How a Lifetime of Structure, Service, and Self-Discipline Became a System for Peace

I didn’t realize how much of my life had been defined by structure until I started looking back at it through the lens of Emotional Infrastructure.
For me, structure has always been more than organization — it’s been a form of survival, a way of creating peace when the world feels unpredictable.

The first place I ever saw real structure in action wasn’t the military. It was at a Domino’s Pizza when I was sixteen years old.

I remember standing behind that prep line, watching ten people move like one organism — tossing dough, spreading sauce, sliding pies into ovens, calling out delivery times. Within an hour, more than a hundred pizzas were boxed, labeled, and out the door. There was a rhythm to it. A flow. A genius that lived inside that system.

When I was promoted to assistant manager at seventeen, I realized that structure could create not just speed, but excellence. Our store doubled its net profit in six months, and I was hooked. That job taught me that good systems make good people better. They remove confusion, reduce stress, and make teamwork possible.

That experience gave me a hunger for order — the kind of predictable, functional environment that didn’t exist in my childhood. I didn’t know it yet, but that craving for structure would become the backbone of everything I built later: Recovery Architecture, BuildingBlocs, and Emotional Infrastructure itself.

Read on: The Martial Art of Emotional Infrastructure