About

I’m Jay McBride. I’m in my 40s. I live in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario — a small city in Northern Ontario that most people drive through on their way somewhere else.

I work in technology. I’ve worked in technology for most of my adult life. But this site isn’t about that.

This site exists because I hit a point where I didn’t recognize myself anymore.

Not in a dramatic way. Not a breakdown. More like looking up one day and realizing that the person I’d been presenting to the world — online, at work, even at home — didn’t quite match the person I actually was. And I wasn’t sure when that had happened.

I’d spent years doing what the internet rewards. Reinventing. Pivoting. Trying new angles. Building something, scrapping it, starting over. Every time it felt like progress. Every time it felt like I was getting closer to something.

I wasn’t.

I was just moving. And movement isn’t the same thing as direction.

So I started writing about it.

Not advice. I don’t have a framework for this. I’m not on the other side of it, looking back with clarity. I’m in it.

I write about identity — what it means to lose a sense of self slowly, through years of reasonable decisions. I write about stability — why staying still feels harder than reinventing, and why it might be the thing that actually matters. I write about recognition — the difference between being noticed and being remembered, and why most people (including me) have been optimizing for the wrong one.

The phrase “Build for Recognition” started as something I was saying to myself. A reminder to stop chasing attention. To stop performing. To stay in one place long enough for something real to form.

It’s not a brand. It’s not a product. It’s just the idea I keep returning to.

I don’t have all of this figured out. That’s the point.

If I waited until I had answers, I’d never write anything. The writing is how I think. The posts are how I process what I’m noticing. And if other people see themselves in it — people who feel like they’ve been drifting, performing, reinventing without arriving anywhere — then the work is doing what it’s supposed to do.

If you want to follow along, the blog is where the thinking lives. And if you want new posts when they’re ready, you can subscribe to the newsletter on LinkedIn.

That’s it. That’s what this is.

— Jay