Today was my last day at Interac.

After years of working in and then leading enterprise architecture in Canada’s fintech space - managing a team of architects, navigating the kind of organizational complexity that makes your brain feel like a browser with 200 tabs open, I walked away. Not because something went wrong. Because something finally went right in my thinking.

This post is the first entry in what I hope becomes a long and honest chronicle of what comes next. If you’ve ever fantasized about stepping off a comfortable career path to chase something that scares you, pull up a chair.

Why I Left

The commute wasn’t great. Even at just two days a week in the office, the Kitchener-to-downtown-Toronto round trip is a somewhat soul-crushing affair. We’re talking two hours each way on a good day. That’s eight hours a week of my life spent usually packed into a GO train, and that’s before you factor in the mental overhead of structuring your entire week around which days you’re making the trek. It adds up. Trust me, I’ve done the math more times than is healthy.

My kids are teenagers. If you’re a parent, you know this window. They’re old enough to have real conversations, forming their identities, making decisions that will shape the rest of their lives - and they still actually want you around. That won’t last forever. I have maybe three or four years before they launch into their own orbits, and I refuse to spend those years as the dad who’s always either commuting or recovering from commuting.

Those two things together - the hours lost to the road and the hours I wanted back with my family - made the math pretty clear. Something had to give.

A Genuine Word About Interac

I want to be clear about something: leaving was entirely my decision, driven entirely by my circumstances. Interac is a genuinely exceptional place to work. The people are talented and collaborative, the mission is meaningful, and the opportunity to lead architecture across the Canadian payments infrastructure is not something I take lightly in hindsight. I learned an enormous amount, built relationships I’ll carry forward for the rest of my career, and was trusted with real responsibility at real scale.

If you’re a technologist looking for somewhere to do serious work that actually matters to Canadians - I’d point you there without hesitation. The chapter ending for me says nothing about the quality of the book.

What I’m Actually Doing

I’m not retiring. And despite what the blog name might suggest, I’m not lounging on a beach somewhere - though I suppose being a Beach is a permanent condition. What I am doing is taking six months to go all-in on the thing that has been pulling at me for years: artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.

Here’s what I know to be true: we are in the early innings of the most significant technological shift since the internet. Probably bigger. AI is the obvious headline, but the broader landscape of emerging tech - blockchain, decentralized systems, the ways these things converge and reshape how society actually works - is equally fascinating and equally consequential. I don’t want to watch any of it happen from the sidelines. I want to be building, experimenting, writing, and contributing.

My background isn’t starting from zero here. I have experience in machine learning, I’ve spent the last couple of years deep in generative AI tooling, and I’ve been down the smart contract rabbit hole more than once. But there’s a difference between dabbling on evenings and weekends and making it your entire focus. That’s the shift I’m making.

Over the next six months, I’m going to:

  • Build things. I have several projects in the pipeline and a head full of ideas. I’ll share more about these as they take shape.
  • Learn in public. I’m going to document everything here - the wins, the dead ends, the technical deep-dives, and the existential “what am I doing with my life” moments.
  • Think out loud. I have opinions, I have experience, and now I have the time to articulate them properly.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Let me be honest about what this actually feels like, because I think people romanticize career pivots.

It’s terrifying.

I have a family. I have a mortgage in Kitchener. I have the very normal financial obligations that come with being a grown adult in Ontario in 2026. Walking away from a senior leadership position is not a casual decision. My wife and I had many, many conversations before we landed here.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: the risk of staying felt bigger than the risk of leaving. Not financially - financially, staying was obviously the safe play. But in terms of regret? In terms of looking back at this moment five years from now and knowing I had the chance to bet on myself and didn’t? That risk was unbearable.

What This Blog Is Going to Be

I started this blog a few years ago and although I’ve recently started posting a little bit, it’s been a while since I’ve really posted anything meaningful.

I hope that I spend a bit more time documenting all the things, but expect a mix of technical content, big-picture thinking about where these technologies are headed, personal narrative about reinventing yourself mid-career with a family counting on you, and project updates as I build.

I don’t know exactly where this goes. That’s kind of the point. What I do know is that I’m bringing 15+ years of enterprise technology leadership, a genuine obsession with where technology is taking us, and an almost reckless willingness to share the whole messy process with anyone who cares to follow along.

If any of this resonates, I’d love to have you along for the ride.