I’m 73. Fat. White. Southerner.
Sounds like the setup for a joke.

But I’ve been riding the digital wave longer than most people reading this. Back when spreadsheets meant Lotus 1-2-3, word processing was WordPerfect, and databases were dBase, I was already tinkering, learning, and pushing the tools. When the internet cracked open, I was an early adopter. By 2004, I was blogging while most folks were still asking what a blog even was.

And here I am today, running a lineup that includes ChatGPT, Sora, Canva, Grammarly, Grok — and whatever else I decide to plug in. I’m not just playing catch-up. I’ve been at this for decades, and I’m still moving forward.

It’s funny because people don’t expect it. They hear “73, Southerner” and picture someone still fiddling with the TV remote. Instead, I’m orchestrating multiple AI platforms, producing exposés, publishing at scale, and testing tools most “digital natives” haven’t touched.

The lesson? Digital doesn’t belong to the young, the thin, the coastal, or the credentialed. It belongs to whoever is willing to put in the work, learn the next thing, and use it for something that matters.

The punchline isn’t that I’m still here. The punchline is that I never left.