This Must Be The Place

An Unexpected Detour

I wasn't expecting to publish a web site, come up with a name for a consulting company, or even go into business for myself at any point. Freelancer, solo entrepreneur, contract worker -- whatever you want to call it, I knew that life from my parents going through it and it was the last thing I wanted.

Funny thing about that! Sometimes the thing you want to avoid will come for you anyway, and we all have to adjust and be brave enough to try something different.

I got laid off from my public relations job toward the end of June 2025, and I was feeling really confident I'd nail the next gig down quickly despite all the warnings I'd read and absorbed about layoffs in tech and people spending the better part of a year or more looking for employment. I met new connections, thought about what I wanted to do, and interviewed a lot. It was a great experience, but didn't lead to an actual offer. I also took the opportunity to handle more aspects of my home and family life, realizing I wanted to ensure I could still show up as a partner and parent in a healthy, connected way.

So toward the end of 2025, I accepted the best way forward was just to try being out there on my own. I had a former colleague from a Portland TV station who offered me a part-time gig with her podcast, then started reaching out to connections and offering my services. When I started accepting more projects, I knew I needed to at least have a presence online, an entity, and an identity for what I offer.

Why "Cohesion"?

When I think about any type of storytelling -- journalism, communications, what have you -- so much of success is defined by how well all the people contributing to a project get each other and behind the idea everyone wants to put out into the world. It requires alignment, understanding, clarity, and unity.

Cohesion is defined as "the act or state of sticking together tightly". It's closely related to two other nouns: coherence and cohesiveness. If your audience can't lock on to the idea behind your project, campaign, article, video, or product launch, it's incoherent. If your teammates and stakeholders aren't aligned and up to speed on the needs, goals, and narratives driving your projects, they have less of a reason to pull together to make it happen due to the lack of a cohesive strategy and tactics.

Cohesion is crucial to success in any kind of enterprise. Most of what I have done over my years in the workforce is about making elements of storytelling link up in a natural way (in local TV news, we called this "flow" when building a newscast), telling stories in ways that make them relevant, ensuring everyone working on a project is on the same page, and keeping an eye on the small details that make or break the whole thing. It's all about cohesion.

("Cohesion" also happens to be the title of an instrumental song by the iconic punk band Minutemen, which satisfies my music geekery to no end. See the Talking Heads reference in the title of this post and the blog itself taking its name from a Teenage Fanclub song.)

If this resonates with you and your project needs, maybe I can help you.