I really dislike the way I think. If it’s hot I like that, but I like cool better. When it’s cool I wish for it to be hot. If it’s rainy I don’t know why it can’t just be sunny, and when it’s sunny for a spell I wonder why it won’t rain. The real issue with this horrible pattern is that I’m 43 years of age and my condition is terminal. I am hopeless. This condition will plague me from now until the day that I die, which, hopefully, will be when it is sunny, unless my mood is sour and it has me wishing for rain. I can’t be sure just yet.
Here we are, late in August, but not so late that it’s already gone. It doesn’t matter if there are still days left in August, my mind is in September. I’m going on a trip in October, a chance to catch my breath from the pace of this summer that has me wondering if this is all my life will ever be. Transaction Guy. That’s me. Line one up, knock it down, then look for another one. Wash, rinse, repeat. Over and over again. Did you know that this month marks 25 years of me sitting at this desk? A career is what I suppose you should call it, but I’m thinking about this transaction and that one, and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to go on my trip because the virus that we fought and vanquished wasn’t vanquished at all, which is to say that it’ll never be vanquished. It’s cloudy this morning, oh how I wish for the sun.
Did you know that between 1996 and 2009 I sold somewhere around $45MM worth of real estate? During that time I got married, had two kids, built a couple of houses, remodeled a few more, moved a whole bunch and bought some cars. Those were some good times and some terrible times, but they were the times of my life. I didn’t worry so much about the weather back then, not like I do today. When people would say that it’s the hottest stretch since before the last World War, I didn’t even care. Did you know that over the past few months I’ve closed $45MM in real estate? I spend quite a bit of time thinking about that transformation, and I wonder what it all means. After some time of thinking I come to the conclusion that it doesn’t mean very much and that I have to check on a survey that was due yesterday for a transaction that might close in a couple of weeks. Transactional Lives are like that.
There was a hurricane last weekend in the Northeast. The west is still on fire, as evidenced by the persistent haze, sometimes heavy and sometimes hardly, the masks our skies and makes for those fiery red sunsets of which we’ve grown accustomed. This date in late August might as well be mid-September, and once it’s mid September the only thing worth counting are the days left before the lake is too cold to jump into. Late September for kids, mid September for adults, barring an oddly warm September which we’re just as likely to have as we are an oddly cool one. Last fall it snowed on Halloween, or maybe it was the Halloween before this one, I can’t be sure. Either way we’re 70-90 days from our first snowflakes, but today it’s warm and people are calling today one of those hazy lazy days of summer. I correct them sometimes. Smokey Lazy Days Of Summer, 2021.
My son leaves for college this week. Twenty-five years ago I left for the office down the road, which isn’t at all the same. He’ll just be down the road, too, at the University of Wisconsin, where I’m hoping he’ll develop friendships and skills that will matter to him throughout his life. When I was 18 I dropped off my lawn mower at Herb’s and Herb told me that I wouldn’t have any success in real estate because I was too young. Odd to find motivation from Herb, but here I am. Motivated By Herb. You have your MBA and I have my MBH, and while yours sounds exclusive, as a point of fact, mine that is the rarest of credentials. But it’s football season in Madison, and I have to buy tickets to watch the Badgers play the Nittany Lions, the thought of which makes me long for a cool, breezy college football Saturday, even though the game is on September 4th, which is more likely to be hot than cool. Which makes all of this more confusing that it needs to be.