What I Do

Answering the wrong question.

Tampa, FL

September 1, 2025

Labor Day is an apt time to consider a common question. It comes up often, especially at social events where strangers mingle and introductions are made. It also arises, as it has this weekend, among old friends I haven’t seen for years.

At happy hours, cocktail receptions, or dinner parties, after the obligatory handshakes and exchange of names, it’s inevitably asked:

“What do you do?”

For four decades, here are some of the ways I’ve responded.

Earth and Water

I began my career as a civil engineer. I’m still licensed in three states, including California. After graduating from Georgia Tech, that’s where I went.

I started in Sacramento, then settled in San Francisco. My areas of expertise were transportation systems, structural design, and geotechnical engineering.

For this type work, there were few places better than the Golden Gate Bridge. So, after a brief detour to Philadelphia (where I met my wife), that’s where I went.

In the wake of the ‘89 earthquake, plans were made to replace the roadway and reinforce the structure.

That quake disrupted the World Series and killed 63 people, yet spared the span. But another 1906-type temblor risked leaving much of it in shambles.

For several years I helped retrofit the structure. My efforts concentrated on the south anchorage beside Fort Point. We evaluated and strengthened the soil to support new rock anchors below the abutment.

I spent as much time on the bay as under the earth. The Golden Gate Bridge is managed by The Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, which oversees a fleet of ferries and buses connecting San Francisco with counties north of the bridge.

In addition to reinforcing the famous structure, I helped design ferry terminals and fuel systems, and oversaw dredging projects on San Francisco Bay. Occasionally, more disturbing objects were pulled from the water.

Once, when measuring salination effects at the base of the south tower, I found a body bobbing in the moat… one of more than two thousand suicides who’ve leapt from life off the side of the span (the thousandth death occurred while I was there).

Forbidden Recipe

By night, I decided to broaden my horizons. I pursued an MBA at the University of San Francisco. While there, the Chair of the Economics department asked me to help teach the dismal science to Executive MBA students. The courses were twice a week on the Stanford campus.

Those nights, I made the round-trip trek down the peninsula. I’d already discovered Austrian economics, with which I’d season the Keynesian dish I was compelled to serve. The diners found those asides appetizing, tho’ I had to remind them not to divulge the forbidden recipe on the tests.

My professor encouraged me to pursue a PhD, which I decided not to do. Instead, I accepted an offer to return to Georgia Tech. My alma mater offered an assistantship as I earned my MBA.

I simultaneously completed requirements for a Masters of Economics. But Tech wouldn’t allow me to apply one class to two degrees. I had to pick, so I chose the MBA because it seemed more “practical”.

I also dabbled in Architecture courses, doubtless the only MBA student to take such electives. I loved it, and wrote several papers on the subject (including this one).

But I was eager to escape school. My affection for history and architecture would remain a hobby. But my knack for economics would be put to work.

Racing Rats

For a quarter century at several global corporations, I oversaw pricing strategy, revenue analytics, and other growth initiatives to “optimize” supply and amplify demand.

I helped guide an international airline after 9/11, a global soft drink provider thru the Great Recession, and a credit bureau during a data breach. It was a good run thru some tough times.

But after so many years in the race, I fell into a rut and grew tired of racing rats. Things turned dull… till corporate lunacy ended the tedium.

My last stop was one of the “Fortune 15” global drug distributors, leading one of their Revenue Management groups. This is where I worked when covid was uncorked and hypochondria ran wild.

As at most corporations, “diversity” diktats compounded covid hysteria. HR apparatchiks quarantined healthy employees at home, sheathed the faces of anyone in the office, ostracized anyone who shunned the “woke” religion, and fired dissidents who failed a drug test by not taking the drug.

Because I refused to get with the program, the company wanted me to go away. They paid me to leave, which provided cushion to decompress and catch my breath.

But I also needed ways to fill my time. For me that’s easy. So long as I have a book, a candle, a kettle of coffee, and a carafe of wine, I’m fine.

I spend several hours managing money and authoring these articles. Sounds like one of those “careers” concocted to disguise or embellish unexpected unemployment.

Sort of.

But it’s also how I can afford it. For thirty-five years my job was to make money. Now it’s to multiply it. The best way to do that is to not lose it. Floating high on a flood of faux credit, current markets make that easy to do.

As precaution, I’ve spent several years hauling our assets to higher ground. Our largest holdings are precious metals. We also own some stocks, primarily in companies that seek, extract, or ship natural resources.

Mouthing Off

As these investments quietly compound (in one direction or the other), I generate most of my income selling options and penning these epistles. I never expected as many readers as I have today, nor that anyone would be kind enough to pay for what I write (tho’ I’m grateful to all who do).

These essays started years ago as something of a diary… family updates, travel journals, book reviews, passing thoughts. I intentionally avoided anything controversial. Not till covid, Jacobin uprisings, and “mostly peaceful protests” did I use them to mouth-off about current events.

I was initially reluctant to publish my opinions. But like sampling a bag of chips, after the first foray I couldn’t stop myself. How could I stay silent during such outrageous overreach?

Our way of life was under assault. I couldn’t keep quiet. Even if no one read what I wrote (and few did), I wanted my opinions posted for future reference.

The future arrived fast. My company took notice. When it did, I expected to be fired.

I was right.

To some extent, I was relieved. When they offered me options to stick around, the thought of staying seemed repulsive.

There’s something immoral about abandoning your own judgment. Yet that was the condition to keep my job. I could keep cashing a check only if I discarded my conscience.

I couldn’t do it.

Having put myself in position where I didn’t have to, why would I? I didn’t have what most people think of as “F-U” money. But I had more than enough to reject “F-Me” money.

What type person (who can afford not to) remains among people who pay him only if he bows to their beliefs while betraying his own? Who would I be if that’s what I’d done?

Concentric Circles

I’m glad I never found out. But who am I now? That question rarely arises at cocktail parties.

I’m proud of my professional accomplishments. But most of them aren’t unique. Had I not existed, someone else could’ve done them. Many have.

But why? Are our ends worthy of the means we employ? What concentric circles do we want to create? Will they cause ripples or make waves? Is our pond improved because we wade in?

At some point we won’t be able to. Dave Collum notes that we each die twice: Initially at our earthly demise; and finally after the last time anyone utters our name. For many of us, those events occur at the same time.

We’re often asked what we do. Yet few wonder who we are. All too often (as a great new book emphasizes) that includes ourselves. But that’s ultimately all that matters.

Thru these missives I’ve met dozens of successful, interesting, and philosophically-sound friends around the world.

When we meet people, does it really matter how they make money (or whether they do)? Or would we rather know they’re respectful and respectable, honest and dependable, considerate and courageous, temperate and thoughtful, charitable and just?

More important, shouldn’t we want that to be the type person new acquaintances encounter when they shake our hand? As this long weekend winds down, we lament there’s no holiday honoring such a pursuit.

JD