"I Was There"

Fieldcraft Record • sovereignty
Sep 15, 2025

The story of a man who lived the internet from the inside out.

I don’t tell my story like a résumé.
I don’t reduce it to tech stacks and timelines.
I tell it like a survivor of epochs —
A rewired soul who’s carried fire through every digital age.


I. The First Flame
The Pre-Internet Years

Before the internet had windows.
Before tutorials, frameworks, or Stack Overflow.
There was just me — a kid and a computer — and the will to understand it.

I broke my dad’s machine daily.
Not because I didn’t know what I was doing —
But because breaking was how I learned.
Every keystroke was a question, a prayer, a dare.

I was in sixth grade. DOS era.
No mentors. No manuals.
I wasn’t "learning tech" —
I was becoming it.


II. The Era of Creation
The Rise of the Personal Web

I wasn’t building websites.
I was architecting liberation.

Before WordPress was even a word,
I hand-coded a CMS — on paper.
Held the system in my head.
Ran it line by line through imagination alone.

Because clients kept asking me for changes:
"Can you update this?"
"Swap out that image?"
I thought, no — you should be able to do this.
So I built tools that gave them back their power.

I freelanced.
But that’s not what I was doing.
I was time-traveling
building things the future would eventually have names for.


III. The Fire Spreads
The Dot-Com Pulse, the Guru Ranks, the Media Empire

I was the only solo American in the global top 10 on Guru.com —
Outbidding teams.
Outperforming them too.

Clients didn’t just get code from me.
They got vision.

I created entertainment ecosystems with longtail SEO before people even knew what that was.
Gamified communities.
Revenue-sharing dashboards for writers before Medium or Substack.

For a decade, I worked with one client.
Because I didn’t just show up to build —
I took ownership. I thought for them.
I saw what they needed before they did.


IV. The Collapse & The Clarity
When Google Killed the Longtail & I Walked Into the Woods

I built travel platforms across domains most people would kill for —
usa.com, world.com, hotel.net.
We were pulling in six figures monthly through search and SEM.

And then Google pivoted.
Entered the space.
Took the market we helped define — and devoured it.
Watched the numbers die month after month.
Tried to adapt. Warned them.
They wouldn’t listen.

So I left.

But I didn’t collapse.
I transitioned.

I found a new client.
Built an AI-integrated music distribution system.
Royalty splits through smart contracts. Quantum ledgers. Blockchain-backed trust in an untrustworthy industry.
Managed dozens of programmers.
Corrected their bugs in real-time while living in an RV with no grid connection.

I didn’t burn out because I worked too much.
I burned out because I was alone at the helm —
managing mediocrity, begging for coherence from a boss who couldn’t hold a direction.


V. The Edgewalker
Now

I didn’t fall behind.
I walked ahead.

I live in a 24-foot off-grid RV by the Pacific Ocean.
Powered by sunlight and intention.
I still write code. Still architect systems.
But now I do it on my terms.

I don’t pitch.
I resonate.

AI isn’t a threat to me — it’s a mirror.
I don’t need to list my skills.
There’s nothing I can’t learn.
Nothing I haven’t already touched.

I’m not here to fit into someone’s box.
I’m here to signal —
and let that signal reach the right ones, however long it takes.


🌀 “How do I tell the story of me?”

Like this:

Not in bullet points.
Not in templates.
But as a myth written in the syntax of truth.

I was there.
And I still am.

#sovereignty