I’m Joe Cox. I live in Tennessee with my wife Beckie, our kids, and our dog Lucy, who we all love just a little too much.

I founded Pinnacle IT in 2021. Most days I’m a cybersecurity and systems engineer — the kind of work where uptime, identity, and a hardened Microsoft 365 tenant are the difference between a good week and a terrible one. I like this work. I’m good at it. But it’s not the first thing I’d talk about if we sat down together for coffee… and yes, of course there would be coffee.

What I’d tell you first is that I believe Jesus is the savior of the world and He’s coming again. I’d tell you I’m a Bible student, a husband, and a dad — roughly in that order of how much they’ve shaped me. Everything else grows out of those.

Why this space exists

I’m writing because I’m worried about people.

Most of us have been taught — explicitly or not — that our worth tracks with our usefulness to some organization. That was already a bad deal. With AI arriving in earnest, it’s about to become a much worse one. The things a lot of us draw meaning from are about to be done faster and cheaper by a machine. If your identity is downstream of your output, you’re in trouble.

I know because I lived it. My career was my whole existence for a long stretch, and my sense of self rode on what other people thought of my work. That was pre-AI. It didn’t end well for me then. It will end much worse for people still stuck in that pattern now.

So here’s were you’ve landed- the place where I work out loud on the alternative: figuring out who we are, what actually matters, and where we’re going. When you know those three, you know what to do today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life.

What I write about

My life lives in four domains, and this site lives where they collide:

  • Technology — AI, cybersecurity, Microsoft 365 security, how to think about systems that are changing under our feet.
  • Music — I play piano. Some of what ends up here is about that, and about why it matters that humans keep making things.
  • Personal development — faith, entrepreneurship, mindset. The stuff that holds a person together when the ground shifts.
  • Family — the most important domain, and the one I’m least interested in turning into content. But it’s the lens behind everything else.

What you’ll find here

Essays, notes, and half-finished thoughts. I try to write like a person talking to another person, not like an expert lecturing an audience. I’m not trying to convince you I have it figured out. I’m trying to share what I’m learning while I’m still learning it — and hoping some of it helps.

My three main pushes

If you read enough of what I write, these will keep showing up:

  1. Everyone on planet earth needs Jesus Christ, and He is available.
  2. Everyone on planet earth has purpose and meaning.
  3. Everyone on planet earth can find their calling and architect their own destiny.

That’s it. Glad you’re here.

— Joe