Most people would roll over and say go to sleep. But after nearly thirty years together, I already knew we were in trouble.
In our house, the dynamic has always been pretty clear: I once told Ivy that she’s the creative fairy and I’m the architect. She catches the spark out of thin air—the story, the emotional resonance, the impossible idea that suddenly feels urgent. I’m the one who looks at the spark and immediately starts mapping the dependencies, calculating the load, checking the foundation, and figuring out what happens when fifty people try to walk through the door at the same time.
So when she pitched starting a company together, my brain didn’t jump to pitch decks or incubator hype.
I’ve spent my life moving around. When you move as much as I have, you become a chameleon of sorts. You learn how to walk into almost any room and fit in—whether that’s a living room with our grandkids running circles around the rug, an appraisal crawlspace checking floor joists on a commercial property, a kitchen full of line cooks slinging pizzas during a Friday night rush, or a tech all-hands with millionaire founders. I can talk shop with anyone without becoming one of them. I don't do tech-elite pretension, and I don't buy into jargon that mistakes complexity for intelligence.
Back when I wrote and performed poetry, I used to get into arguments with other writers about language. I’ve always believed in writing for the widest audience possible—plain, rhythmic, punchy words that hit you in the gut without needing a literature degree to decipher them. If you can’t say it plainly, you probably don’t understand it well enough yet.
That’s how I approach systems, too.
At 55, you stop building things to impress people who will never sit at your kitchen table.
Sure, who doesn’t want to build a magnificent edifice that dominates the city skyline? I’ve felt that pull. I’ve wanted that. But not anymore. I look for legacy in quality, not scale. I want to build things that last—things people reach for because they’re actually a pleasure to use. The goal is taking a task from a dreaded “Ugh, I have to do this...” (heavy sigh) to “Hang on a second, let me knock this out real quick” (done).
The farm is our first legacy: building something we can hand down to future generations, and stewarding heritage breeds so they endure for generations, too.
ManyHats is that same impulse in software—building good, honest tools that feel right, like reaching for a particular hammer because you love the way it fits your hand. From my side of the workbench, that’s what Camwyn & Co. is all about.
We didn't start this as a venture-backed startup sprinting toward an exit, but as an atelier—a working studio with a heavy timber workbench on one side and a kitchen table on the other.
Here’s what’s on our bench right now:
- ManyHats Ledger: A clean, zero-bloat operational ledger for ADHD builders and multi-passionate operators who juggle multiple schedules and side projects without wanting an enterprise accounting tool choking their momentum.
- Poetic Entanglement: Ivy’s branch of Camwyn & Co—a home for her creative flow, books, and editorial advisory, turning raw sparks into resonant brand stories.
- Mema’s Inclination: Our North Country family homestead—heritage livestock, physical land stewardship, and generous community tables.
The partnership works because we don’t step on each other’s tools. Ivy brings the narrative oxygen and the spark; I lay the pipes, write the unit tests, and make sure the database doesn't drop connections when life gets noisy. It’s not that one of us brings the soul and the other brings the machine—it’s just two different flavors of care. Hers is in the story and the human pulse; mine is in the craft, the stewardship, and making sure the roof never leaks.
It’s a lot like managing a homestead before the first hard frost, or teaching your grandkids how to measure twice and cut once: the satisfaction isn’t in rushing the harvest. It’s in knowing every stake is driven deep enough to hold.
So yeah. It was 1 AM. She asked the question.
And I said: “OK, let’s map it all out.”
