A Return to the Beginning

When I started writing in 2019, it was partly out of necessity. I’d accidentally written a book after the first time I was fired, and a publisher told me plainly: if you want anyone to read it, you need a social media following. Before that, I’d never posted, never cared, never been on any of it.

Now it’s a career. You open X or LinkedIn or whatever app you’re on, and what you find is a wall of influencers serving their own bias. Some you choose to follow. Some you ignore. Either way, we’ve become a peer-to-peer news world, and nobody appointed any of us. Myself included.

Back in 2019, I was writing that oil and gas companies were running their businesses incorrectly — that Tier 1 inventory was limited, that they were overcapitalized, and that they were still operating like it was 2014. The good part, not the crash part. I built a following because I was saying something people already knew but couldn’t say out loud. And I was punished for it. Career doors closed. Getting back into the industry after we sold OneEnergy was harder than it needed to be. That’s partly on others, but honestly, it’s mostly on me and my personality. I made myself a wildcard. I didn’t follow the rules. I said what I thought. I always had.

When you’re 24, that feels like integrity. When you get older, you realize you don’t have the luxury of saying whatever you want until you have enough money that you can — and by that point, you’re so addicted to making money that it’s very hard to remember why you said it in the first place. “F you” money, they say.

Then COVID came. And I watched another injustice unfold in real time: debt explosion, catastrophic medical decisions made by panicked institutions, schools shuttered, lives ruined, and the largest inflation event in a generation. This isn’t retroactive analysis. You can read the blog. It’s been up, unedited, for seven years.

I lost my sense of purpose somewhere in there. Was angry. Lost a lot of friends for saying the unpopular thing and now, occasionally people will say “I got that wrong.” The comment I appreciate more than anything is “Your writing made me feel like I wasn’t the only one who was crazy.”

I went to law school trying to find purpose again — hoping the intellectual stimulation and a new social network would fill the void left by what I think was a genuine commitment to honesty in a world that increasingly punishes it. I haven’t yet. The world doesn’t need me in law school.

I’ve written sporadically the last couple of years. Sometimes there’s nothing to add. Everyone’s already saying it. But I’ll say this.

As much as I support this administration — and I would never in 100 million years have voted for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris — I think it’s fair to say that the Trump administration has lost the narrative. Because, like me earlier in my career, they’re not listening to the people around them saying change course. They think they’re the smartest in the room. Sometimes they are. Mostly no one is.

And I have to win. I have to be right. I know that feeling. It’s a trap.

Look at what’s happening: Iran. The US economy. Housing. Equities. Tech. AI. Oil doesn’t get the respect it deserves — people have been deliberately trained to dismiss it — but make no mistake, oil runs the world. And when goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.

Whatever the true driver of this Iranian conflict — Israel’s influence, a genuine nuclear threat, geopolitical positioning — we have set off what was supposed to be a controlled burn. It is becoming the Palisades Fire. And no one is willing to step back, take the loss, and negotiate, because saving face has become more important than saving the situation.

Look at the full picture: Venezuela. Canada hit with tariffs to keep the oil coming. Russian barrels sanctioned, to end the war and get the barrels coming. Now Iran.

We have an energy independence problem. We are at peak oil, USA, I was 7 years early.

We have a global dominance problem. And we have a political standstill problem. We created it while telling ourselves we were solving it.

For a long time, President Trump has controlled the party through fear — where speaking out against a policy (not the man) becomes career suicide. I want to be clear: if I had a seat at dinner with Warren Buffett or Donald Trump, I’d probably take Trump. His wisdom, his instincts, his story — I’d be there. But wisdom requires the willingness to be wrong. And right now, no one in that room is willing to say it.

The world cannot handle $100 oil. It cannot handle $5,000 gold. It cannot handle $1.5M starter homes. It cannot handle an economy where kids graduate from college with credentials that lead nowhere. And maybe voices need to start being vocal.

All of it starts changing with real conversations. Get the Strait of Hormuz open. Make that the top priority — not threatening to destroy the infrastructure of 92 million people who didn’t choose this fight and don’t deserve what’s coming if we don’t change course.