Graduation

 Today is the big day.  My son graduates from High School.  With honors, cum laude, and a couple of credits shy of an associates degree.  I'm ridiculously proud of him and I very much wish my Dad could be here to see this because he would also be ridiculously proud.  

Can you tell I've been missing him a lot lately?  I've also had a healthy dose of nostalgia lately stemming mostly from the fact that it has been 30 years since I graduated from high school.  I enjoyed the social aspects of school, there were some classes that I really loved, and a few that I despised.  That reminds me-  I need to ask Jackson who his favorite teacher and subjects were.  I know he's going to say anything having to do with computer science.  He told me a few weeks ago (he was talking out the whole computer science vs teaching path that he's currently trying to decide between and I told him to get his core classes out of the way before he actually makes the decision which way to go) that he really loves programming, saying he loves the language aspect of it.  If I had to think about it more deeply, I would say that he likes the control aspect of it and being able to get a computer to do what he wants it to do.  My son very much likes to have control over things, much like I do.  Programming a computer is certainly a way to keep control over your environment - engineering things the way you want them to be in the digital world.  

My wife calls him a min-maxer, meaning he likes to do the minimum work to gain the maximum reward, which has gamified his academic career.  I don't know whether or not that's a good thing, but it has worked for him.  As long as he's happy? He seems happy.  We had some tough times the past couple of years as far as his emotional well being is concerned.  Honestly, it has been since we moved to Florida that it's been tough.  He has never done change very well and I'm amazed that he's managed to adapt as well as he has, considering that less than a year into moving to Florida we were locked down, in a new city, with not many friends during a global pandemic.  For a while there it felt like we were on vacation and while our house was a pretty nice stop along the way, nothing felt permanent and everything felt fluid.  Everything was changing ridiculously fast and we were all hanging on for dear life.  

It has been a roller coaster of non-stop change for the past 6 years, and things are finally settling down.  I'm also realizing that I am taking a page from Jack's book and min-maxing my life currently.  I'm trying to make as much as I can in effort to figure out who I am and what I want to do going forward.  Do I want to expand our empire? Do I want to keep selling houses? Do I want to do something completely different?  

I know I want to write a book.  I have a couple of ideas that I'm working on and the world building is coming easier than the story (even though I have the plot outlined and yesterday I came up with a fun idea to include).  I also know that I actually do want to sell houses.  I enjoy working in real estate, but the market is kind of depressed right now.  Locally, they say it's stable and I will admit that I haven't necessarily made a great effort in jumping back into that world, but I am slowly making my way back into it.  I'm doing the necessary things to restart my business, I'm just not as gung-ho as I used to be (I'm exhausted, honestly.  Well, exhausted and burnt out. And in order for me to not to be a complete bitch to my family, I need to take it nice and slow.). 

I need to keep plugging away at life.  And I need to encourage Jack to keep plugging away.  I want to enjoy the summer, yes, but I want to balance that with work.  And finding work/life balance is never easy.  I don't care what the guru's and coaches say... it's a hard road to go down and I currently lack the comfy shoes.  Maybe I need to do some shopping? Maybe I need to keep resting my feet? Maybe I just need to soak up some vitamin D for a while?  I'll figure it out eventually.  I kind of have to.