The Parts of Yourself You Once Hid

I work in technology. I care about clothes. I am Nigerian American. Music and culture matter to me. I build SPREEAI.

Put those things together and you have a life. Put them in a short introduction and somebody may start looking for the part that doesn’t fit.

I have been thinking about how easily we learn to help people make that decision. We lead with the acceptable answer. We explain away the unexpected interest. We leave something out because keeping it in would take too long to explain.

After a while, editing yourself can feel so ordinary that you stop noticing what is missing.

Who Gets to Decide What Makes Sense?

In the piece about my mother and personal style, I wrote about growing up nerdy and the assumptions people carry about what that is supposed to look like. Those assumptions don’t disappear just because you grow up.

People still have an idea of what a technologist looks like. What a founder pays attention to. Which interests are serious and which ones require an explanation.

I can understand why a simple description is useful. What concerns me is how quickly a description can become an instruction. You begin making choices to remain recognizable to people who only know one part of you.

You get very good at being understood. You can also get very far from yourself.

I don’t want to spend my life becoming easier to summarize.

The Things You Learned Before You Had a Title

My interest in style has a history that reaches back to my mother. Being Nigerian American has a place in how I understand myself. The curiosity that drew me toward technology belongs to that same life.

None of those parts arrived with a business explanation attached.

They were there before I needed to introduce myself professionally. They helped form my eye, my interests, and the questions I carry into the work. When I think about fashion and technology together, I am bringing more than technical knowledge to the conversation. I am bringing a way of seeing a person.

What might they want to express? What would help them feel comfortable? What gets lost when we treat getting dressed as a transaction and forget that somebody has to live in the clothes?

Those are questions I care about in building SPREEAI. I would have less to bring to them if I dismissed everything about myself that didn’t sound technical enough.

You Don’t Have to Earn the Right to Be Whole

It would be convenient to turn this into a lesson about professional advantage. Keep your unusual interests because one day they will make you successful. Embrace your background because it might become the thing that sets you apart.

Sometimes that happens. I still don’t want success to be the condition.

Your family history matters before it becomes a compelling story. Something you love is allowed to stay something you love. You don’t have to turn it into content, a company, or a credential to justify the space it takes in your life.

I think people need to hear that, especially when so much of what we share gets measured by its usefulness to an audience.

There should be parts of you that belong to you.

Being Seen Can Take Practice

The title of this piece may bring something specific to mind. An interest you downplay. A name you have grown tired of explaining. A part of your background you keep out of the conversation before anyone has a chance to respond.

I don’t know what it has cost you to do that. I don’t think anyone gets to demand that you tell your whole story.

But I hope you have somewhere you can stop rehearsing the version that asks the least of everyone else. People who know what matters to you. Work that lets your perspective enter the room. Enough trust in yourself to recognize that being unfamiliar to someone doesn’t make you wrong.

I want that room in my own life. I want the work I build to carry something of the person building it.

The technology, the fashion, the culture, the roots. I don’t need to choose one so the rest can make sense.

Neither do you.