13 years was back in June - I was so busy living my best life I completely forgot about it. There's a danger in taking something as foundational as sobriety for granted, so here I am nearly six months later laying the 13th brick.
Time is a funny thing.
We're always gambling on how much of it we have left. Does one live like a monk so that one can enjoy the back nine of life financially free, or does one live like there's no tomorrow. Do a little bit of both? Where do you draw the line at any given point in time? I've been wrestling with this more lately as I'm 55 years old now and these decisions have more of an impact than they did thirteen years ago.
The grandkids are back with their mom. She's really turned her life around and I'm proud of her. And her new husband is a nice man - selfless and hardworking. But the kids aren't getting the same kind of stimulation they had with us. We kept them busy with sports and chores and tried to minimize their screen time. That's now been reversed and it's not easy to witness.
We've been able to maintain a presence in their lives though. I rented a condo at a mountain resort for a few days in October to go mountain biking and everyone had a blast. I booked the same condo for a week this winter and I'm sure it'll be great.
The older boy will be 13 this year. In the blink of eye he'll have a driver's license and will start to forge his own path. And we felt like 2 family trips per year wasn't the best or most useful way to be in their lives. So we decided to take the truck camper idea off the retirement checklist and spend the money now. It'll make it significantly easier to visit and facilitate healthy outdoor activities. This has implications for my professional life as it implies recalibrating some business goals to free up time. At the very least I'm going to have to double down on schedule discipline.
My inner financial planner is absolutely cringing at this. Off the top of my head I can come up with a dozen reasons why this is a stupid idea. But you know, those kids will be grown before you know it, and you can never get that time back.
Didn't see this coming! I thought after they left we would move on with our lives and accelerate our real estate investing activity. Tough choices, but I don't think we'll be second guessing this in ten years.
What else -
I've gotten much better at mountain biking - only had one injury this year - broken metatarsal in my left hand. I was able to tape it up and ride through it. I did break my leg snowboarding in March - freak accident tbh. Looking forward to the upcoming season - got Ikon and Epic passes. Really want to venture out beyond my home mountain now that I have some skills.
Time is a funny thing. Kids will change your life, even if they're not your own. And that's not a bad thing.
-s
