well told.

From fiction and poetry to journalistic columns as a stringer. From innumerable grant proposals and environmental impact reports, to the brevity of video game box copy. From onscreen prompting schemas for new OSs, to software manuals, to web sites, to radio scripts. From proofreading for publishers to word stacking for SEO.  From academic journals, to blogs, to ghostwriting books and speeches.

As my career moved along and the jobs got larger, taking on owning brands and communities, new market segments and product launches, marketing, customer service, and sales orgs, still it was words and stories, wrapped in ever larger strategies and audiences.

It’s always been a process of getting the words aligned, and the story ready before jumping on a stage, into a board meeting, or heading out to visit partners and customers. Or simply pushing Send or Publish.

I mapped this out on a flight recently, thinking about how the means of expression and the intent morphed as the tech platforms have changed.

How as a pirate radio entrepreneur and late night radio host, as a builder of companies on the web from the earliest incarnation to the mashup of environmental activism, blockchain, gaming, and philanthropy that I play in now, it simply keeps evolving.

Not quite that the medium is the message, but more so, the medium lets us be creative in new ways in how the message is internalized by the ever changing publics we speak to.

And then there was blogging.

For the very first time, expression became all about me, my thoughts, and my opinions.

Writing about whatever I wanted to, from obscure topics like NFTs, or the memorial on the passing of my mother. My exultation of my hero Chuck Close, or my true love affair with wine regions like Marsala or Mt.Etna.

I never realized the true depth of this impact on me till recently on September 11th when I republished my memorial post.

The memory was about the days following 9/11/2001 of course but in actuality, the story truly came alive when I wrote it on my then new blog in 2010. To me, that is when it created a bridge to something formless in the past taking shape annually on that date in the present.

As if it didn’t exist in a personal way till I wrote and shared it.

At this stage of my career, I lean harder on myself as a strategist and listener, thinking less about what I write or conjure up, but of what is heard and internalized by the reader, viewer, or listener as their own.

Harks back to how I was in awe of the market, when I was given my very first opportunity to create the words for games like Ballblazer and Rescue from Fractalus, lifetimes ago as kid starting out in the then new computer gaming world.

Or the extreme humbleness I felt on my very first marketing job, sending a message out into the BBS of 1+m Atari enthusiasts in my then office, basically a desk in a server room.

I’m tempted to wax poetic here, talking about how over time the distance between the thought in my head and the expression on paper gets closer and closer, like two lines verging towards each other on the horizon but never touching.

But I’m not a poet, more a practitioner of the story, a launcher of narratives into the world.

Been doing these unique projects the last few years where I dig in deep into a company, over months, seeing where the product, the vision, the markets, the possible customer emotional reflex all come together.

And create not a report, but a dynamic, living short document as a draft of their company language. The vernacular that teams can take out themselves, make their own, and in every variation, be on mark even through the lens of different situations, and themselves, each unique.

Not talking points but a a shared story as a lexicon of dynamic thoughts.

At one time I wanted to be a Charles Olson academic, a Faulkner like storyteller, a visionary poet like Guillevic, an artistic revolutionary, emasculating common perceptions like Antonin Artaud., a masterful spinner of daily meanderings like Kerouac.

Now I’m quite content to call myself a storyteller as a vocation, being part of bringing possibilities to new ideas, to new markets in different ways.

It’s still words and expression and stories.

And I still don’t consider myself a writer.

But discovering language that can be shared and owned by broad communities is a craft that has served me well.

Just really fortunate to be good at something I love to do that continually changes and forever inspires.