More June Musings
Fascinating transition happening in life and business. The slooowwww down. After literal decades of go-go, then two years of rebuilding, then a half a year of financial planning, I have a vision as to what the 3rd chapter of my life might look like. Although, as I put together a new squad in the office - interestingly of all men - maybe the spark to continue gains ground.
It’s an enviable position with lots of options; options that include timing, structure, pace, and commitment. Lucas Petersheim and my mom at Penn State for a football 7 on 7 Summer Ball.
That enviable position comes after the unenviable task of building a company for 25 years, where options were more like requirements, where discretionary meant not if, but when, are you going to do something (correct answer: better do it now).
I spend a ton of time thinking about this business stuff and enjoy it immensely, but I don’t write directly about it, and perhaps I will on this thread.
This classic Cottage keeps looking better with the landscaping, rails, and stone work. The Owners, who work in the sports broadcasting field, have invited us to an 'on the field' experience for an NFL game this fall, to a game of our choosing.
As I’ve said a few times in the past, I write more when things are uncertain - the act of writing for me has always been an effort at figuring things out, an exercise of strategic thought, an outlet for frustration venting. And as you can see over the last 2 months, the volume of my writing has decreased. That must mean things are on the mend, and it must mean I don’t have any front and center nonsense to deal with that is hogging a bunch of head space. Actually, it doesn't mean that at all -but the front and center nonsense is stuff I've seen before, so while it must be addressed, it's not new.
6:45am, Saturday - Off to play some early morning, windless pickleball in Matamoras PA. Then a stop at Home Depot, a couple of chores, obligatory late morning nap, some pool time, a new book, a work out and now watching game one of College World Series - Coastal Carolina v LSU. Update- LSU swept them.
Men’s league (45+ to play, 48+ to pitch) tomorrow at 10am. I’m 0-7 after two games and to add salt to the wound I broke my bat - and those bats aren’t cheap -$200 a pop. Update -this game got rained out.
Ranch 72, waiting on Electric - finished.
I’m mentoring 3 young high school men this summer - Gino, in the office. He’s super smart, just graduated, a walk-on volleyball hopeful, and has been helping with all sorts of tasks. Cameron and Zion, heading into their 11th grade year and good friends of Lucas, are working at my home on the grounds all summer. Building that work muscle, that show up to work everyday muscle, stay off your phone muscle - that work isn’t good or bad, the task at hand not good or bad, it’s just work. And the more you develop that muscle, the easier the task is, and the mind over matter battle is won - if you don’t mind it don’t matter.
I also loan them out to various other companies I know. The pictures below are at Tamerlaine Animal Santuary in Montague NJ, where they muck stalls, and make pals with rescued animals. No meat allowed in the packed lunches.
I’ll probably introduce them to some budgeting apps, and show them how to track their income and spending - develop their relationship and awareness of money, their habits, and the idea that money is 75% psychology and 25% math.
I have a small philanthropic fund (actually, is $125k small? - who knows anymore it’s all so relative and individual) and through that I run a financial literacy program and then hand out (10) $1250 scholarships for those chosen for the class and show up for it. And another $7500-$10k in various organizational grants such as food pantries, equine therapy, libraries, main streets enhancements, etc...
America is full of financial illiteracy, and really it’s a prison of unawareness at first, and then a prison of debt payments delaying, postponing and possibly eliminating the plans for your future.
Lake front home in North Branch NY.
The dumbness of new cars, anything with motors. Of micro-finance where you buy anything and finance it through some simple 'low cost' program. That the billions spent each year in marketing from American companies to get you to borrow, borrow, and borrow. Welcome to the machine, built and maintained for you, for a lifetime.
Even the all important credit score -it doesn’t monitor income to debt ratio, it measures a bunch of nonsense that revolves on how you borrow money - not on your net worth, your income, your cash flow. As a metric to measure someone's inclination to pay their bills without some excuse - yes, good and important monitor of that - but anything else, for anyone making real money and using debt, points, credit cards in a surgical way - nonsense score.
Are these baseball pants too tight? I accidentally picked up 'youth large' and not 'mens large'.
It has been wet in the northeast. Like someone was saying 17 straight weekends of rain. I know the contractors who work outside are struggling to stay on pace with their schedule - especially painters and landscapers. I’m trying to finish up my pickleball court, and that literally is like a 7 stop coating process which is impossible to do in between rain storms. And then it does one day stop raining and these guys are weeks or months behind on their schedule - it’s a zero sum game, it’s not like they can snap their fingers and catch up - you lose a day, it’s lost.
Now it’s hot - heat dome hot. Like 100 degrees in the shade, as they like to say. There’s so much moisture in the ground that the heat is baking the moisture out and windows are fogged up, eye-glasses are fogged in.
We have a large lake front house going up in North Branch for a lovely family. A bigger house, a really fun home where a young family will go to retreat, camp, pick worms, get lost in the woods and kayak on the lake.
Lots of road kill in May - on my daily mid-day walks, all sorts of migratory Bashakill species were getting run over trying to cross the road.
We are finishing up the lake house in Parksville for a family from CT. That project went really well. It’s pretty amazing what we can do when we don’t spread ourselves too thin. We’ve been spread too thin since the very beginning of Catskill Farms. So to take all that administrative, construction, planning expertise and laser focus it on a few projects can really produce results.
The spring and winter were tough with 1, a deep freeze, 2, a lot of black swan warranty and construction issues that I had to solve on my own since the team was in transition. Literally every Friday night or Saturday morning some real emergency would arise to ruin my weekend. It was tough. It was unnecessary. It’s why you always have to keep some gas in the tank, or at least have some reservoir of gas somewhere. Or just operate on fumes, hoping to get it done before the car putters to a stop. It's why this business is hard, especially if you care and take it personally.
I’m in St Petes. Not sure if I said that. Playing pickleball at 7am on 6 courts with 50 players rotating in. Never played doubles before - sort of fun, and definitely aerobic. I have a pickleball court going in at my home and super excited to get playing. Flew down on a plane from RDU with a malfunctioning AC system - the cabin was 90+ degrees. Very uncomfortable and the fear was the temps would keep rising inside that little aluminum bullet. American Airlines - ugh..
Been on a jig to improve my reading discipline - 20 pages a day. It worked and cruised through Salmon Rushdie's Midnight Children in less than a month. It's a good quest, put the phone away, and turn page by page for my daily quota - having read so much about the Satanic Verses, Midnight Children is considered one of the Centuries best 100 books. If you picture a book with the tempo, humor and weirdness of the way Rushdie looks on this book jacket picture, you can get an inkling of the book itself.
