New day new step
(if you read this previously, please note it's been fixed up - didn't realize it was a shit show editing job).
According the Financial Times, 16% of people picked a book or magazine to read leisurely last 16. 10 years ago it was 28%. Over the last 20 years, it has fallen by 40%. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a real ‘sky is falling’ statistic. Reading is knowledge, reading is empathy, reading is perspective, and reading is power. By reading, you can walk in another’s shoes, you can witness communication, articulation. It builds attention spans and imagination. It’s the wonderment of words.
The rise of social media snippets and the decline in reading means many things, most of the negative; however, it provides an open lane for the young person who does continue the tradition of reading - an easy lane, like showing up on time for work, like putting your phone away while you are at work - it’s an easy lane to gain an advantage.
One thing I’ve always done in my 25 years leading Catskill Farms, and while I can’t remember I’m sure it’s a habit before that - regardless of the situation- I get up and go to work, fulfill commitments, keep on track. What my family is going through currently is just a more significant trauma than hundreds before it, where you get knocked down and you get to decide how to react. I've trained myself to get up and do hard things - it's a muscle, that first needs to be developed, then maintained.
Times like these are where excuses are made - why you can’t pay a bill, why you can’t take a meeting, why you can’t exercise good judgment. Or they are times where you muster the mustard to to take that step forward. The setbacks are endless and continuous, and if you aren’t experiencing them, you aren’t really pushing the limits of what’s possible.
Lulu doesn't 'need' luxury, but she won't pass it up either. In that regard she's a lot like Lucas. Knows comfort when he sees it.
So I’m proud of my son for getting up each day, on time, before the alarm, and getting himself to football and other scheduled events. The day after the death - literally 15 hours later - he pulled himself together and drove to football practice. He argues with me a lot, and sure he is repudiating and rejecting each and everything I’m telling him, but I model good consistent behavior, and he copies it. Parenting is caught not taught, they say, and I’m seeing that first-hand, across the board (except for reading). Both the good and the bad.
For me, the day after the death, I put in a 15 hour old school workday - up at 4:30am, home by 7, and checking progress and emails until I went to sleep. That was more of a ‘keep busy’ type of thing, but even the days following, as the reality crept in and lingered and was there each morning, you go to work. You focus your mind. You take care of business.
MiniBarn run as an Airbnb, very dog friendly.
I think the last post I talked about ramping up the construction schedule of Catskill Farms, and chasing down a bunch of building opportunities and I might have mentioned how much I must have let go through my fingers over the last 12 months, since as soon as I closed up my finger netting, I was catching a lot of fish to feed the large dependent Catskill Farms family. It’s cool, 25 years in, to be able see the ebbs and flows of what I’ve built with a more cool-hand and light touch. Because even what I don’t know poses little risk anymore, since I always have an idea of who to talk to about possible paths to resolution - I have the luxury of time to problem-solve, and I have a steady team to problem-solve, and I have the money to problem-solve. Tackle what I tackled for the last 2.5 decades without those above 3 things in your corner, and you learn real quick the magic of hard work and sticking-with-it and putting in the hours to bounce around from dead end abort solution to dead end aborted solution until the tinkering reveals a lane to resolution.
There’s another secret to really scaling, too - for me, it was humility. Not the type where you-have-a lot-so-it’s-easy-to-feign-generosity-and-humility (traits borne only after the risk of both are gone), but humility in that I truly believed and acted like each house I got sold could be my last.
Could be my last because if it didn’t sell, I didn’t have any more cash. Could be the last because I tried something big that didn’t work. Could be the last because of the economy. Fear is good, and it’s a good friend. Combine that with humility and experience, and you can really create a bullet-proof vest from business mis-direction.
And one of my highlights of the week/month/year, as much as a culmination of my character flaws as well as my vast competitive spirit, a friend of mine has a daughter in town from North Carolina, and she just so happens to be an D1 athlete, and she just so happened to step onto my pickleball court confidently, only to lose a best of 3 match to me in 2 games. I don't like to lose, and I dug deep to pull that one out. So I made a little trophy shrine and of course shared it with them.
