Why I Finally Rebuilt My Website (And Why It Has Nothing To Do With Design)

The first time I asked myself who I was becoming, I didn’t know I was asking it. I was standing in a National Guard armory, eighteen years old, and somebody handed me a uniform and told me who to be for the next several years. I put it on and I became that person, or at least I became a version of him. It felt permanent at the time. Most identities do, right up until they aren’t. I didn’t think of it as an identity crisis then. I thought of it as a job. You put on the uniform, you learn the role, you get good at it, and eventually the role starts wearing you instead of the other way around. That happened again a few years later when I walked into a fire station for the first time. And it happened again when I left the fire service after twenty three years and put on a different kind of uniform, the one that comes with a desk and business cards that say commercial banker instead of Battalion Chief. And it happened again when I left banking to build something of my own. And it happened again when artificial intelligence walked into the room and made me ask the question all over, this time with higher stakes, because it wasn’t just my career shifting under me. It was every career shifting under everyone, all at once, all around me. Here’s what nobody tells you about reinvention. It isn’t really a career question. It feels like one. It shows up dressed as a resume decision or a networking problem or a question about which skills to learn next. But underneath all of that, every single time, the real question is the same one I didn’t know I was asking in that armory. Who am I becoming. Not what am I going to do next, but who am I going to be once the thing I used to be is gone. I’ve spent the better part of a year thinking about this, partly because I’ve been writing a book about it, and partly because I’ve been living it in real time. Every reinvention I’ve gone through followed the same pattern, whether I recognized it or not. Something I built my identity around stopped being available to me. The Army ended. The fire service retired me out. The bank wasn’t where my future was. And in that gap, in that space between who I used to be and who I hadn’t figured out how to be yet, I had two choices. I could grieve the old identity and stay stuck in it, or I could get curious about what was actually still true about me underneath the uniform, the badge, the title. What I found, every time, was that the title was never really the thing. The uniform wasn’t the thing. What carried through every version of me was how I showed up with people. How I listened. How I tried to help someone else navigate something hard when I didn’t have all the answers either. That thread ran through the armory and the fire station and the bank and every stage I’ve stood on since. I just couldn’t see it until I’d lost enough titles to notice what was left standing when they were gone. I bring this up now because I think we’re living through the biggest identity crisis most people will never name out loud. AI isn’t just changing jobs. It’s taking the things a lot of us built our sense of self around, the expertise, the skill, the role we were known for, and it’s making those things less scarce, sometimes overnight. And when the thing you built your identity on stops being scarce, you’re left standing in the same gap I stood in every time I changed uniforms. Who am I becoming, now that the old answer doesn’t work anymore. I don’t think there’s a shortcut through that gap. I think you have to go through it the way I went through it every time, by getting curious about what’s actually true about you underneath the role, and by paying attention to the thread that keeps showing up no matter what uniform you’re wearing. For me that thread turned out to be leadership that doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, and communication that helps someone else find solid ground when everything around them feels uncertain. It took me a long time and a lot of chapters to see that clearly. That’s really what pushed me to rebuild my website over the last several months. Not because the old one looked dated, though it probably did. I rebuilt it because I finally had language for the thread that’s been running through every version of me, and I wanted one place where that thread was visible instead of scattered across a dozen different bios written for a dozen different chapters. The workshops, the speaking, the podcast, the book, the AI work, none of it is really separate. It’s all just the same thread, dressed in different clothes. If you’re in your own version of that gap right now, wondering who you’re becoming now that the old answer doesn’t fit anymore, I’d love for you to take a look at where that thinking landed for me. Not because the site has the answer for you. It won’t. But it might help you ask the question a little more clearly. michaelgreenwalt.net We're coming up on 25 years since September 11th, and I've been thinking about it a little differently lately; as… Still Needed: I Don't Want to Write This One Alone I've been working quietly on my next book, and until now almost… Everyone is talking about what AI can do. Nobody is asking what it's doing to you. You have a self-leadership problem. It’s a familiar phrase: “I’d love to start that, build that, learn that, do that… I… The greatest barrier to entry is rarely lack of ability. It is the fear of being seen trying. Sometimes the hardest part of growth is admitting that a chapter didn’t fail. It simply finished. 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