Misaligned
Right Subject, Wrong Adjective, Disastrous Result
A sea of shifting maps, one compass needle holding its direction.
Navigating the gap between intention and outcome.
Misaligned begins with a personal diagnosis received late in life and follows its implications outward: through a first marriage that ended in miscommunication rather than malice, through a career built on containment, and through the slow recognition that many strengths become liabilities when context changes. The book treats the gap between internal experience and external expectation as a structural problem, not a personal failure.
The chapters examine what happens when the wrong map is applied with discipline: a Stoic temperament that preserves stability at the cost of intimacy; an executive function that succeeds professionally while eroding relationally; a pattern of self-management that outlasts its usefulness. The analysis is unsentimental. It does not blame the map or the mapper. It examines the collision.
Written for readers who have performed well and still found themselves at a loss, Misaligned offers a framework for recognizing when alignment itself becomes the problem — and for rebuilding with different assumptions. The final argument is not repair but agency: the capacity to choose what to preserve, what to release, and what to construct differently.