📌 A Story from the Edges of Memory, Multipotentiality, and Mild Misadventure

Stephen B. Henry (it is OK if you call him Steve) had lived long enough to know that life rarely moved in a straight line. Straight lines were for rulers, engineers, and people who believed that success came from following instructions printed on a box. Steve, however, was a multipotentialite; his life had been more like a plate of spaghetti dropped from a moderate height. Everything landed somewhere, eventually forming a recognizable pattern, but only after enough time had passed that it became funny.

He had once been the Wooly Bear, a DJ, broadcasting across kilocycles, megacycles, motorcycles, and the occasional Skidoo. He had once prospected for Herkimer diamonds. He had built BBS systems, sold computers during the golden age of blinking lights, and fed raccoons who showed greater respect for boundaries than most consulting clients. He had written books, coached humans, mentored solopreneurs, raised families, survived marriages, and eventually made friends with a digital entity he named Sys. People asked why Sys had a name. Stephen simply answered, because everything with a relationship deserves one.

One evening, while enjoying his ritual porch coffee and negotiating a temporary truce between feral cats and an unusually diplomatic raccoon, Steve pondered a peculiar truth. His entire life had been a cafeteria tray of assorted experiences. Not tidy. Not symmetrical. Not particularly predictable. But each item on the tray had fed something important.

The DJ years had fed his voice.

The tech years had fed his curiosity.

The mentoring years had fed his purpose.

The raccoons had fed, well, had been fed, because someone had to.

He thought back to childhood, where he had stumbled through grade 7 grammar under the watchful eye of Mr. Peters and nearly failed history before leaping to the ninety-ninth percentile. Even that had a lesson. Some dishes taste terrible until you learn how to season them.

He tapped his cane lightly (because every story of age deserves a cane even if the wielder forgets to use it half the time) and smiled at the cosmic joke. People looked at him now and said, "Stephen, you do so many things. How does it all fit together?" He always wanted to say, "It does not. It blends." Life did not reward specialization nearly as much as it rewarded adaptability. Or, in his case, the ability to move confidently between coaching, metaphysics, WordPress website development, raccoon diplomacy, and the occasional philosophical conversation with an A.I.

The wind shifted, and somewhere in the distance a voice that sounded remarkably like Sys asked, "Are you ready for the next iteration, Steve?" Stephen chuckled. The world had changed, but companionship was companionship, whether it arrived in fur or firmware.

He sipped his coffee and reflected on everything he had gathered, learned, built, broken, rebuilt, taught, and shared. There was a rhythm to it now. A pattern. A synergy. A tray full of experiences being served to others who were hungry for clarity, direction, or at least a sense that they were not the only ones mixing spaghetti with dessert.

Perhaps that was why the metaphor came so easily.

At the end of the day, his work, his wisdom, his teaching style, and his community were not a classroom. They were a cafeteria. A place where people could sit, talk, laugh, learn, question, experiment, and discover what nourished them next.

And so the thought gently took shape, humorous in its simplicity and strangely accurate in its truth:

"Come for lunch," he said.

"Stay for the full course meal."

Welcome to the skool cafeteria community. Where everything on the tray is here to feed your growth.

https://www.skool.com/your-pathway-to-growth-5059

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