I will continue to look and find the right words to explain what drives me, what fulfills me, what makes me tick. This morning, it hit me (again) like sunlight through a window - it's always been about the same thing, from the very beginning.

Pivoting babies and innovating!

Let me tell you, the reader who is listening, every time I sit down to write (which is everyday doing the morning pages) I am listening to myself, giving myself full attention - not to communicate "out loud" where I get caught up thinking about whether someone else will get it or not… follow me a little, you'll see what I mean.

Picture this: a five-year-old in his dad's toy store, methodically calling out "brand, style number, price, count" during inventory. Not playing with toys, but understanding their language - their place in a system that only made sense if you could see all the moving parts at once. I learned what a bar code meant to the database!

That child grew up to become a fourth-plus-generation “merchant”, but the obsession remained the same: How do all these pieces fit together, and how can we make them work better?

My first "real" job was at IVEY's department store in the '80s, selling Gucci handbags. But even then, I wasn't just selling - I was watching, learning, understanding the intricate dance between customer desire and the parts that make the whole reality. Explaining the bag, what the makeup explains the price point thru price value engineering.. Between what people wanted and what was possible to deliver.

Studies in depth of the liberal arts (I guess when its cool to be liberal) English Literature, Chemistry, Economics, Math etc - I kept gravitating toward understanding systems. How things work. How they connect. How they transform.

FIT changed everything. Suddenly I was deep in the mechanics of creation: engineering, knits, woven technologies, costing, color science, international trade. But it wasn't just about learning techniques - it was about understanding the entire ecosystem from fiber to final sale.

Then came Ralph Lauren. Specifically, Chaps Ralph Lauren, where they had something magical: a DOS-based CAD computer and a head of sweaters who saw potential in someone obsessed with how things work.

Those intarsia sweaters became my graduate school in innovation. Stitch by stitch, I was creating stories - bass fishermen in Bob Ross-like settings, vintage canoes against Montana mountains, Gordon the fisherman reimagined. But what really hooked me wasn't the storytelling; it was the systems behind the stories.

The color palettes that needed input and printer matching. The showroom cycles that began to reveal their patterns to me. The obvious next step that everyone could see but no one had quite articulated: What if we could see it all at once? What if we could make it all work together?

I pitched for investment in a three-station CAD network - the first in NYC. But that was just the beginning. Soon we were integrating architectural CAD, advertising, marketing, visual merchandising, sales tools. Moving from DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 to Microsoft Windows. Building one of the first PLM systems with a company called Animated Images - a vector-based system based in Camden Maine, using Oracle that could finally connect all the dots!

I was moving "at the speed of light," but here's what I realize now: I wasn't moving fast because I loved technology. I was moving fast because I could see the inefficiencies everywhere, and they were keeping people from doing their best work.

I became a translator between what designers needed and what technology could deliver. Between what had always been done and what could be done. Between the obvious problem and the not-so-obvious solution.

This morning, the words finally came to me. My satisfaction - the thing that lights up all my chakras - comes from transformation. From taking "what is" and revealing "what could be." From helping people see the connections they couldn't see before.

Brand, style number, count, purpose. It's all still there.

I've tried to put technology and innovation behind me, thinking I wanted to get back to my first love: the product itself. But I realize now that was never the point. The point was always the connection between product and possibility. Between what someone makes and how it transforms the person who chooses to invest in it.

The world of fashion might not "need" digital integration anymore - or maybe it needs it more than ever, just in ways we haven't articulated yet. Social commerce, AI innovations, the endless evolution of how people discover and connect with things that light them up.

I don't know what's next, and that's exactly where I want to be. Because I know I'll recognize it when I see it - that moment when the obvious solution becomes clear, when efficiency and beauty converge, when someone puts on something perfectly made for them and you can see it in their whole being.

I've always been on the "right" path to efficiency. That's where my satisfaction lives - in the color, the yarn, the pattern, the supply chain, the calendar, the PLM system, all of it working together so that eventually, someone somewhere lights up because they made exactly the right choice.

That's innovation. That's what I do. That's who I am.

Will Works - Still counting, still connecting, still transforming.

What patterns are you seeing that others might be missing? What obvious solutions are hiding in plain sight? Sometimes the best innovations come from simply paying attention to what's already there.