There's a moment every morning - around 6:30, after Holy Hour, second mug of coffee in hand - when I ask myself: "Which hat am I wearing right now?"

I have about an hour before I take Andrew to school and launch into my day job. That 6:30-7:40 window is precious Domus time. But to get there, I've had to discipline myself: no phone, no email, no peeking at anything as I brew the coffee and get ready to go downstairs to the chapel. God first. Listen first.

Only after that hour with the Lord do I pick up the work. And then the question: which hat?

It's not a metaphor. It's a discipline.

Because when you're building something from scratch, every moment presents the opportunity to think through a dozen different lenses. And if you try to wear all the hats at once, you end up wearing none of them well.

Here's what I mean. In any given hour, I could be:

The Visionary - dreaming about where Domus Formation could be in five years, how the ecosystem could serve the domestic church across generations, what new properties might emerge.

The CEO - making decisions about priorities, saying no to good ideas so I can say yes to the right ones, holding the whole picture.

The COO - setting up legal structures, managing operations, making sure the trains run on time.

The Product Manager - defining what each property actually does, what features matter, what the user experience should feel like.

The Product Marketer - figuring out how to talk about what we're building, who it's for, why it matters.

The Engineer - actually building the thing, writing code, fixing bugs, testing functionality.

The Content Creator - writing the daily formation content that is the whole point of everything else.

The Business Development & Sales Lead - starting the outreach to other deacons, to parishes, to dioceses. Building relationships that might bear fruit months from now.

Every single one of these roles matters. Every single one of them could consume an entire day. And every single one of them requires a different kind of thinking.

Here's what I'm learning: the discipline isn't in doing all of them. It's in knowing which one I'm doing RIGHT NOW.

When I sit down to write formation content, I can't be thinking about the legal structure. When I'm debugging a feature, I can't be dreaming about year five. When I'm making a CEO decision about priorities, I can't get lost in the weeds of product details.

The temptation is to let every role bleed into every moment. To check email while writing. To think about marketing while coding. To let the visionary interrupt the operator.

But that's how you go 1,000 directions and arrive nowhere.

So I've started being intentional about naming it. Sometimes out loud: "Right now I'm the Content Creator. That's the only hat on my head for the next two hours."

It sounds simple. It's not. But it's helping.

The other thing I'm learning is respect.

I've worked with people in all of these roles over the years. Friends who became product managers. Colleagues who moved into marketing. Engineers I've collaborated with. Leaders I've watched make hard CEO decisions.

I thought I understood what they did.

I didn't.

There's a difference between understanding a role conceptually and actually inhabiting it - feeling the weight of its decisions, the particular way it requires you to think, the trade-offs only visible from inside that chair.

Building Domus has given me a new appreciation for every person I've ever worked with. They weren't just "doing their job." They were carrying something. They were making judgment calls I never saw. They were protecting priorities I didn't know needed protecting.

If you work with people in roles different from yours, take a moment to respect what they're actually carrying. It's more than it looks like from the outside.

But here's the thing that makes this sustainable - and I don't think I could do it without this:

Everything goes to Holy Hour.

The visionary dreams. The CEO decisions. The product questions. The marketing struggles. The code that won't work. The content that won't come.

All of it.

I've added a Prayer to the Sacred Heart to my daily prayers - because Domus is consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and I need that anchor every single day. When I'm switching hats, when I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of roles this season requires, when I'm not sure which lens to look through next - I need to remember whose work this actually is.

It's not mine. I'm just the one wearing the hats right now.

The Sacred Heart holds all of it. The vision and the operations. The dreams and the debugging. The strategy and the sentences.

That's what keeps me from drowning in the chaos. Not better productivity systems (though those help). Not more discipline (though that helps too). But the daily, repeated act of laying it all down and picking it back up as gift.

I don't know how long this season of wearing every hat will last. Maybe someday there will be others to share the load. Maybe some of these roles will simplify or consolidate. Maybe I'll get better at switching between them.

But right now, this is the work. And I'm grateful for it.

Grateful for the chance to build something that matters.

Grateful for the roles that are stretching me.

Grateful for the Holy Hour that holds it all together.

And grateful for you - for following along, for praying, for being part of what we're building.

One hat at a time.

If this resonated with you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it.