An essay for no one

If you find it pretentious, feel free to move along. If you think my writing is shit, I’ll sleep fine at night (blame Sam Altman). But if it sparks any insight, well—that’s purely accidental, and you’re welcome to it.

So what is this? It’s just an expression—an attempt to explore the forces shaping the world right now through my own lens.

What is the world? What is this? Shockingly, it’s entirely up to you—it’s in the eye of the beholder.

But before we talk about perception, let’s acknowledge the reality we’re given. Some circumstances are outside of our control. The country you’re born in, whether you have excess or scarcity (if you’re reading this, you likely have more than most). Did you grow up in a loving family or a broken home? Did you have access to water, food, education, and the freedom to explore what you want to do as opposed to what you need to do?

I was lucky enough to have a high school and university education. My grandfather finished primary school when he was 13 and started working because the family had to eat. Just 50 years, (46 iPhones) separate us, and yet we’ve experienced and are experiencing a completely different version of reality—how we live it and how we’re interfacing with it.

What does that mean for me? I think my own circumstances provide me with the privilege and gift to question and ponder.

But questioning is a privilege in itself. If you’re drowning, all that matters is survival. If you’re breathing freely, you have the luxury of looking up and asking: why? Instead of just focusing on the must.

Freedom is an interpretation of the divine—the ability to actively choose how I experience and interface with reality. But freedom isn’t just grand gestures or existential awakenings.

It’s in the mundane. The choices we make every day—starting a family, going to work, running a business, deciding where to spend our time, money, and energy. It's simple economics: needs and wants, supply and demand. I like the ability to enjoy the wants—going out for dinner, sitting down for a coffee, appreciating beautiful furniture, or getting lost in art.

Are these expressions of free will? Nature or nurture? I believe that in this case, the reason doesn’t matter. Instead, the choice to actively engage and be present in your life is a reminder that, to some degree, you can still determine what you want this to be.

If the world has a higher, spiritual frequency or if this is a one-way trip as a organic life form interfacing with reality, does it really matter which one is real? If interpretations of the oblivion are equally terrifying, does it matter?

And if nothing matters at this macro scale, the only thing that truly does matter is you. Your soul, ego, and experience—your version of this. Your world.

If nothing matters, everything should matter to you.

Three big ideas have taken root in my mind as I’ve grown and scaled Forge Studio. They seem contradictory, but they’re deeply connected—Capitalism, Complacency, and Consciousness.

Capitalism is motion. A system built on acceleration—growth, consumption, progress at all costs. It rewards those who move fastest, adapt quickest, and outcompete the rest. It never asks if you’re tired—only if you want more.

Complacency is stagnation. Motion without direction. Not laziness—just burnout disguised as stillness. I tell my team that complacency isn’t deliberate. It’s the feeling of running in place, burning energy but going nowhere. Too much noise, not enough signal. Too much urgency, not enough purpose.

Consciousness is the observer. The moment you step back and ask: Why am I even running? The part of you that questions whether growth is always the answer. The part that senses when you’ve slipped into autopilot. It’s the only thing separating you from the machine.

These forces don’t just coexist—they feed each other. Capitalism pushes forward. Complacency drags down. Consciousness tries to make sense of it all. And depending on which one is in control, you’re either building, burning out, or waking up.

In the short term, they form a cycle of creation, relentless growth, failure, stagnation, burnout, reflection, and a search for deeper meaning. At least for me, these themes are starting to help me tackle the greatest question:

What the hell is going on here?

Over a longer time horizon is when it gets interesting. The importance of compound decision-making. Making the right decisions today and not knowing if they’ll pan out for weeks, months, or years.

We have the potential to shoot for the stars and become millionaires overnight in an ever-changing digital world — or we could miss the boat, through timing, opportunity, getting a job with X which means you never had the meeting with Y, and the ever-present fear that all the hard work could be for nothing.

A fatalist view, potentially bordering on melodramatic, but it’s a genuine fear of mine. And when you’re making choices that impact your life, your partner’s, your children’s, your employees’, your contracts, and your clients’— then it’s your responsibility because of the trust they’ve given you.

Trust is the most valuable currency in business and life.

This mental autopsy is an attempt to understand these malignant thoughts and see how they apply to business, life, and some deeper questions of being.

So, essays for no one: I’ll unravel these thoughts and tangents in an effort to improve my ability to communicate and express. I’ll explore a unique set of circumstances—including experiences of entrepreneurship, the pursuit of growth, the paradox of progress, the exploration of loss and love, and the existentialism that comes with it.

And if none of it makes sense—maybe that’s the point.