Day 0

Monday, I join the team at One Ocean Diving.

And the calendar is doing something strange about it. This Sunday, my last day before Day 1, I turn exactly 34 years and 47 weeks old. To the day, zero remainder. Next Saturday, the day I sit down with the founders for the first time, I turn exactly 1,822 weeks old. Zero remainder, twice in one week. I’m a systems guy. I checked the math three times.

I grew up scared of sharks. In Dayton, Ohio, about as far from the ocean as you can get, my father Gerald and I lived on the Discovery Channel, and every year, Shark Week. Sharks were his greatest fear. But he taught me to wear what scares you like a badge of courage. It isn’t what happens to you that defines you. It’s how you respond.

So I joined the Navy and lived on a warship, where checklists keep people alive. Went to Berklee and learned to build songs. Landed in Honolulu building AI systems for small businesses, learning that the right tools give people their time back. None of it looked like a straight line. Turns out it was.

This didn’t start with a job posting. It started in the water. I got in with the sharks, straight at my family’s greatest fear, and the first time one came close, my whole body told me to bolt. And I did. I swam away as fast as I could. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But that fear flipped into something I couldn’t walk away from. So I started giving back: beach cleanups, hauling line and debris off the North Shore. And the more I gave the ocean, the more I understood what we stand to lose.

That’s where the name comes from. SharkChase cuts both ways: the shark closing the distance, and the fear you keep swimming away from. I haven’t beaten mine yet, but I keep getting back in. (It helps that my name is Chase, and I’ve built everything under PaperChase. The brand flipped itself.)

One Ocean Diving: marine scientists who swim with sharks every day, cage-free, who helped get shark killing banned in Hawaiian waters. I’m there to build the systems behind the mission, so the people who belong in the water spend more time in it.

12,746 days to get here. Day 1 is Monday.

For my father, Gerald.

Turn and face it.