The Goldilocks Journey: Free Preview Chapters

What if career disruption isn't failure—it's compression?

After five layoffs in nine years, I discovered something unexpected: pattern recognition accelerates through repetition. What took twelve months to process after the first layoff compressed to weeks by the fifth. Not because I got tougher, but because I learned to see the edges approaching.

This preview includes two chapters from The Goldilocks Journey, publishing September 2026:

Chapter 1: Reading the Room traces how pattern recognition develops. From a 10-year-old kid with a vacuum trying to ease his nurse mother's burden, through navigating cultural hierarchies in Japan, to reading organizational gaps that led to VP roles. The skill that helped me survive also set up every failure that followed.

Chapter 3: Career - The Goldilocks Trap of Identity Fusion explores why some work configurations last decades while others collapse in months. It introduces the three-component sustainability formula I wish I'd understood 30 years ago, plus the portfolio approach I'm testing now that separates economic engine from identity source.

This isn't a career success story. It's documentation of how recognition compresses when you're paying attention. And why compression isn't the same as elimination. I'm 56, working retail while writing this book, still testing whether faster pattern recognition eventually translates to different choices.

Who this serves: People navigating multiple career disruptions. Mid-career professionals whose industries shifted beneath them. Anyone exhausted by advice that assumes stable employment still exists. Readers willing to sit with complexity rather than reach for simple formulas.

What you won't find here: Transformation promises. Expert positioning. Neat resolutions. Advice that ignores structural constraints or pretends everyone has equal options.

September 2026 launch. Submit your email to get the preview now and notification when the full book releases.

The ground beneath workers keeps shifting. Pattern recognition matters more than ever. Not because it prevents disruption, but because it compresses recovery time. These two chapters show how that compression works.