Chapter 9: "The Beautiful War"
Chapter 9: "The Beautiful War"
I need to tell you something I haven't talked about much in our journey so far. Something that underlies everything—the Alaska patience, the calculated risks, the systems thinking, the comfort with solitude, the ability to find beauty in simple things.
Before I traded bullets for bluffs, before I learned to read poker tells and cultural signals, before I discovered that the best things in life aren't things—they're people and places—I worked as a military contractor in active war zones.
Running live missions in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan shapes you in ways that most civilians never experience. It teaches you about pressure, about making life-and-death decisions with incomplete information, about functioning when everything around you is chaos.
But most importantly, it teaches you that life itself is a battle—not against other people, but against complacency, against settling for less than you're capable of, against the human tendency to choose comfort over growth.
Contractor thinking isn't about aggression or violence. It's about clarity under pressure, preparation for uncertain outcomes, and the understanding that whether you're facing bullets or bluffs, clear thinking saves lives—your own and others'.
Every poker decision I've made, every travel risk I've calculated, every system I've built—they all trace back to lessons learned in war zones where mistakes had permanent consequences and success meant bringing everyone home alive.
Working in active war zones taught me that preparation isn't paranoia—it's respect for reality. That confidence comes not from feeling fearless, but from knowing you can function effectively even when you're afraid. That taking responsibility for mission outcomes means controlling what you can and adapting to what you can't.
When I sit at a poker table, I'm not just playing cards—I'm applying military-grade risk assessment, situational awareness, and decision-making under pressure. The stakes are lower, but the cognitive skills are identical.
When I travel to remote places like Fair Isle, I'm not being adventurous—I'm using military-developed capabilities for logistics planning, contingency thinking, and adaptability when plans change.
Military service taught me the most important lesson of all: You're already in the fight. Life is already happening to you. The only choice is whether you'll engage it with intention, skill, and honor.
The transition from running live missions in war zones to civilian life is often described as jarring, and it is. But for me, it wasn't about leaving something behind—it was about translating hard-earned skills into new contexts.
I'd learned to read battlefield situations, to assess threats and opportunities under extreme pressure, to make decisions with incomplete information when lives depended on getting it right. As a contractor in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, those skills weren't just helpful—they were essential for survival and mission success.
Poker became my first civilian battlefield. The environment was controlled, the stakes were manageable, but the cognitive demands were familiar: read the situation, assess probabilities, make optimal decisions under pressure, manage resources, adapt when circumstances change.
Other players saw gambling. I saw applied decision science. They saw cards and chips. I saw a training ground for the same mental skills that had kept me alive in much higher-stakes environments.
Travel became my second civilian battlefield—not against other people, but against my own limitations, my assumptions, my comfort zones. Every destination was a mission requiring planning, execution, adaptation, and after-action analysis.
Working in war zones had taught me that missions fail when you don't prepare for what could go wrong. But they also fail when you're so focused on avoiding failure that you miss opportunities for extraordinary success.
That Alaska king salmon I caught? That wasn't luck—that was military-trained patience, persistence, and the understanding that sometimes you have to stay in the fight longer than feels comfortable to achieve your objective.
Here's what I've learned about life, and why I call it a beautiful war: You're already all-in. Every day you wake up, you're committing your most valuable resources—your time, your attention, your energy—to something. The question isn't whether to engage. The question is whether you'll engage magnificently.
War gets a bad reputation because we think of it as destruction. But at its core, war is about commitment to something larger than yourself, about bringing everything you have to a cause that matters, about refusing to surrender when things get difficult.
The beautiful war isn't fought with weapons—it's fought with intention, with excellence, with the daily choice to show up fully for your own life.
It's beautiful because you get to choose your battles. You get to decide what's worth fighting for, what deserves your best effort, what causes are worthy of your limited time on this planet.
My beautiful war is fought at poker tables where I test my decision-making against uncertainty. It's fought in remote places where I test my adaptability against the unknown. It's fought in relationships where I test my capacity for genuine connection.
But mostly, it's fought in the daily choice to approach ordinary moments with extraordinary attention, to find meaning in simple experiences, to create beauty wherever I am instead of waiting for it to be provided.
What does it mean to play magnificently? It means bringing military-grade preparation to civilian adventures. It means applying Feynman-level thinking to everyday decisions. It means finding Fair Isle-quality presence in Norwegian house moments.
It means understanding that every experience—every poker hand, every travel destination, every relationship, every challenge—is an opportunity to test and refine your character.
The battlefield mindset never left me, but it evolved. Instead of fighting external enemies, I fight internal limitations. Instead of defending territory, I expand possibilities. Instead of surviving combat, I thrive in complexity.
Working in war zones taught me that honor isn't just about completing contracts—it's about holding yourself to standards that don't diminish when no one's watching, when the mission gets difficult, when easier options are available.
That's what travel became for me: a way to test those standards against new environments, new challenges, new opportunities to prove that character travels well, that excellence adapts to any context.
The beautiful war is fought one decision at a time, one day at a time, one experience at a time. It's fought with curiosity instead of anger, with systems instead of hope, with presence instead of distraction.
So why share this with you? Because I want you to understand that everything we've talked about—the scientific thinking, the calculated risks, the systems over luck, the finding beauty in simple things—all of it comes from understanding that life is precious precisely because it's challenging.
The beautiful war isn't something you win and then retire from. It's something you commit to fighting every day, with honor and skill and appreciation for the privilege of being in the battle at all.
The war zone contracts ended, but the mission continues. Now it's a mission of being fully alive, fully present, fully committed to extracting every bit of meaning and beauty and connection from whatever time I have.
Whether facing bullets or bluffs, ancient fjords or Norwegian houses, 110 days at sea or one perfect moment of clarity—the approach is the same: Show up fully. Engage completely. Fight beautifully.
In our final section, we'll explore what happens when all this experience, all this preparation, all this beautiful fighting, finally brings you back to where you started—but as a completely different person.
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"You're already all-in on life—the only question is whether you'll play the most magnificent hand possible."
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