Another Screen Time Measurement
The 2nd season of Euphoria dropped, like literally 3 years from the first one. Like I do with a lot of shows I watch with multiple seasons with long periods in between (which actually narrows it down to like 2 shows), I like to restream, rebinge the first season before I watch the new. Turns out it's a good exercise since it's amazing how little you remember as time and other events track on. So game on, I'm on Episode 2 of Season 1. By the time I finish re-streaming Season #1, Season #2 will have dropped in entirety.
Repeatedly over the break, I reached out to wish my construction industry colleagues a merry Christmas and thank them for the past years work and look forward to another year of productive profit taking made possible by working well together, and on multiple occasions, I got a response a few days later with a quick apology explaining that their present to their spouse and/or family was turning off the phone for a few days. Now that I'm writing this it feels like I just wrote this on the last post but its such a bear to go back and check - close this window, open that, , I'll just riff with it. That damn phone - can't live with can't live without.
Sometimes when I look at my life, my goals, my achievements and failures, sometimes I just shrug and say as long I'm making the journey easier for my son, then I've done fine. Though, sometimes I think I'm overdoing it, which is my habit, providing a first class luxe good seats west coast skiing Miami big time travel at will experience. But fuck it, there's still seems to plenty left over.
With 2020 being a big year, 2021 a bigger year and 2022 topping each, I have the enviable decision to make about how hard to work this year, which sort of leaves me in a mini-depressed state since for 20 years I didn't have a choice. Work or fail. Heroics or fail. Burrow out or fail. The idea of graduated effort, a calculated effort, leaves me a bit aimless, waiting for the summer to lay by the pool, and at least have that excuse, that I'm laying by the pool.
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I had two rentals in Barryville NY area, 1 of them being my personal homestead, which as I wrote on Instagram - "Saying goodbye to an old farmhouse that saw me broke, saw me rich, saw me married, saw me divorced, sheltered a baby boy for 10 years and 2 dogs, not to mention an important relationship with a neighbor"
Nothing annoys me more than those Tik Toks or life pamphlets that say "I've never met someone on their deathbed that talked about working more, it's always about family and small moments'. Yeah, no dumb fuck, of course, and when your family was as happy as they were, healthy as they were, prosperous in whatever way you determine and define prosperity - yeah, that was all made possible by work and a lot of it. So yeah, maybe the time put in in the office or the job or the factory floor doesn't rank as the top achievement, but it is the life blood of all other achievements.
The Miami Beach W is one of my favorite hotels, with a roof top basketball court where Lucas hung out all day and the fun pool area where you have to get up early in the morning to reserve your seats. Lots of drama at the W with people unhappy with the lack of pool chairs and beach chairs for those who naively thought you could just saunter on in anytime. Oh contraire, just the opposite. Those who get seats strategize, organize and push their way in.
ps. I wrote this blog a few weeks back because the program has some glitch with pics, I always forget the most streamlined way to post, and hence the delay.
Reduced screen time on a Southern Holiday
It’s always hard to gauge big-picture progress. There are just too many small picture operational fixes and issues to deal with to a lot of the time to fully appreciate what has been built and accomplished, in the grand scheme of things.
It’s also hard to really put into words how hard I personally worked over the last 20 months in order to take advantage of the business opportunities that came our way. It’s one thing to sign people up for homes - by no means a small task of sales - it’s another to actually rise to the moment and get the work done, in an environment where every task is complicated in a new way by the pandemic and aftershocks of the disruption.
Sometimes I look at all the house keys sitting on a key rack and their sheer number is visually telling about our efforts. Sometimes its when I’m changing up the website, and are navigating through the multitudinous pictures. But recently, on a micro level, a metric has become more analagous to my efforts than others, and that’s my screen time reports, which show a marked decrease in my phone use. It has dropped from 7-9 hours daily, to under 2 hours. Which makes sense, as I reflect on it. For nearly 2 years, in order to keep this Catskill Farms barge moving in the right direction, I have woke at 4am, started sending organizational texts out before 5, and continued all day long until I went to sleep, 7 days a week. I eliminated all artificial boundaries on my work day and work week - I was on, never off. Considering I drive on many days 3-4 hours to jobs sites, etc…, and out of service a fair amount of time, it shows me that when I was in range, I was on the phone managing the operations that resulted in a doubling of our revenue and an increase in net profits of 400%, with little accompanying increase in fixed costs.
I know my business well, and what was true over the last 20 months is that I understood what it was going to take to take advantage of this opportunity and provide our best to our clients - and that was my effort, leading, from the front, tackling the hardest problems, clearing the way, - and my effort was needed everyday, every hour.
Honestly, without the pandemic lockdown, such an effort would have been impossible. There would have been vacations, and school events and parties and just enough distraction to cause slack in the line that needed to be taut. There was no room for error, and for a guy who likes to work and is good at what he does, I really got to flex over the last 20 months.
Lucas and I are on a holiday, with stops in Charlotte to see Brady and Gronk play the Panthers the day after Christmas. The next day we got caught in the Covid flight chaos, and woke to our 9am flight to Miami being cancelled, with an alternative 'kindly' booked for us to Gainsville for a 5 hour layover, where we sat in the tiniest of airports on pins and needles hoping our flight to Maimi in the last afternoon wasn't cancelled. Since from Gainesville, you can only fly to Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami, and those only once a day, it wasn't the type of connection you hoped got sidetracked. it didn't, and while we lost 5 hours of surf, all and all, just fine.
Danger of Finish Line Expectation
In my mind, September 2021 was the end of the pandemic sprint - from 2020 through the 3rd quarter of 2021 we embarked on a grand adventure of doubling in size while confronting endless challenges and obstacles, many never navigated before. We had planned on delivering 10 finished homes to waiting buyers from September to December and were looking forward to the deflation of the mind-bending effort it took the team to get there. But it was not to be. Like the tik-tok guy that randomly pops up in my feed, an army ranger or navy seal, who tells the story of the foolhardy recruits who manage their mental stamina by counting on a predictable finish line, only for the instructor to continue the training, the run, the lifting, the swim, the sleepless drill long past what was expected - teaching the recruits that counting on, feeding off the ‘finish line’ can be dangerous and deadly, since allowing the mind to begin to relax creates a situation doubly difficult to reignite from.
Same for us, same for me. September was my month to throttle down, though we had plenty of work ahead of us, the really heavy lift and risk was behind us. But then Ida came, and poured 110,000 gallons of water into a home I own near Valley Forge PA. And a lead man quit without notice. And I caught covid. And a guy I hired who I think will be quite valuable is going to take a lot more mentorship than I expected, then I caught a cold which was twice as bad since no one got sick last year. Even though vaccinated, then I got covid which kicked my ass. And I sold another 4 homes to be built.
So, the moral or summary of the story is don’t expect the finish line, since if doesn’t come, and you don’t have any gas in the tank, the risk is real.
Now it’s December 28th. I’m in Miami with Lucas. The sprint did come to an end, it just wasn’t when I was expecting it, and there was no victory without being able to find those reserves to see us through.
Covid, cold, booster and writing
Wow, got a serious cold in early November which I guess was doubly bad since no one got sick last year, then I got covid which sucked even though I'm vaccinated and in few high risk situations, then I got my booster which knocked me on my ass. But I swear, over the Christmas holidays I will catch up on this damn anchor around my ankle.
I've been writing for The River Reporter, a small newspaper in Narrowsburg. I donate my pay to the Narrowsburg food pantry. First few articles were about a masking debate at the Delaware Valley School District, not because I'm a fanatic one direction or another, but because that was the school board top du jour for a month. Here are the articles written to date -
DV Board, Admin spar over Mask
Judge pauses new DV mask policy
Multi-pronged attack on masking
