I'm going to skip the third-person stuff for a bit and just get down to it.
I'm a writer. I've been a PrOfFeSsIoNaL wRiTeR or over twenty years. I've written for magazines, newspapers, marketing agencies, ad agencies, brands, startups, television networks, events, conferences, festivals, and one time I wrote a guy's best man speech. Before I did any of those things, I had aspirations of being a screenwriter who moonlighted as a playwright. (These aspirations were bolstered when a one-act play I wrote in twenty-four hours won the Lionel Shapiro Award in 2004.)
A few years ago I put a pin in my content/copy career and moved into UX writing and content design. This coincided with my move back to Toronto. That move, that work, and the series of decisions that led to making that move and getting that work did something to me. I started to wake up. I started to change. I could feel new neural pathways growing in real time. Everything was the same, but not really.
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If you asked fifty former colleagues what my areas of expertise and interest are, as a writer, they'd likely mention a few of the following: the arts, music, film, theatre, comedy, culture, food, nightlife, sports, the internet, memes, tech, advertising, marketing, media, Toronto, and Montreal.
I'm interested in all of those things. I have been paid to write about those things. I have enjoyed writing about those things. But the things I actually obsess about, the things I actually think critically about more often than not — they're not reflected here.
Other than my nearest and dearest, no one really knows what I'm interested in, what I care about, what I obsess over, what I want people to think of when they think of me if they think of me at all. No one really knows what I've always wanted to write about (and do, privately). This isn't their fault. It's mine.
I never took myself seriously enough to present my thoughts, ideas, obsessions, predilections, and so on as part of an overarching oeuvre. I thought that was for real writers, real thinkers, real artists. People who changed the world, or could. I didn't have the confidence, self-respect, or self-esteem to actually just like, do the thing. I waited for permission, and then waited some more. One day I looked up and it turned out I had been waiting for 20 years.
Lately I don't fuck with that at all. I am a real writer, a real thinker, and maybe even a real artist. I can change the world — and if not, I will cut a big ugly scar into it so that it will know that I was here.
So, who am I? I am a writer concerned with the intersection of technology, creativity, and human behaviour. I am a writer who seeks to see the immense, incalculable beauty in the mundane. My recent brush with health and clarity has encouraged me to redefine what I do. And I'm still working on it.
Lately, my work has involved ghostwriting and consulting work in and around GenAI, AI ethics, and human-machine partnerships. Yeah, I have years and years of arts journalism, criticism, and agency work under my belt, but these days all I really want to talk and write about is how emerging technology can coexist with human creativity and autonomy — but only if we get honest about what the fuck is going on.
Most of the writing people haven't seen examines the tension between technological possibility and human values. Yes, I'm fascinated by technology itself, but I'm more interested in what happens to people when the technological tools change, and how people's lives veer off in new directions — not all of them good — because of those tools.
When I'm not thinking or writing about ethics and implementation or doing consulting work in that area, I'm probably working on a trade in one of my dynasty basketball leagues or writing fiction that explores how we adapt, resist, or transform alongside the systems we create.
