The short version? Marine. Writer. Dad. Copy guy who lost the plot and decided to rewrite it.
The long version? Depends how much bullshit you can handle.
If life’s a story, mine wasn’t outlined. It was scratched into broken bottles and voice notes I forgot to delete.
I’ve fucked up more things than I’ve fixed. Burned bridges. Burned the blueprints.
One day I’m making her laugh.
The next, I’m wondering if the Glock is still loaded.
I didn’t get here clean. But I’m still here.
And now I write the kind of stories you can’t unread.
I grew up Greek—work like a mule, eat like it’s your last meal, party like shame doesn’t exist.
The world screamed, Be a man.
So I did what a lot of broken boys do: I joined the Marines.
Swapped daddy issues for desert ops.
Learned real quick that nothing says masculinity like getting shot at by people you’ve never met… in a country you couldn’t pronounce
Boot camp was Disneyland compared to what came next.
Iraq? An all-expenses-paid trip to hell—complete with a front-row seat to my best friend’s final exit.
That’s when I learned my real talents: spiraling, self-destruction, and making peace with every substance I could swallow or shoot.
The Corps, in its infinite wisdom, kept me around.
I climbed the ranks hoarding life lessons and PTSD like war was going out of style.
Went from sandbox firefights to FBI liaisons and Top Secret clearances. Cool title. Shaky hands.
Combat became routine.
My passport started to look like a disaster tour—40 countries and counting.
Somewhere between the bullets and the blackout nights, I had an epiphany:
maybe this whole thing is just a cosmic shitshow and we’re all pretending we know the script.
Ten years in, more medals than brain cells left, I finally hung it up.
The uniform came off.
The baggage didn’t.
Life became a checklist.
Marriage. Fatherhood. Fitness. Degrees. All just boxes I thought I was supposed to tick.
Why?
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I just knew standing still felt worse.
Depression moved in.
Guilt stocked the fridge.
And I kept smiling in group photos, hoping no one would notice the crack behind my teeth.
Eventually, even the most committed train wreck runs out of track.
I sobered up.
Swapped the bottle for a yoga mat.
Started putting the pain down on paper—just to see if it would leave my body.
Turns out, my words were messier than I was. But at least they didn’t lie.
Then this Marine-turned-business guy read one of my rants and said,
“You ever think about selling this shit?”
So I did. Not because I wanted to be a writer.
But because it was the first time writing it felt like something more than collapse.
SEO, newsletters, click funnels. I learned the rules. Learned how to make pain marketable.
Self-help. Copy. Ghostwriting. All of it.
Each piece was another slice of the same broken story.
And people ate it up.
Apparently there’s a market for emotional honesty—as long as it’s well edited.
Who knew?
I’m not here to be a brand.
I’m not trying to save anyone.
I write because I have to.
Because the words keep me honest.
If you’re still here, maybe you’re chasing the same thing.