I’ve lived a life that doesn’t fit neatly into any container. It’s been full of adventure, missteps, windfalls, and having to borrow money to keep the lights on. Looking back, I somehow lived my bucket list without trying to.

I share this because when people sit down with me — usually exhausted from trying to force their companies or their lives into a perfect straight line — they like to know they are talking to someone with a high capacity for reality, not someone who invented yet another sterile framework in a vacuum.

On paper, I spent the last 30 years managing complex tech projects, but my actual job was usually helping people navigate their own chaos. I've read a lot of neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality along the way — not to build a framework, but because I was trying to find my own ground.

The ability to hold a quiet, unbothered space for people doesn't come from a strategy. It comes from the things I survived, the moments of strange serendipity, and the times I had no choice but to drop the armor.

Here's a few of those interesting moments along the journey:

• I helped build the 3rd .com website in history, and the very first kraftfoods.com site, on which I hid an Easter egg just to see if I could, and nearly got fired for it.
• I started a software company at 23.
• I was mugged at gunpoint in a Detroit parking lot and negotiated to get my wallet back.
• I once came across a fatal car accident where the trained EMTs were so shaken they froze. Having never done it before, I ended up directing the firefighters and the jaws of life.
• I spent a week fearing arrest by the FBI after falling victim to a complicated con job in Goa.
• I sang Hava Nagila at a club in Bangalore with an 80-year-old, chain-smoking former Playboy bunny.
• I rode a bicycle from Seattle to San Francisco when I was 16.
• I have photographs archived in the Smithsonian.
• I got married in Israel, divorced 3 years later, moved into a rented room in New York City, and spent three months walking the streets at night taking photographs until my feet couldn't take it anymore.
• I once let a strange guy I met in a New York bar sleep on my couch in Boston. He introduced me to a woman who became one of my best friends and hired me for a multi-year contract that changed my life.