Memorial Day thoughts and reflections
4 days until my 27 yr old nephew and I head out to the South of France. With a basecamp in Nice, we explore north and south from there - though I guess it’s mostly north. I think I’m going to get a shave each day at a different barber, whittle away the days with strolls and hikes and naps, and do my best to put down my damn phone. Besides our business class seats and our what looks to be a pretty fabulous Airbnb, we have zero, nunka, plans laid out ahead of time.
It’s Friday morning, and I don’t leave until Monday, mid-day, so that leaves time to throw a party on Sunday by the pool. That should be fun and the weather should be great - which is a miracle.
Our local bike shop in Milford where I live runs a few weekly ‘no-drop’ bike rides - Monday night 10+ miles of mountain biking and Thursdays 24 miles of road biking. No drop means you wait at intervals for the slowest, which can be a bit of a pain, but turns out not too bad. Even for aging gent like myself, get out on that bike enough and stamina and strength improvements are sure to follow.
I’m thinking about selling my baby, my 1972 Chevy Malibu. Why? I’m not sure. More on that a little later. But I’m giving it real consideration. I guess it’s a little bit of spitefulness because the weather sucks so much anymore, and a little bit of consolidation of assets and expenses. When you are moving from playing with $1.3m a month of cash flow, to some sort of much more fixed income existence, you start looking at every expense. With Catskill Farms, the last 4 years have been so go-go, that we piled on expenses without a lot of micro-controls. Don’t me wrong, I’m always careful with my money, but when you are doing as much business as we are/were, it’s impossible not to put on a little expense fat. We have trucks we don’t use, phones we don’t use, computers we don’t use, key man life insurance policies far in excess of the amount I borrow anymore (the bank likes me to have life insurance equal to their lines of credit limits they give me), etc… So we are looking at every expense.
But the cherry red Malibu with the white interiors I picked up 4 or 5 years ago is such a nice car - and when I say nice I don’t mean ‘nice’ like you are afraid to drive it. I mean ‘nice’ as in you can’t love driving it around. Those seats are comfy like a couch. I’ve done a few big road trips of 3000 miles plus in it, once with the dog, and once with my nephew and son. It’s not a big expense - insurance is cheap and don’t owe anything on it. But it’s a lightly used asset, and those are on the chopping block.
While you are in it, it’s hard to remember what it used to be like. Since March of 2020, me and my staff have lived a life of ‘hold on for your dear life’ of business expansion, taking a company that likes to build 6-8 homes a year and tripling that, overnight, across a two hour travel distance, within dozens of small municipalities each with their own rules. It’s only now that we are down to 9, and soon down to 7, that I begin to remember that life was not always the way it was for the last 4 years, when I used to take mental health Mondays and long weekend Fridays, in the same week, consistently.
We did that volume of business in the toughest business climate one could imagine, the Covid climate where all rules were off the table, where the rules changed on a daily basis, where people’s lives were actually dependent on our efforts, where supply and labor chains were completely disrupted. We expanded - doubled or more- right into the face of those challenges. And put 50 families into homes. And made a lot of money. And worked everyday, all day. We took our job seriously, unlike most other builders out there.
So it’s only now that we are down to 7 or 8 homes, which is still double what most building companies can handle, that the toll of those years becomes clear, as the new reduced workday reveals itself. Where every little detail doesn’t threaten the big picture.
The problem I was beginning to have - and when I say beginning - I mean for the last year or two, is I had so many problems to solve it became impossible to really understand which problems were big and which were not, which needed one type of reaction, and which needed a different type. It was just all one big tangled mess of problem-solving, employee and sub management, a hamster wheel of booking business and building homes. I carried the load for dozens of families and hundreds of vendors, subtractors and employees, let alone my family and even my dog. All needed me.
It’s nice to be needed. But it’s going to be nice not to be needed so much. To hang up the hero’s cap/cape, and just be an ordinary joe. That’s what I’m starting to see now that we are returning to our origins of 6 homes a year. Where I can just shrug my shoulders and let it be, not having to rush in to fix it.
Got my garden in, only by the skin of my teeth and the help of a good friend. If I would have left from France without getting it straighten up, it probably wouldn't have happened this year.
Baseball season is in full swing from my 45+ men's league.
And the two books Im taking on the trip. I'm a Fitzgerald fan, so I've read all of his stuff several times. Tender is the Night is set in the Riviera, in the 20's, at the height of his fame. And Death in the Riviera is hopefully tolerable as a low-effort read.
As they say in France, Au revoir. See you in a few weeks.