Philosophy & Vision
The question isn't just what you believe. It's whether you're willing to live like it's actually true. If you've read this far, you have a sense of who I am and where I've been. This final section is about what I believe, what I'm working toward, and what I hope to leave behind.
Core Values: Truth, Beauty, and Love
When I think about what matters, it comes down to three things: truth, beauty, and love. These aren't simply abstract ideals. They're practical guides for how I try to live.
Truth means seeing reality as it actually is, not as I wish it were or as others tell me it should be. It means being honest about my own failings and limitations. It means being skeptical of narratives that sound too good to be true or too convenient. It means doing the hard work of actually understanding things rather than accepting easy answers.
Beauty is about recognizing that aesthetics matter, that how we do things is almost as important as what we do. Ugly solutions to problems often hide deeper issues. Beautiful solutions tend to be elegant, simple, and sustainable. This applies to code, to relationships, to how we structure our lives.
Love is the most important, and it's defined biblically. The fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 spell it out: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is what I'm aiming for, even though I fail at it constantly. Love isn't a feeling. It's a practice, a discipline, a choice to act in the best interest of others even when it costs you something.
These three values inform everything else I believe and do. When I'm making decisions, I try to ask: Is this true? Is this beautiful? Is this loving? If the answer to any of those is no, I need to reconsider.
Political and Economic Views: Beyond Left and Right
I used to be heavily involved in libertarianism and
But I'm not as passionate about it as I used to be because I've come to realize it's not a motivating enough vision for most people. Telling people they can all have economic prosperity if they follow a system that's completely unintuitive and different from everything they've experienced doesn't work. The people benefiting from the current system have every incentive to keep it going, and they're very good at propaganda.
More importantly, I've come to see that the genuine problem isn't Left versus Right. Both sides have valid concerns. The Left, at its best, is about protecting the vulnerable, the outsider, the marginalized. The Right, at its best, is about protecting tradition, family, continuity. We need both. The tension between them is healthy.
The actual problem is the people gaming the system. The oligarchy. The military-banking-industrial-intelligence-silicon complex. The
This is where my Christian Voluntarism comes in. I think the answer is to stop trying to use violence, whether directly or through state institutions, to impose our will on others. Focus on your own life. Work on the plank in your own eye. Love your neighbors. Build community. Stop trying to control people.
I know this sounds naive. I know it's not going to happen on a large scale. But I can do it in my own life, and I can teach my kids to do it, and maybe that's enough.
Legacy and Impact: What I Hope to Leave Behind
I think about legacy more now that I have kids. What am I passing on to them? What will they remember about me? What values and patterns am I embedding in them that will shape their kids?
I hope they remember me as someone who tried to walk in love, even though I failed often. I hope they remember that I prioritized them over my own comfort. I hope they see in me an example of someone who kept getting back up after falling, who didn't quit even when things were hard.
I hope they learn from my mistakes without having to repeat all of them. I hope they develop better emotional regulation than I have. I hope they're less critical of themselves and more gracious with their own failures.
Most of all, I hope they find their purpose in Christ and start working toward it early. I hope they don't waste years in the wilderness like I did. I hope they experience the transformation that comes from walking in love without having to hit rock bottom first.
Beyond my kids, I hope I can make some small impact through my work. Not by being famous or building a company or making much money, but by loving the people around me well, by teaching what I've learned, by being a witness to a different way of seeing things.
If people remember me at all, I want them to remember someone who genuinely cared about them, who tried to help them grow, who pointed them toward truth and love and beauty. That's enough.
Looking Forward: The Next Few Years
I don't have a detailed five-year plan because the last time I had one, God laughed and took me somewhere completely different. My goal is to be faithful with what's in front of me and trust the next steps will become clear when I need them.
That said, there are some concrete things I'm working toward:
One-Year Horizon
This website: Finish it, launch it publicly, do some marketing, and use it as a networking hub. I want it to be my personal communications platform since I'm not on social media.
Church and community: Continue mentoring younger Christians and making an impact in Bible study groups. Get more involved in the homeschool co-op we just started and build relationships there.
Professional growth: Get deeper into AI work. I'm hoping for a promotion to a specific title related to AI. I want to deliver more talks and workshops to evangelize Intelligence Augmentation (IA) and help companies see practical applications. We have a GM-assisted job estimator and contract bid application in the works that's pretty interesting.
Personal: Continue growing in all areas while maintaining what's working.
Three-Year Horizon
Professionally: I want to continue growing with SEQTEK as the company expands. I'd love to help us break into the AI space and become a trusted voice for Midwestern industries (oil and gas, manufacturing, healthcare), helping them identify and adopt what IA can actually do for them. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and I want to be an honest, realistic voice in that conversation.
With my kids: Figure out what it means to be the father of teenage daughters, because in three years I'll have one teenager and one almost-teenager. Continue working toward good progression with Teddy and his therapy, both with the clinic and at home.
Personally: Be much more fit. Climb three mountains and make strength training part of my daily routine. Read many more books. Have the website well-established with features people are using, functioning as my personal social media hub and maybe even something that could be adapted for others to use.
The Kingdom work: Continue taking steps toward God and His kingdom, doing the work, loving the people around me. I'm open to where that leads. I have many opportunities and ideas, and finding the right ones to bring to fruition will be part of my spiritual journey as well as my life journey.
For My Kids
I need to clarify something about how I think about my kids' futures: I'm not working toward specific outcomes for them in the sense of imposing my vision on their lives. I'm trying to facilitate their growth in the way they want to grow and help them discover God's purpose for them. I'm not a helicopter parent. My role is to provide framework (there are rules and expectations at my house, especially for behavior that reflects on our family), but setting specific "goals" for them feels wrong.
What I'm actually doing is supporting them in what they're already interested in:
Rory loves dance, our homeschool co-op, and science, so I want to support those interests. She wants to make new friends, which is a struggle for her (much like it is for me), so I want to put her in more social situations and do a better job helping her connect with friends she's already made. Setting up playdates has been difficult as a single dad, but it's something I'm working on.
Charlie also loves dance and wants to do more of it. She's very social and wants more social situations, which I want to help facilitate.
Both girls want to continue in ballets and musicals. I want to keep equipping them with fundamental math and reading skills and help them discover a love of reading like I have by finding books they enjoy.
Teddy is a special case. There's no way to know how he's capable is. The doctors don't know, and I don't know. Only the Lord knows. We're going to continue working with him through therapy, putting him in more social situations, and supporting his development in every way we can.
I don't have a detailed plan because I'm holding it all loosely. What I know is that I want to be faithful with what's in front of me, love the people around me well, and trust that God is working even when I can't see the full picture.
Advice I Wish I'd Received Earlier
If I could go back and talk to my younger self, here's what I'd say. And maybe this will be helpful to someone else who's where I was.
For people entering software development, focus on fundamentals. Data structures, algorithms, systems thinking, architecture. Don't just learn enough to be productive. Understand how things actually work. The bar is rising with AI. If all you can do is what GMs can do, you're in trouble. But if you have strong fundamentals and good communication skills, IA makes you incredibly valuable.
For people struggling with their path, it's okay that you don't have it figured out yet. Most people don't. The key is to keep moving, keep trying things, and pay attention to what actually engages you versus what you think should engage you. Sometimes the detours teach you more than the straight path would have.
For people dealing with addiction or destructive patterns, you can't save yourself. I tried for years, and it made things worse. You need something outside yourself. For me, that was God. Maybe it's different for you. But stop thinking you can willpower your way out of it. Get help. Accept grace.
For people who are critical of themselves, compare yourself to your past self, not to some ideal. You've made progress. You're not where you want to be, but you're not where you were. Give yourself credit for that. God's grace is sufficient. Your weakness is where His strength is made perfect.
For everyone, work on the plank in your own eye before you worry about the speck in your brother's eye. Most of us have it backwards. We're so concerned with fixing everyone else that we ignore our own massive issues. Start with yourself. Be ruthlessly honest about your own failings. Be gracious with everyone else's.
How I Want to Be Remembered
I don't need to be remembered by many people. Most of us are forgotten within a generation or two, and that's fine. But if I am remembered, here's what I hope people say:
He tried to love people well, even though he failed often. He was honest about his struggles. He didn't pretend to have it all figured out. He pointed people toward Jesus, toward truth, toward beauty. He was a good father who prioritized his kids. He was a good friend who genuinely cared. He tried to do his work with excellence. He refused to join the mob. He kept getting back up.
That would be enough. That would be a life well lived.
Final Thoughts: Still Being Written
This is where I am right now, at 43 years old, in October 2025. But the story isn't finished. I'm still learning, still growing, still failing and getting back up. Still trying to figure out what it means to walk in love in a world that runs on violence and fear.
I don't have all the answers. I'm not a guru or a prophet or someone who's arrived. I'm a guy trying to follow Jesus as best I can, raising three kids, doing work I find meaningful, reading theology, writing code, and hoping that somehow it all adds up to something worthwhile.
If you've read all of this, thank you. I hope something here resonated with you or challenged you or at least gave you a glimpse into how one person is trying to make sense of this strange and beautiful and difficult life.
And if you're considering reaching out, whether for work or friendship or romance or to talk about Girard or AI or whatever, please do. Despite my fear of rejection and my tendency to isolate, I genuinely want to connect with people. That's what we're here for.
The story continues. Let's see where it goes.