Summer Journal: Career

The week disappeared into planning.

My business partner and I spent hours charting our company’s course, trying to glimpse enough of the future to position ourselves where light and water meet fertile soil. I’ve always loved this work: testing ground to see what might grow, selecting the right seeds, applying water, and watching with hope.

If I’m honest, my whole career has been spent planning. I chased education, charted my course through corporate hierarchies, driving at what seemed important. I crafted two-year plans, five-year plans, ten-year plans. I rose before dawn to keep my body strong—for the long run—and ate only what promised longevity. Today never felt as real to me as those imagined futures.

Given my current situation, I can assure you that the irony isn’t lost on me.

Now, planning feels more urgent than ever. Business strategies with a partner I’ll be forced to leave when this body can no longer manifest this mind. Estate arrangements to protect my young son, my sweet daughter—forever shaped by her calamitous birth—who will always need care. And my eldest, just beginning her professional path, who must now shoulder burdens meant for me. End-of-life decisions. Living wills. Durable power of attorney. The choice between a tracheostomy ventilator or hospice care. So much planning.

Life’s pursuits can crowd out everything else, swallowing us whole. They keep us sprinting between plans, crises, victories, and defeats until they rob us of stillness. They feed or crush our egos, flood our minds with endless thoughts of what’s next and what threatens. You never have enough money—or recognize when you do. And one day, it all slips through your fingers.

All folly.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the game. I find joy in setting a course. I’m fascinated by the dance of people working together. I feel real satisfaction in solving problems and seizing opportunities. But more than any of that, I love the competition, the drama, the chance to test myself.

It has been magnificent sport.

Sport nourishes. Engage with the world and leave it better. Walk off the field exhausted but content, knowing you held nothing back. Yet always remember: you are merely playing a game on a warm summer evening, as the sun dips toward the horizon.

Play your best before shadows stretch long.
Play with everything you possess.
Play with fire in your blood.
Play until the game must end.
Play—until cold bottles of beer are opened
and the universe finally reveals its true self in
starlight,
laughter,
and mosquitoes.