About
I’m still figuring things out.
I enjoy being alive. I care about people. I take my health seriously. Faith matters to me. I like my work, but it isn’t the whole of who I am.
Today
I like a good ordinary day. Work that is useful. Time with my wife. Two dogs who think they run the house — Bramlet and Xena. A walk. A meal. A little humor when the day needs it.
I would rather live the life I have than wait around for a more official version of myself to arrive. That does not mean I have it figured out. It means I would rather practice living than keep postponing it.
What shaped me
Years ago, cancer walked into a year I had not planned. It changed how I understood time. Days got more specific. Gratitude stopped being a nice idea. Faith was something to lean on when the future felt too loud and the past felt too heavy.
I don’t treat that chapter as my identity. I am not “Stan Hartke, cancer survivor” first. I went through something that rearranged my priorities, then I had to keep living after the rearrangement.
In a grocery store checkout line during that season, a small sign said: Cherish yesterday. Dream of tomorrow. Live today. I didn’t walk past it. A lot of the years since have been me trying to understand why those words landed, and how to keep returning to them.
What I made from it
Project Continuum is the public form of that work. Remembering who I have been. Living the day that is actually here. Becoming, in small ways, the person I hope to practice being. The book carries the longer conversation. The practice on this site is meant to stay small and private.
I also changed my body later, on purpose, over time. That story has its own page because the photographs are easy to misread. I am not handing anyone a program.
Faith
God matters to me. Faith shapes how I understand gratitude, mortality, purpose, and peace. This site is not a pulpit. If you share my faith, you will recognize it. If you don’t, you are still welcome here.
This is simply how I make sense of a life that has included both ordinary joy and serious interruption.
Work
I have spent about twenty-five years in real estate. My current role is Director of MLS Strategic Initiatives. Most of the work sits where real estate, MLS systems, technology, data, organizations, and people meet — usually in the middle of some kind of change that has to actually get implemented.
It is real work and I take it seriously. It is not the front door of this site. If you want the longer professional picture, it is on LinkedIn.
