I wanted to be a spy.

Believe it or not, I came thiiiis close.

When I went to college I expected I’d take a job at a three-letter agency in Northern Virginia. I worked hard, got good grades. I even won a scholarship to study Arabic in the Middle East.

I applied and started the recruitment process but I never got in. Instead I spent the first few years of my career doing a random assortment of intelligence-adjacent jobs.

I monitored Arabic social media looking for information about the war in Syria. This may or may not have entailed messaging members of ISIS.

I helped manage a $10 million counter nuclear smuggling program in the Middle East. There’s not much I can say about that job.

And I worked on a program that sold weapons to foreign countries

On paper all of these jobs sound really cool. In practice, I was just another butt in a chair in a poorly lit office somewhere in Washington, DC. It was spiritually draining. By 2019, I called it quits and headed back home to start anew…

Then COVID happened.

Returning to my childhood bedroom indefinitely wasn’t part of my plan. Neither was sharing a home with four other grown adults.

I needed to go somewhere and do something. By this point I was several years deep into the tiny house movement. I knew I couldn’t afford one of those swanky build outs like you see on Instagram. So I thought of the next best thing I had: my 2014 Subaru Outback.

At the end of 2020, I packed up my car and hit the road. I headed south and spent the good part of the next year driving around the country.

I had found a new job back home but thanks to COVID, it didn’t quite pan out. At this point I hadn’t quite gotten to a place where I could support myself with writing either. So I got creative. During the COVID years I took on the wildest assortment of jobs you could imagine.

My main hustle was flipping books on Amazon and eBay.

I’d start in the morning when Goodwill opened up. I’d find books I could resell to fill up a box I bought at Lowe’s. I’d go to Panera Bread in the afternoon to scan them into my Amazon Seller account. And by dinner time, I’d have that box ready to ship at the local Office Depot.

I eventually landed in Jackson, Wyoming. I spent the summer chasing hot air balloons, slinging espresso shots, and sorting recycling at the local waste center.

These days I write.

I think we’re in the midst of one of the most profound transformations in human history.

I think it’s so big, it’s going to change everything — from how we’re governed to how our society is structured.

More importantly, I think this change is going to usher in a post-capitalist economic order that will radically transform every facet of our individual existence.

To get a better understanding of what’s going on, I’m studying philosophy, history, and economic thought and publishing my thoughts online.

You can find my work on Substack. Subscribe to receive new essays when they’re published.