But today is Sean’s 21^st birthday, and that is a memorable birthday. He’s in Amsterdam, studying abroad with five of his best friends from Bates. He’s not going to forget this one, though. For the rest of his life, he’ll always have Amsterdam.

In fact, while writing this, he just texted the family group chat, “They just sang me happy birthday in front of our entire program orientation session. Nightmare!”

Singing happy birthday (the only song to which I know all the words), is its own form of torture, and if that’s your thing, then you may have some issues!

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t wish my brother Bill a happy birthday, and Erin’s friend, Roisin (big fan of MSG), who have birthdays today.

I get why some people treat their birthdays like it’s the most magical day of the year. I don’t begrudge them. Not at all.

My dad let me have a sleepover party for my friends one year. I remember some of it, mostly because my dad had a massive gout flareup and was in agony the whole night but never complained.

Then there was the birthday when…no, that’s about it until my college years.

The birthday of all birthdays was when I turned fifty. We were in Washington, D.C. for the Richmond A10 Basketball tournament. My first book, Ten Days With Dad, was published that day, which would have been more than memorable in and by itself.

And then the Spiders won the A10 tournament, against all odds, winning five consecutive games. That was nuts. Watching Campbell cut down the nets with the players and coaches, then later, watching the selection committee announce that their first-round opponent would be Iowa.

Turning 50. Publishing my first book. A bid to the NCAA tournament. With Coleen and the kids.

That was a spectacular birthday

There’s no doubt my lack of birthday celebration interest is tied to my upbringing. I’m not upset about it. Even though I don’t remember them, I’m sure there were many cakes. We attended South Boston’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and I’m guessing we celebrated my birthday, and my cousin Anthony’s on that Sunday.

Birthdays are just not my jam.

Collecting is, though.

By collecting, I mean I’m a keeper and collector of things from my past. The normal things, sure. Newspaper clippings, awards, medals, photos, journals. But also, knickknacks from my travels. Erin and I both love to bring part of our vacations home with us. Not just a shirt or hat.

I still have items from my honeymoon in Hawaii. In the bathroom is a catchall tray. In the basement, in a bin, are photos, our itinerary, notes, brochures of places we visited, matchbooks, and dinner receipts.

I keep the first hockey trophy I ever received on a shelve in my “reading” room. Just that one trophy remains, but in my mind, it’s the most important one.

Standing at less than 4” tall and 2” wide, the trophy reminds me of where I came from—where I started. I got a late start to the sport of hockey, yet I owe it a lot. Spending so much time in the rinks as a kid kept me out of trouble. When I got older, I used hockey as an excuse to avoid drinking too much or experimenting with other things.

The early morning and late-night practices, dryland training, weightlifting, and the games themselves, taught me about resilience, hard work, commitment, and teamwork.

Hockey led me to Xaverian and Fairfield, two places intricately tied to my values, strengths—my identity, even.

So, that trophy is a daily reminder of how I got to where I am now. All 3.75” of it.

Most of us collect things. Keepsakes. Trinkets. Definitely photos and albums. Hopefully journals. Vacation bracelets. Family recipes. Baseball cards. Hess Trucks. And I imagine, a whole lot more.

Remembering the past is different than holding on to the past. I did the latter for many years. I couldn’t let go of certain things or people or circumstances.

I know the difference now.

Keeping that hockey trophy doesn’t mean I want to go back and play hockey again. Saving a receipt from our honeymoon doesn’t mean I’m trying to recreate the meal. The objects matter because of the stories attached to them—and the people we shared them with.

Maybe birthdays serve the same purpose.

I may not need a cake, a party, or a room full of people singing the one song I know by heart. But birthdays are markers. They remind us where we were, who was there, and how far we’ve come.

And now there’s Sean, turning twenty-one in Amsterdam with his best friends—and being publicly humiliated during program orientation.

Today, it’s a nightmare. Someday, it will be a story.

We can’t keep the moments. We can keep the stories—and every now and then, something small enough to fit on a shelf, in a bin, or on a nightstand.

Happy 21st birthday, Sean.

Enjoy Amsterdam.

(And bring me home something small.)

See you next week.

“I try my damnedest to avoid finding out what my students did—what they’ve been charged with. Not many teachers have to say that. We’re a rarity, my colleagues and I. We teach incarcerated youth in the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS). In every classroom, every kid has a court case. The charges they face run from theft to assault, and beyond. And I have the good fortune to call myself their teacher.” — John Cady, Ten Toes Down

What happens when a teacher stops seeing the charges and starts seeing the kids?

For seventeen years, John Cady has taught young men in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. His students have been arrested for everything from minor offenses to serious crimes. Many have grown up surrounded by poverty, violence, gangs, drugs, and circumstances most of us will never fully understand.

But those aren’t the stories John remembers most.

He remembers the rival gang members who became roommates, study partners, and friends. The teenager who discovered he might have a future as a personal trainer. The gifted basketball players who pushed each other toward something better. The young man who stepped up to help families at Christmas when everyone else in the room stayed quiet. And the grieving teenager whose classmate spent hours designing a memorial tattoo for the mother he’d lost.

John entered DYS believing his job was to teach English, help students earn diplomas and GEDs, and prepare them for life after they left. Along the way, he learned something far more important: a charge isn’t a character trait, and one bad chapter doesn’t have to become the whole story.

Ten Toes Down: Risking It All for At Risk Students is a collection of true stories about opportunity, empathy, accountability, unexpected kindness, and the people willing to stand firmly in someone else’s corner.

These young men don’t need excuses made for them. They need choices. They need opportunities. And sometimes, they need another teammate willing to believe their story isn’t over yet.

John Cady has spent seventeen years trying to make a difference in their lives.

And yet, all this time, they’ve been making a difference in his.

That sounds like a book I’d want to read. Fortunately for me, I get to publish it, too.

He’s waited patiently for this moment and I’m happy to share that the waiting is nearly over.

Not over. Nearly over.

My team at Bellarmine is getting close: a few final edits here and there, making sure every word reads as John intended, putting the finishing touches on the cover, and then formatting the book itself.

Ten Toes Down (TTD) is John’s first non-fiction book, but he’s already a prolific writer. His fiction work has appeared in multiple anthologies, including After the Kool Aid Is Gone and The Dire Circle. He is also the author of the middle-grade horror novella Attack of the 3-D Zombies and the young adult urban fantasy Angela of Death trilogy.

TTD marks my third book as a publisher. I thought I’d share that process with you, as I often get asked, “What does a book publisher do?”

The short answer?

A little bit of everything.

By the time a manuscript reaches me, the author has already done the hardest part. They’ve written the book. In John’s case, he spent years collecting stories, remembering conversations, revisiting students and moments that mattered, and figuring out what he wanted to say.

Then we get to work.

So, what does a book publisher do?

First, we read. A lot.

We edit. We ask questions. We move things around. We cut things. Sometimes we put them back. We debate words, sentences, chapter titles, punctuation, and whether a story that makes perfect sense to the author will make the same sense to someone who wasn’t there.

We work on the title and subtitle. We write and rewrite the description on the back cover. We design the cover, then change the cover, then stare at the cover for several days and change something else.

We proofread.

And proofread again. And again.

Then there are all the things readers never see: ISBNs, copyrights, pricing, metadata, formatting, distribution, Amazon, bookstores, ebooks, audiobooks, author copies, launch plans, marketing, and about seventeen other things I’m probably forgetting.

Eventually, all those individual pieces become something you can hold in your hands.

A book.

What doesn’t a publisher do?

Write the author’s story for him. At least, I don’t.

John’s name will be on the cover of Ten Toes Down, not mine. Those are his students. His experiences. His memories. His lessons. His voice.

My job isn’t to turn John’s book into the book I would have written. It’s to help John make it the best version of the book he wanted to write.

That’s probably my favorite part of publishing.

There’s a strange moment in this process when a Word document stops feeling like a Word document. The chapters are finished. The cover has a title and an author’s name on it. The pages are formatted. Someone sends you a proof.

And suddenly, it’s a book.

I’ve experienced that moment with my own books, and I can tell you it never gets old. But there’s something pretty special about experiencing it with someone else’s.

An author hands you something they’ve worked on for months—or sometimes years. Something personal. Something they’re proud of. Something they’ve probably questioned a hundred times along the way.

And they trust you with it.

Soon, I’ll get to hand Ten Toes Down back to John Cady. Only this time, it won’t be a manuscript. It’ll be a book.

MARK.

Some of the things we’re most proud of begin as something only we can see.

A story. An idea. A business. A goal scribbled in a notebook. A manuscript sitting on a laptop.

SET.

Bringing those things to life takes other people. People who challenge us, encourage us, improve our work, and sometimes see the finished product before we can.

GO…

There are few things better than creating something you’re proud of.

Helping someone else create something they’re proud of might be one of them.

I can’t wait for you to meet John—and the young men who inspired Ten Toes Down.

See you next week.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m more comfortable with who I am at this point in my life than at any other time since college. But having it figured out? Not even close.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been looking for signs. From God, maybe. Certainly from the universe. Something, anything, that tells me I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

And yet, I’ve come to believe that signs rarely announce themselves. They just sit there, disguised as an ordinary Tuesday, until enough time passes that you can finally see them for what they were.

I know what I’m supposed to be doing day to day, for my family and business. I can get through it on autopilot with a fair amount of consistency; motivation, even.

But for what, exactly.

Speaking on Ten Days With Dad and my caregiving journey in front of fifteen residents at Cornerstone of Weymouth this afternoon gave me hope. Not affirmation—I don’t feel that yet. But hope. I just didn’t know that a sign I was looking for was going to happen in that room, when the talk was over.

I love speaking to Independent Living residents. They’re attentive, ask good questions, and genuinely seem to care. The story of taking care of my dad resonates with them.

I was nervous today. Not butterflies, but just nervous I wouldn’t be able to deliver. It had been six months since my last talk, and it came a week after my dad’s five-year anniversary.

What I relish most about these talks is the closeness I feel with him. He’s gone, but sharing his life, his legacy; that’s an incredible feeling. One that leaves me feeling light. Strong. Happy.

One thing has been clear to me since the book published in 2022: many of us don’t tell our parents how much they mean to us. As I mentioned last week, we take time for granted.

These talks give me the chance to bend time. He’s right there with me while I’m sharing our story. Same spots as when they happened, except this time, I can add things.

I’m not romanticizing him in hindsight. My dad had a limited ability to express his feelings or show empathy. He was far from a perfect father, and he made mistakes. Opening up wasn’t easy for either of us.

And still, I can talk about him with genuine love and admiration. Not through his words, but through his actions.

Ten Days With Dad was never supposed to be a story about my dad. It was my story all along. I didn’t see that until the book was finished. That’s the pattern for a lot of us: we don’t recognize the sign until we’re looking at it in the rearview.

So, when I tell residents in their seventies, eighties, and nineties that they’re under no obligation to be the person they were forty years ago, forty months ago, or four days ago—I mean it. I just hadn’t clocked, until I started writing this, that I was also saying it to myself.

The people who cherish inflicting doubt, or throwing obstacles in your path, will always be there. No matter your age. No matter where you’re living. It’s human nature.

Just because I am able to block those people out (most of the time), doesn’t mean my transformation is finished. I work at it constantly. The meditation and exercise routines get skipped. New burdens arise (none as great as caregiving, yet). Financial stuff. Physical stuff. Family drama.

Just like you.

After the talk, someone asked if I did this for a living.

“Not yet,” I smiled. “But that’s the plan.”

“Good. Because you’re good at it. I’d listen to you speak again, anytime.”

I almost missed it. I was so busy waiting for a sign that would tell me I’d arrived that I nearly walked past the one that told me I already had.

That’s the part I keep getting wrong. I keep expecting the sign to feel like an announcement. It never does. It feels like a stranger being kind to you in a hallway, and you don’t understand what she actually handed you until you’re driving home.

If life were easy, we’d all have it figured out. Just don’t beat yourself up—we’re never getting “it” fully worked out. Our stories have a beginning and an end, but we get to write the middle, mostly by accident, mostly without knowing which parts are the signs until much later.

The kids are heading off shortly. Some already have. Sean leaves for Amsterdam on Sunday and doesn’t come back until mid-December.

That’s going to be hard for Coleen and me. We’re used to four or five weekends every fall watching him play golf for Bates.

We’ll visit in October. We’ll call, we’ll text.

But he’s going to spend the next few months doing exactly what I did in that room today: collecting things that don’t look like signs yet. Adding them to his story without knowing what they mean.

He’ll find out later.

And that’s perfectly ok.

See you next week.

Well, “giant” might not be accurate. He was anything but. My friends called him Big D because he was relatively large for a man of his size, topping out at 5’6”. And that might be generous. We also called him Papa Smurf — big smile, white beard, gentle spirit.

He was a giant in other ways. The way he coached hockey was one. His Ten Commandments of Hockey were legendary. When I wrote about them in his obituary, hundreds of former players commented, telling me how much my dad had meant to them.

I miss sitting with him by the grill. He’d have a drink in hand, and we’d sit in lawn chairs. Sometimes there was lively conversation, or differing opinions on sports, politics, religion. Other times there was silence, nothing but the sizzle of chicken wings charring, or the sound of Ah-So sauce being reapplied. I loved the silence as much as the banter.

I miss the wings, too, that sweet Chinese Ah-So sauce. I never could get my own kids to fall in love with them the way I did. I miss his sayings. It could always be worse. You’re only getting screwed if you think you’re getting screwed. What looks good, guys? Even when he was sick: Where you been, Markus.

I miss seeing him in the stands or on the sidelines at my kids’ games. I miss his Thanksgiving meals, even the ones that went awry. I miss his bad jokes. I miss having him behind me on the bench, barking out line changes.

Anniversaries, if that’s what you call them, have a way of putting you in a funk without your noticing. Today is one of those days. I’m writing from Richmond, where I’m helping Campbell move into a new apartment.

Moving stinks. Apartments, houses, jobs, relationships. Planned or not, they’re time-consuming, exhausting, emotionally charging in both directions. Fortunately, he’s only moving down the hall, and I don’t really mind.

Flying down, I couldn’t help thinking about my dad, and how different my relationship with my kids is from the one I had with him. The stuff we do today that our parents didn’t isn’t remarkable because we’re better parents. It’s just the world we live in now.

When I moved to Virginia after college for an internship on Capitol Hill, I drove myself. When I left six months later, I packed up and drove home. I might have talked to my dad every other week. Maybe longer. Not having a cell phone or the internet isn’t an excuse for the lack of communication—it just wasn’t something either of us was very good at.

Not talking on the phone didn’t mean I didn’t miss him. I did. A lot. I was good at hiding my feelings, pushing them aside. Not exactly healthy, but certainly normal for both of us. Going into business together in 1999 changed that. We started talking every day.

When I slipped on a log in second grade and fell into a pond, neither of my parents came to school with new clothes. In middle school, my date’s father picked me up and dropped me off for the eighth-grade dance. When my childhood friend died and I slipped into a depression, I dealt with it on my own.

I’m not dragging these up to complain. I’m just noting how different my relationship was with them.

Flying, driving, or taking the train to Richmond, Connecticut, or Maine to help our kids isn’t even a debate for Coleen and me. If we can make it happen, we do, and I consider us lucky that they still want us to. But I know my dad supported us, too. Just not in the way I’d once assumed he would.

Seeing him at hockey games was one way. Whether I ever told him or not, I loved looking for him, usually ice-level, along the boards. He wasn’t great at giving feedback after a game or a milestone, but my stepmom, Jane, would tell me how proud he was, and that was enough. Anytime I needed to borrow money, he stepped in. And as business partners, I always knew he had my back.

Different. But the same.

So what will my “kids” remember about me? Strange thought, I know, but strange thoughts come with the territory on a day like this.

I don’t think I have “sayings” the way Papa Smurf did. Though maybe I do. My jokes are terrible, and there’s a more-than-normal number of unfiltered comments that escape before my ADHD brain can stop them. You’ll have to ask my kids about those.

Honestly, though, I hope what they remember are the moments by the grill. Not literally—I don’t think we’ve ever once talked while I was grilling. But metaphorically. The moments I want them to remember are experiences.

Will Campbell and Erin remember the time I carried them through the snow, chasing after Campbell’s preschool classmates on a field trip? Probably not.

But I’m hopeful they’ll remember Hawaii, Aruba, Disney. The World Cup and the Frozen Four. A Guinness in Dublin, a lager in Prague. Windshield time driving to hockey games. Hamilton, Tower of Terror, Woodloch, ice luges, backyard badminton, the Ryder Cup, US Opens, concerts, fishing on the Cape, the playoff bell, Fenway, Agganis Arena, an afternoon tea in Walpole and one in London.

There will be more. I know because it’s a priority for Coleen and me.

Our best friends go away every August with their “kids” to celebrate their anniversary. It’s the highlight of their year. This summer it was almost derailed by scheduling. I pushed them to make it work no matter what, probably projecting my own strong opinions about family time a little harder than I needed to. They leave next week. I couldn’t be happier for them.

I remember and miss my dad all the time, not just on his “anniversary.” But there’s something about the actual day, revisiting where it happened, or how, that brings its own particular strangeness. Not sad, exactly. Not depressed. If anything, I’m hopeful. And unquestionably grateful.

Big D will always be a giant; in my memory of him, in our shared experiences, but also in his struggles and his failures. I keep learning from his life. And I’ll never forget his selfless sacrifices, or his enduring will to support his boys the best way he knew how.

Last night at dinner, I raised an extra, extra, extra dry gin martini with a twist. For Big D. For future experiences with my own family. And for everyone else out there missing a giant of their own.

Paperboy. Farm hand. Supermarket bakery clerk. Car wash attendant. Painter. Scorekeeper. Snack bar attendant. Ice cream scooper. Busboy. Cutlery salesman. Landscaper. Maintenance worker. Liquor store clerk. Hockey camp counselor…and others.

If that’s not some sort of record, it ought to be.

Most of them involved manual labor. I’m including my paper route and scooping ice cream in that category, for what it’s worth. Most of them were lousy gigs, too, but at least they allowed me to contribute, albeit in a small way, to my high school and college tuition. In fact, delivering The Boston Globe for three years earned me a $5,000 scholarship, though it was a miserable experience and the Globe definitely got its money’s worth.

This isn’t a humble brag. Having that many jobs was hardly an accomplishment. Early mornings, late nights, spoiled clothes, sweat, grime, rain, snow, heat, and so-so pay. But for nearly every one of them, I fulfilled my commitment. I made it through the summer season, or semester, or whatever was expected of me.

That wasn’t always easy.

I didn’t enjoy landscaping or painting houses or doing maintenance at the local nursing home. I despised the paper route and barely survived the summer I sold Cutco knives. I wasn’t very good at some of those jobs either, but for the most part, I worked hard while I was on the clock. Whether picking beans and tomatoes at the farm, stocking shelves at Curtis Liquors, or bussing tables at The Ground Round, I genuinely tried to be a diligent worker.

Those ten years of hustling taught me valuable lessons. Usually the hard way.

If I was late to the farm, I had to wait for the truck to come back and get me, and I only got paid if I was working. If I didn’t finish the paper route because it meant I would miss the school bus, I had to explain myself to my customers and made less in tips. If I was having a bad day, I still had to show up to work and pretend everything was fine.

After my childhood friend died my senior year in high school, and I experienced depression for the first time, I still had to show up at Star Market to work in the bakery. When customers needed a frosted cake or pastries packaged, I had to block out the baggage and focus on my job.

And smile.

No matter how much I was hurting inside.

I learned that staying late or taking an extra shift put me in a better position with my bosses. I learned earning money beats borrowing it. I learned there’s no such thing as a free lunch, though truthfully, I had my fair share of free dessert in the bakery.

Mostly, I learned that time mattered.

At that age, time felt like something to schedule, fill, and trade. An hour of work became a few dollars. A summer became tuition money. A shift became gas money. A weekend became spending money. Time was something I could use, waste, stretch, or sell to the highest bidder, which, in most cases, was not very high.

But even then, I was also learning something else.

During those years, I spent a lot of time working, but I also spent a lot of time playing hockey, socializing, and doing the things I wanted to do. All of this to say, looking back on my life, long before my dad’s Alzheimer’s and the realization that life really is short, I was already pretty successful at tilting the work-life balance toward life.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. It happened over time.

Starting my career in nonprofit fundraising for my alma maters played a factor. I felt at home right away, and part of me never wanted to lose that feeling. Then my dad invited me to start a business with him, and we created something special. Professionally, yes, but personally as well.

I loved those years working alongside my dad, whose birthday last week would have been his 89th. In a few days, we’ll also remember the fifth anniversary of his passing.

Where does the time go?

I know that sounds like something people say when they don’t know what else to say, but I don’t think that makes it any less true. Time does go somewhere. It goes into jobs and school and practices and carpools. It goes into bills and emails and errands and house projects. It goes into raising children, caring for parents, building careers, and trying to become the person you thought you might be by now.

Some of it is well spent. Some of it isn’t. Some of it becomes a memory. Some of it disappears before we ever think to notice it.

We just returned from Woodloch Pines, where Coleen’s family celebrated its 50th summer vacation. Fifty years. Same week. Same lake. Many of the same families. Many of the same games. Many of the same stories, somehow getting funnier every year.

I’ve been part of thirty-three of those summers.

When I first started going, I was one of the boyfriends. Then I became one of the spouses. Then Coleen and I started bringing our own children. Now those children are adults, and we’re still showing up every July, leaving tired and happy and a little amazed that another year has passed.

Woodloch has become one of the places where time is easiest to see.

You see it in the old photos and the kids who used to need life jackets but are now ordering drinks in the North Lodge. You see it in the grandparents watching the same lake they watched as young parents. You see it in the empty chairs, too. The people who were once part of every story and now live inside the stories.

One thing I’m starting to understand about time is that it doesn’t announce what it’s taking while it’s taking it. You only notice much later.

My writing, speaking, publishing, and career in the branded merchandise universe are anything but certain these days. I’m not sure which fork in the road I will take when the time comes, but the decision is mine to make.

And I know that’s a gift.

Not everyone gets the time to figure out what comes next.

A close friend of mine is facing the reality that his time is running out. I don’t want to write too much about him because it’s not my story to tell. But when someone you love is forced to measure life differently, you start measuring yours differently, too.

Conversations become more important. Delayed plans seem a little more foolish. Small complaints lose some of their power. You think about the text you should send, the visit you should make, the thing you keep saying you’ll get around to later.

Later is not guaranteed.

I learned this the hard way with my dad, but without that experience, I might still be chasing “later.”

We know this, of course. We all know it. But most of us live as if later is a storage closet with unlimited space. We toss things in there all the time. The trip. The call. The apology. The dream. The book. The career change. The hard conversation. The better habit. The thing we know matters but keep pushing off because today is busy.

Today is always busy.

That doesn’t mean we can drop everything and live as if every day is our last. That sounds inspiring until the mortgage is due, the inbox is full, the dishwasher breaks, and somebody needs a ride. We still have responsibilities. We still have work to do. We still have people counting on us.

But maybe we can become more honest about what deserves our time.

Time and tomatoes, apparently, both need more attention than we think.

After a week away, I wasn’t sure what I’d find when I checked the garden. The rabbit and I had been battling for weeks before vacation, and I half expected to come home to chewed leaves, toppled cages, and another reminder that nature usually wins.

Instead, the tomatoes were still there and, if I may say, they look great!

I stood there longer than I needed to, checking the branches, looking for new fruit, pulling a few weeds, and making sure everything still had enough support. It was such a small thing after a week filled with family, memories, aging, and all the reminders of how fast life moves.

But that’s why it mattered.

Tomatoes don’t care that you’re busy. They don’t care that you’re tired. They don’t care that you have big questions about career, purpose, family, grief, or what comes next. They simply ask for what most meaningful things ask for: attention, patience, protection, and time.

So do families, friendships, dreams, and the people we love.

I spent a good part of my youth learning how to work hard while I was on the clock. I’m still grateful for that. But I think I’m spending this part of my life learning something different. I’m learning that the most important clock is not always the one we punch.

It’s the one we forget is running.

Time is not just something to manage. It is something to honor. Something to invest. Something to give away carefully. Something to spend with the people who matter while they are still here to receive it.

Because someday, if we’re lucky, our time becomes someone else’s memory.

What kind of memories are we helping create in our lives?

See you next week.

Finding something to write about is rarely a challenge. I write about the things happening around me. Whether they're worthy of sharing with 1,100 people each week isn't something I worry about nearly as much as writing every Tuesday.

This week’s story came from my ten-year-old nephew, James, with an assist from his eight-year-old sister, Katie.

We’re at THE PINES this week, celebrating my in-laws’ fiftieth summer vacation at Woodloch. There are thirty-two of us here, spread across multiple living areas and crossing paths from breakfast until bedtime.

From lounging on the chairs in front of Lake Teedyuskung to paddle boarding, Bingo to water skiing, fishing to saunas, Pool Games to mini golf, drinks on the deck to nightly entertainment in the Night Club or North Lodge.

Someone is always looking for teammates to play Double Dare or Volleyball. They seldom have trouble finding them.

Erin created this video on Monday. Our outfits honor Mr. Campbell, who in 1976, was known to rock his jean shorts, white tee shirt, and high socks.

On Tuesday, I normally disappear for a while to write, but this year, I skipped breakfast at The Inn and stayed at the kitchen table.

James and Katie decided they wanted to help write this week’s newsletter. I wasn't looking for an idea. I was just listening.

James started telling me about something that happened a few weeks earlier, the last time he was in Pennsylvania. He was sitting on his skateboard, taking a break from practicing his Ollie—a skateboard trick I still don’t understand—when our neighbor walked by.

According to James, she “mean-mugged” him.

I’d never heard the phrase before.

He explained that she gave him a nasty look as she walked to her car. Then, a few seconds later, she saw his dad and smiled.

“Fake smiled,” James corrected me.

That gave me the idea to invite James and Katie to be part of this week’s MSG. Here is their essay:

How often do we mean-mug people?

Probably more than we’d like to admit.

Sometimes we mean-mug people on purpose. Most of the time, I wonder if we don't even realize we're doing it. One expression. One snippet of conversation. One moment. Before long, we've filled in the blanks.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve always loved coming to THE PINES.

I’ve been fortunate enough to spend thirty-three of these fifty summers here. Long enough to know the stories behind the stories.

I know who stays up late on the porch. Who wakes up before everyone else for some solitude on the deck. Who never misses bingo. Who’s always willing to play one more game with the kids. I know who quietly cleans up the kitchen after late night cocktails without being asked, and who somehow always remembers to bring extra sunscreen.

When you know people that well, it’s harder to judge them by one moment, but like every family, we’re far from perfect.

Somebody gets irritated.

Somebody says something they wish they’d said differently.

Somebody disappears for a while because they need a little quiet.

But after fifty years, one moment doesn’t carry nearly as much weight. That’s not because we’re immune from conflict. We’ve had plenty.

It’s because fifty years gives you enough history to know that one bad afternoon isn’t the whole story. Looking back, I think 123 Tuesdays has done something similar.

Today, many of you know I've written about rabbits eating tomato plants, my dad's Alzheimer's journey, my children, my work, my faith, and now, apparently, skateboard tricks and something called mean-mugging.

Some of you have been reading since the beginning. Others joined somewhere along the way. Either way, you’ve probably figured out that one week’s essay isn’t the whole story any more than one difficult afternoon defines a person.

One thing I’ve learned from writing every Tuesday is that consistency creates something we rarely think about.

History.

History with our families.

History with our friends.

History with one another.

The more history we share with someone, the less likely we are to define them by one bad moment.

James and Katie wandered off a few minutes later in search of the next adventure.

I stayed behind to finish this week’s essay.

They think they were just telling stories.

I know they helped write Essay No. 123.

See you next week.

Mr. McGuirk nicknamed me “Magic” early on, so clearly, I was doing something right on the ice. And yet I didn’t make the top Squirt team on my first try. I didn’t make the top Peewee team either until my second try. I caught up eventually.

By high school, I knew I was an above-average player, but that’s all I knew. Something like 60 kids tried out for the freshman hockey team at Xaverian. I didn’t just make the team; I also played on its top line with Billy Lincoln and Dave Bliss.

All three of us were slated for Varsity the year after that, but I missed the entire season to injury and illness. I’ll spare you the details, but you can certainly find them in the chapter called On My Own from Ten Days With Dad.

There was no doubt about my place on the team from then on. Dave, Bill, and I remained on the top line, and I made it my mission to be the hardest working player on the ice.

Let’s be clear about something: I was never one of the best players on any team (in any sport). Heck, I probably wasn’t even in the top five. But I still ended up near the top, shift after shift, line after line. The word “effort” doesn’t quite capture the reason for my success.

It was more like grit.

Grit isn’t the same as trying hard for a shift, or a practice, or even a season. Trying hard is a moment. Grit is what happens when you string a few thousand of those moments together across years, without any promise of a payoff.

It’s what let a kid who was never in the top five outlast the ones who were.

There’s no doubt grit kept me on that top line in high school, and then again for a good part of my freshman year at Fairfield, where I continued to play my part as a role player. And I say that with real pride.

Coach McCarthy didn’t put me on the top line to score. He put me there to dig the puck out of the corners and get it to the guys who could actually finish—the Bobby McDonalds, the Steve Forests, the Peter Lewis’s of the world. I was the guy who worked harder, checked harder, and caused a little chaos so someone else could cash in.

Working harder than everyone around me. That was the whole plan. It was the only plan. And for a long time, it worked.

But grit didn’t stop me from making one of the worst decisions of my hockey career. That’s because grit doesn’t ask you where to spend your effort; only whether you’re willing to spend it at all.

In my sophomore season at Fairfield, I didn’t show up to most of the “optional” Captain’s Practices that preseason. I told myself it was the fee. I didn’t have the money, so I skipped it. That was the story I told, anyway. My dad would have handed me that money without blinking if I’d asked him. I never asked. I used a solvable problem as an excuse not to solve it.

I blew it before the next season even started. The kind of blowing it where nobody yells at you…you just don’t get the thing back.

I never played on the first line again.

That’s the part that still gets me. I showed up to tryouts that fall stronger and more in shape than I’d ever been, but none of that mattered, because I hadn’t shown up when it actually counted, in the weeks nobody was watching. It’s probably why I rode my own kids so hard, years later, about showing up on time and keeping commitments even, especially, when nobody’s watching.

I learned that lesson the expensive way, and I wasn’t about to let them learn it the same one.

That wasn't the last time a commitment and my hockey career would collide.

I got elected student body president junior year, and there was a leadership conference in Tennessee I was supposed to attend—mid-season. I went to Coach McCarthy and asked for four days off from practice. To his enormous credit, he didn’t say no. But he also didn’t pretend there wouldn’t be a cost. And there was one. I worked as hard as I possibly could after I got back, and I never fully worked my way out of the doghouse that decision put me in.

Here’s the difference between those two moments (which took me way too long to see): one was a commitment I dodged out of insecurity and a manufactured excuse. The other was a decision I made on purpose, with my eyes open, knowing exactly what it would cost me—because something else mattered more in that moment. I’d make that second choice again tomorrow. The first one still shows up in my dreams.

I mean that literally. I still have the dream, at least once a year, more than thirty years later. The worst version of it is the one where I’m back on the first line as a freshman, and then I’m just... never on the ice again. I show up, I suit up, I sit. The coach never puts me into the game.

But here’s the detail I actually care about, the one I’d want you to remember if you forget everything else: in every single one of those dreams, I never quit. I should have, probably. I don’t. Not once. Even in my subconscious, at 2 a.m., in a nightmare I don’t control, quitting isn’t a thing I can do.

The other half, working smarter, is the half I skipped, the same way I skipped those Captain’s Practices, telling myself a story about why it was fine.

It wasn’t fine. It’s still not entirely fine. I catch myself doing it right now, building out my writing career, writing MARK. Set. Go…s every Tuesday, ghostwriting someone else’s book, and still moving merchandise...my honest first instinct when there's too much on my plate is always the same: work harder."

Not “work differently.” Or smarter.

I’m trying to unlearn that. I’m trying to teach my readers to unlearn it too. Working smarter, in 2026, might mean finally letting a tool like AI take the first, ugly draft off your plate so you can spend your energy on the sentence that actually needs a human heart behind it. It might mean looking at your calendar and admitting that saying yes to one more thing is really just you dodging Captain’s Practice with a different excuse.

Sometimes the smartest, hardest thing you can do is say no. Not because you’re tired. Because something else, like the version of yourself you’re trying to become, matters more right now, and you’re finally willing to let it cost you something.

I wasn’t willing to pay that cost as a teenager. It’s taken years of ghostwriting other people’s turning points to recognize my own, and to realize that the “harder” instinct isn’t wrong, it’s just incomplete.

Adaptation is the other half. Knowing when to grind and when to change the plan entirely.

Show up for the things that matter. Work harder than the person next to you if that’s what it takes. But don’t mistake harder for smarter. And don’t let a manufactured excuse (money, timing, being too busy) talk you out of showing up for the practice nobody’s forcing you to attend. That’s usually the one that matters most.

I’m still catching up.

I always do, eventually.

See you next week.

It didn’t start that way. In fact, I rather liked having him around. Most mornings I’d spot him from the kitchen window while drinking my coffee, quietly hopping through the backyard without bothering anyone. Some nights, after peeling carrots or chopping celery for dinner, I’d toss the scraps near the edge of the deck instead of into my compost barrel. It seemed like a harmless gesture, and I figured he appreciated the meal.

That was before he discovered my tomato garden.

This spring, I built a raised bed for tomatoes and herbs. By the time I bought the lumber, soil, plants, cages, fertilizer, and everything else that somehow finds its way into a gardening project, I had close to $200 invested. It wasn’t about the money as much as the anticipation. I was already looking forward to August BLTs, homemade salsa, and enough basil to convince myself I should finally learn how to make pesto.

The rabbit had a different vision.

It started with a few leaves. Then he found a way through the plastic fencing. I added bug netting. He chewed through that, too. I doubled the fencing and stapled it to the raised bed. Last weekend I sprinkled cayenne pepper around the perimeter after reading that rabbits hate spicy food. Either the internet lied, or this particular rabbit has developed a taste for Mexican cuisine.

Every morning has become an inspection. I walk outside with my coffee wondering what survived the night, and every morning he reminds me that determination usually beats convenience.

As I was replacing another section of netting a few days ago, it occurred to me that this wasn’t really a story about gardening.

It was a story about investment.

The difference between the rabbit and me isn’t determination. It’s that I’ve invested something in that garden, and he hasn’t. I’ve spent the money, hauled the soil, planted the tomatoes, watered them through the heat, and checked on them every morning. The rabbit simply discovered that breakfast appears around sunrise and, if he comes back before dinner, there might be another snack waiting for him.

Investment has a way of changing how we see things.

Coleen and I have spent twenty-five years trying to strike that balance with our children.

Like most parents, we’ve wanted to make life a little easier for them than it was for us. We’ve helped pay for college, covered unexpected expenses, and tried to open doors whenever we could. At the same time, we’ve tried to remember that there’s value in having something invested in your own future.

All three of our kids graduated or will graduate with college loans. We could have paid more than we did, but we wanted them to have some ownership in the experience. When you’ve worked for something, sacrificed for it, or watched your own bank account shrink because of it, you tend to see it differently. You ask different questions. You make different decisions. You appreciate it in ways you probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

Maybe that's why helping someone and enabling someone aren't always the same thing. One quietly removes the investment. When we make something so easy, so available, or so expected, the other person never develops the same appreciation for what was required to create it.

Helping someone is one thing; removing every opportunity for them to invest in themselves is something else entirely.

One of the things I’ve always admired about Coleen’s parents is that they decided a long time ago what they wanted to invest in.

Since 1976, they’ve spent the third week of every July at Woodloch Pines in the Pocono Mountains. Every year. Same week.

They packed up seven children and headed to the mountains. Years later, those seven children started bringing boyfriends and girlfriends. I eventually became one of them. Then came spouses, grandchildren, and enough family members that it’s become easier to count who isn’t there than who is.

In two weeks, we’ll head back again. It will be the Campbell’s fiftieth year at Woodloch and my thirty-third.

We’ll see many of the same families we’ve known for decades. We’ll play the same games, tell some of the same stories, laugh at memories that somehow become funnier every year, and create a few new ones without even realizing it.

That's what investing in your family looks like after fifty years.

When people talk about leaving something behind for their children, they usually mean money. Coleen’s parents gave their children something that has grown more valuable with every passing summer. They gave them a tradition, a place that still feels like home every July, and memories that continue to compound year after year.

Watching their family has shaped the way Coleen and I think about our own.

Losing my dad to Alzheimer’s changed my perspective on time. Watching a close friend face a terminal illness has reinforced it. We’d rather invest in experiences while everyone is healthy enough to enjoy them than leave behind a few extra dollars someday. That’s why we’re heading back to Woodloch. It’s why we’ll be exploring Amsterdam later this year (during Sean’s semester abroad). And it’s why we choose a family vacation at Christmas instead of presents.

I don’t really hope our children remember what we spent—I hope they remember how it felt.

And if we’re fortunate, maybe one day they’ll decide those experiences are worth investing in with their own families.

The same principle extends far beyond our home.

Managers invest in employees. Teachers invest in students. Coaches invest in athletes. Friends invest in one another. The healthiest relationships aren’t built on convenience. They’re built when both people have something invested in the outcome.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll walk outside with my coffee and see if the rabbit found another creative way to test my defenses.

Truthfully, I don’t mind the challenge anymore. The herbs have taken a few hits, but the tomatoes are thriving.

That’s because this year’s garden isn’t like the ones I’ve planted in the past. Instead of planting and praying for the best, I’ve invested in better soil, stronger protection, more consistent watering, and a little more patience. Every time the rabbit exposed a weakness, I made an improvement.

Come to think of it, that’s how most worthwhile things in life seem to work.

Investment asks us to pay attention. It asks us to learn, adapt, and improve instead of settling for "good enough." Looking back, I’m not sure the rabbit has been ruining my garden as much as he’s been making me a better gardener.

Maybe that makes us frenemies.

Gardens, like children, don't come with guarantees. You invest your time, energy, patience, and a little bit of your heart, hoping they'll flourish. Sometimes they surprise you. Sometimes they test you.

Either way, you keep watering.

See you next week.

I had fallen out of the Kearns’ tree while hanging from a branch with one arm. It didn’t feel broken, exactly, but it didn’t feel good, either. This was before my parents divorced, so I wasn’t as self-conscious yet, but it was still unusual for me. I didn’t feel normal or comfortable. I felt different and awkward.

But that’s not how Mrs. McCann made me feel.

She was my first-grade teacher, and somehow she made me feel perfectly comfortable in her classroom, as if there was nothing unusual about showing up with a cast on your arm. No big production. No making me feel helpless. No making me feel embarrassed. Just, okay, this is where we are, and we will figure it out.

She remains my favorite elementary school teacher.

Erin taught first grade this past year, and I don’t have to know a single kid in her classroom to know she is going to be remembered as someone’s favorite teacher. Some things you just know. She has that way about her. She puts kids at ease. She recognizes when shy kids need a little extra attention. She notices the child who needs comfort before the child knows how to ask for it.

Yes, some of that probably comes from her nystagmus, which has made her far more attuned to the needs of children who feel different, uncomfortable, or unsure in the moment. But it is also instinct. She understands kids. She understands the room. She understands when to push, when to pause, and when to remind a child that hard does not mean impossible.

She got that from Coleen, clearly.

Last night, I read Erin’s 25-page capstone paper for her master’s degree in elementary education at Fairfield University. The title was, Instilling Growth Mindset in First-Grade Students: An Action Research Study. It was excellent, and it gave me the idea for this week’s MARK. Set. Go…

Growth mindset.

At its core, that is what this weekly newsletter has always been about. Maybe not in academic language. Maybe not with formal research or educational theory attached to it. But the idea has been there from the beginning: keep learning, keep trying, keep growing, keep becoming. Pursue your purpose. Follow your passion. Build better habits. Learn from mistakes. Try again.

Only Erin’s paper helped me see something I had not thought about before.

Most of us probably start with a growth mindset.

Especially when we are young. Especially in elementary school. Especially when we have great teachers, like Mrs. McCann, who praise effort, offer support, provide feedback, and create classrooms where mistakes are not treated like disasters.

When you are in first grade, learning is supposed to be messy. Letters are backwards. Numbers are confusing. Shoes are untied. Words are sounded out one painful syllable at a time. Nobody expects you to be polished. Nobody expects you to know everything. Nobody looks at a six-year-old struggling to read and says, “Well, I guess reading just isn’t for you.”

At least, they shouldn’t.

Instead, great teachers say things like the ones Erin included in her paper:

“This is new for our brains, so it’s not meant to feel easy right away.”

“We are going to keep a growth mindset and remember the power of yet.”

“Mistakes help our brains grow.”

Imagine if adults spoke to themselves that way.

Imagine if we treated our own struggles, failures, setbacks, and unfinished dreams with the same patience we offer a first grader learning regrouping in math, or sounding out a sentence, or trying to fix a drawing they think is ruined.

We don’t, though.

Somewhere along the way, people and events begin to chip away at our growth mindset. A bad grade. A coach who embarrasses you. A teacher who doesn’t see you. A parent who means well but says the wrong thing. A job rejection. A breakup. A business failure. A lost client. A diagnosis. A divorce. A dream that once felt possible but now seems ridiculous because you are too old, too busy, too late, too tired, too whatever.

Little by little, “I can’t do this yet” becomes “I can’t do this.”

And eventually, if we are not careful, “I can’t do this” becomes “This is just who I am.”

That is a dangerous sentence.

Erin’s paper focused on first-grade students, but so much of what she wrote translates to the corporate world, the locker room, the stage, the kitchen table, the doctor’s office, the blank page, and the middle of the night when you are staring at the ceiling wondering whether it is too late to become someone different.

One section that stood out to me was the idea that growth mindset is not achieved through motivational language alone. In other words, telling a kid, “Just try harder,” is not enough. In fact, it can backfire. If all we do is praise effort without offering guidance, support, and meaningful feedback, effort can begin to feel like failure.

Adults know this feeling well.

If you are struggling at work and someone says, “Just keep grinding,” that might be motivating for about eight seconds. But if you do not have coaching, direction, strategy, support, or someone helping you see what needs to change, “keep grinding” can become exhausting. Worse, it can make you blame yourself for not succeeding faster.

Growth mindset is not pretending everything is possible if you simply work hard enough. That is not mindset. That is a bumper sticker. Or worse, an Instagram reel.

Real growth mindset requires support. It requires instruction. It requires feedback. It requires honesty. It requires people who believe in your ability to improve, but also care enough to help you improve. That is what great teachers do. They do not just cheer from the sidelines. They get down next to the child and say, “Let’s take it step by step.”

That line was in Erin’s paper, too.

When a student said, “This is too hard for me,” the teacher response was, “It feels hard right now, but let’s take it step by step.”

Not, “No it’s not.”

Not, “Stop complaining.”

Not, “Try harder.”

It feels hard right now.

There is a lot of wisdom in those five words. They acknowledge the struggle without making the struggle permanent. They validate the feeling without turning it into an identity.

It feels hard right now.

Not forever. Not always. Not because you are incapable. Right now.

I tossed and turned most of the night after reading Erin’s paper. For many reasons, but in part because I kept thinking about my own growth mindset. I thought about Mrs. McCann. I thought about Mrs. Blake, my fifth-grade teacher, who encouraged me to pursue creative writing. I thought about Mr. Dalton at Xaverian, who told me I would be representing the school at a leadership conference. I thought about Brother Moran. I thought about Ann Spector at Fairfield, my Composition and Prose professor, who taught me how to become a better writer.

None of them made me who I am, exactly. But they helped me believe there was more in me. They helped me see something I could not fully see yet.

That is what great teachers do.

And that is what great coaches, mentors, parents, managers, friends, spouses, and leaders do, too. They do not just tell us we are good enough. They help us believe we can get better.

That may be even more important.

Because the older we get, the easier it becomes to let our fixed beliefs harden. We begin to say things like, “I’m not creative.” “I’m bad with money.” “I could never speak in public.” “I’m not a reader.” “I’m too old to go back to school.” “I missed my chance.” “I’m not disciplined.” “I’m not athletic.” “I’m not a writer.”

Be careful with every sentence that begins with “I’m not.”

Some of them may be true today. Some may have been true for a long time. But that does not mean they are permanent.

One of the best parts of Erin’s paper was the student interview section. When first graders were asked what it means to practice a growth mindset, one student said, “To talk nicely to your brain.”

Yes! To talk nicely to your brain. I’m not sure any academic definition could say it better.

How many of us do that? How many of us talk to ourselves with kindness, patience, and belief? How many of us give ourselves the same grace we give a child learning something for the first time?

Not enough, I bet.

We talk to ourselves like disappointed bosses, frustrated coaches, sarcastic classmates, or critics who have been waiting years for the chance to say, “See, I told you.”

Maybe growth mindset at 54 is not all that different from growth mindset at 6. Maybe it still begins with the same basic idea: I can learn. I can improve. I can ask for help. I can make a mistake and try again. I can be frustrated without giving up. I can do hard things, even if they feel hard right now.

One first grader said growth mindset means, “Always a second chance.”

Another said, “To know you can do it even if it takes a few tries.”

Another wrote that a goal for second grade was “to try to solve hard problems.”

Not avoid hard problems. Try to solve them.

There is a difference.

And maybe that is the lesson for the rest of us. We do not need to become fearless. We do not need to pretend failure does not hurt. We do not need to become relentlessly positive or slap the word “yet” onto every disappointment and call it growth.

We just need to keep believing that improvement is possible.

At any age.

With the right support, the right people, the right feedback, and the right willingness to begin again, growth mindset keeps us healthy. It keeps us alive. It keeps us curious. It keeps us connected to possibility. And ultimately, I think, it helps keep us happy.

Because happiness is not only found in achievement. It is found in progress. In learning. In trying something that scares you. In getting a little better. In realizing that the thing you thought was over might only be entering a new chapter.

The world will chip away at your growth mindset if you let it. Disappointment will. Failure will. Age will. Comparison will. Other people’s opinions will. Your own inner voice definitely will.

Don’t let that happen. Or, more realistically, don’t let it keep happening.

Talk nicely to your brain. Remember the power of yet. Take it step by step. Ask for help when you need it. Stop treating mistakes as proof that you do not belong in the room.

You are still learning. We all are.

See you next week.

The number of years Erin and I have lived with our Nystagmus.

Nystagmus, pronounced “ni-STAG-muhs,” is a condition where your eyes make rapid, repetitive, uncontrolled movements. Ours go side-to-side, but for some people, the movement can go up and down or in a circular motion. Either way, they are always moving. Even while we’re asleep.

And because our eyes are always moving, our brains must work harder to create stable images. People with nystagmus can deal with blurry or shaky vision, trouble focusing, reduced depth perception, light sensitivity, difficulty seeing at night, balance issues, dizziness, or the feeling that the world is moving.

Check.

In everyday life, this means we often have trouble reading, driving, playing sports, staring at screens, making eye contact, recognizing faces from even a short distance, and navigating crowded or unfamiliar places. It is also tiring. Really tiring. Ask anyone who is required to give maximum concentration for extended periods of time. Like, most of the day.

Check.

For some people, it is mild and manageable. For others, it can be significantly limiting, especially if it affects driving, work, school, or confidence in social situations. And headaches. Lots of headaches.

Check.

Our family celebrated Nystagmus Day on Saturday. I had two scoops of chocolate peanut butter ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. Erin had soft serve with sprinkles. Rainbow, I think. But long before enjoying our ice cream, we received an early morning text from Coleen.

What a great way to start Nystagmus Day, and an even greater reminder of how lucky Erin and I are to live with someone who recognizes our challenges. Struggles, to be honest.

That’s a tricky word sometimes. Struggle. Because the moment you acknowledge your own, part of you starts measuring it against someone else’s. At least I do. There are people with far greater struggles than Erin and me. People who cannot see at all. People who cannot walk. People living with chronic pain, serious illness, addiction, poverty, grief, loneliness, depression, or diagnoses that change everything in one awful sentence.

So where does nystagmus fit into all of that?

I don’t always know.

My dad used to say, “It could always be worse.” I hated when he said that. Hated it. Not because he was wrong, but because it felt like he was trying to talk me out of whatever I was feeling. Like my frustration didn’t count because someone else had it harder.

But he was right. It could always be worse.

He died of Alzheimer’s, and somehow even that sentence comes with its own terrible comparison. There are worse ways to die. There are faster ways. More painful ways. More violent ways. More lonely ways. But knowing that does not make Alzheimer’s less cruel. It does not give back the years it stole from him or the version of my father we lost long before he died.

That’s the balance I keep coming back to this week. Other people having harder battles does not mean ours are imaginary. It just means we should hold our struggles with perspective, not shame.

I don’t want pity for having nystagmus. I don’t want it to become an excuse or something to blame for failures, disappointments, or things I didn’t have the courage or discipline to do. At the same time, I also don’t want to pretend it has not shaped my life.

It has.

It shaped how I read. How I studied. How I played sports.

It continues to shape how I drive. How I walk into rooms. How I recognize people. How I sometimes avoid eye contact, not because I am uninterested, rude, or distracted, but because my eyes are already working harder than people realize.

Nystagmus has shaped the ways in which I have adapted to so many things, without always knowing I was adapting.

I wonder how much of Erin’s life has been shaped the same way. She is twenty-three now, and like me, she has never known anything different. This is just how the world has always looked to her. Moving a little. Shaking a little. Demanding a little more from her than it does from most people.

And still, she continues to make the best of every situation she faces.

Maybe that’s the part worth celebrating. Not the condition itself, exactly, but the resilience required to live with it. Recognition days can sometimes feel a little silly from the outside. There’s a day for everything now. But when it’s your thing, or your child’s thing, it feels different. It’s not about asking the world to stop. It’s more about asking the world to notice.

Not forever. Just for a minute. To understand that some people are carrying things you cannot see. Some are obvious. Some are hidden. Some are heavy. Some are simply constant.

Nystagmus does not make Erin or me weaker. I think, in many ways, it has made us stronger. More determined. More empathetic. More aware that everybody has something they are dealing with, even when they look fine from the outside.

Do I wish I didn’t have it?

Absolutely.

Do I wish Erin didn’t have it?

Even more.

But we do. The decision is not really whether to accept it. We accepted it a long time ago because we never had another option. The decision is whether to let it alter our lives any more than it has to.

And that answer, most days, is no.

We will keep reading, even when our eyes get tired. We will keep writing, even when the screen gives us headaches. We will keep walking into rooms, even when faces blur from across the way. We will keep driving, working, teaching, parenting, speaking, laughing, celebrating, and ordering ice cream with sprinkles.

We will keep shaking.

And we will keep remembering that, yes, it could always be worse. But that does not mean this is always easy.

See you next week.

USA’s massive win over Paraguay alone would have been enough, but hearing Coleen and Campbell describe their experience from the game in LA was so cool. Then Campbell flew home with Col to stay with us for a bit. Couple more games to see at Gillette—sorry, Boston Stadium—a Red Sox game at Fenway, nightly dinners together, a round of golf or two and who knows what else.

Let’s go!

Speaking of golf. On Thursday, I played for the first time in a year at a fundraiser in Canton. We came in last place. No joke. They even gave us hats. More importantly, the two scholarship recipients were both cancer survivors, both graduating high school seniors, and both heading to Fairfield University in the fall.

The following day, Friday, I had an early dinner with someone special, someone I’ve known for 40 years. He’s bravely battling some serious health conditions. His attitude, spirit, and generosity continue to inspire me. Like, I’m in awe each time I leave his company. And it’s incredible to witness his friends showing up for him during his greatest time of need. He’s not just special to me—he’s remarkable to every one of us.

Erin and I were both in Boston to see our friends. It was the day before Scotland’s first World Cup game (their first in 28 years), and their fans took over the city. I’ve never seen more fans of a foreign team in my lifetime. Kilts and brogues were everywhere, and it was a delight to witness.

Speaking of kilts, I’ve got mine ready for Scotland’s match against Morocco Friday night (Coleen’s kilt from high school) and Dave assures me that he has the face paint. We’re both going to be Scottish for the night.

Tomorrow night is Fenway Park. Bleacher seats, baby! Sausage, peppers, and onions, peanuts from the street guy on Landsdowne Street, and overpriced beer.

Let’s go!

The response to Beyond The Green has been tremendous. The interest from recent college grads and young adults has been the best surprise. Thank you to many of you who have already purchased a copy.

One of the most challenging parts of being a publisher, personally, is promoting my authors’ books. And my own. I want them to crush it—each one of them. I have to remind myself, and them, that they’ve already crushed it by sharing their stories with the world.

And they keep coming. In August, we’ll publish John Cady’s Ten Toes Down: Risking It All for At-Risk Students. In the Fall, Jim Malley’s The Seeds We Sow: How Experience Changes the Brain and Human Behavior is due.

I was in a funk for part of May. After Erin graduated with her master’s in elementary education, I came down with a cold that lasted for weeks. At the same time, I pulled my back. My morning exercise and meditation routines took a back seat. I didn’t feel myself.

What brought me out of the funk wasn’t the World Cup or Scottish fans. It wasn’t the launch of Beyond The Green or the start of summer.

My friend of 40 years brought me out of it.

Witnessing his courage up close. Talking about faith and family and friendship. Discussing plants and Mike’s Pastry and our alma maters. Talking about our friends and the moments we’ve shared.

If he’s up to it, this weekend we’re going to watch the new Avatar movie. Lobster rolls this time, because, hey—why not.

And again, I’ll say: let’s go!

It doesn’t always go our way. Plans go sideways. Big life plans, like colleges, careers and relationships. We get sidetracked (nachos, anyone—sorry, couldn’t resist the inside joke for our Fairfield friends).

Things happen to us that we can’t explain. Or sometimes believe.

When I think back, when I remember the bad stuff that has happened to me—the times I got left out or off, discounted or dismissed, neglected or ignored…it was always my friends who brought me back.

There’s a reason why you immediately fall back into a comfortable rhythm when you are with friends you haven’t seen in years. Five years, forty years. They’re still your friends.

They have their own lives and families now, but they never stop being your friends. And when they show up for you in your greatest time of need — and not everyone does — it says everything about the kind of person you've been to them.

Something to think about.

I think the next time I get myself into a funk, I’ll think of my friends much sooner. Maybe shoot a quick text to some people I haven’t said hello to in a while.

It always amazes me…how much of a difference a little text can make. Not to me, even though my intent is to make myself feel better. But to the person receiving it.

Know what I mean?

I know you do.

See you next week.

There’s rarely a plan heading into the writing of MARK. Set. Go… There’s definitely not a backlog of articles waiting to be released each Tuesday. It’s more like the news— what’s happening in my life at the time, or whatever pops into focus when I sit down, is what I write about.

Readers of Ten Days With Dad know I had two early ambitions: baking and writing. Going back to elementary school. Easy-Bake Oven and Mrs. Blake, in that order. Then my journal.

In high school I wrote for the literary magazine and the newspaper. It wasn’t deliberate. It was like one day I decided to go for it and submit something. No idea why, really, other than to say the pull was always there.

By senior year I was named Editor in Chief of the paper, assigning stories to my editors, including my good friend Jeff, the PhotArtTainment Editor. We thought it was clever.

At Fairfield, I created a class newsletter with Pamela, Michelle, Rob, Tricia, and Coleen. ‘94 Knows Fairfield. Light, fun, and yes, we also thought it was clever. Some things don’t change.

Now, in my fifties and writing books, helping others write books, publishing a weekly newsletter, I can say: mission accomplished. I became a writer.

Only I was a writer the whole time. I became one the moment I decided to become one. Or dreamt of it.

My Aunt Janet, pronounced Ahnt, not Ant, gave me a book my senior year of high school: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. I know I read it, but I’d forgotten all about it until I rediscovered it in a keepsake box. Not on the shelf, but tucked in with journals, letters, and other memorabilia. From high school.

Epistemological—I had to look it up, and I’m not ashamed. Jim and Yuka probably didn’t have to. It has to do with how we know what we know. How we distinguish justified belief from mere opinion. Which is, it turns out, exactly the question I’ve been asking myself lately.

I’ve been under a microscope. My own, not anyone else’s, so no alarm bells; but I’ve been looking for signs. Permission, maybe. Confirmation that I’m supposed to be doing what I’m doing.

I’m supposed to be a writer. And I am. And I’ll write until I’m no longer able.

That should be enough, right?

So does it matter: how we arrive at the conclusion that we’re meant to be doing something? Or more of what we’re already doing?

Hang on. Chomping gum. Just bit the back of my tongue. Ouch.

Wait — is that a sign?

Never mind. The pain is subsiding.

Last week I wrote about ADHD. This week I’m writing about what it feels like to want to write — to need it, to be pulled back to it, to shout “Simba!” when you’ve let it go feral for a day.

If you haven’t found your thing yet—don’t stop looking. Put yourself under the microscope, in a healthy way, and look for the signs.

Chances are, you already know. You’ve always known. The pull has always been there.

So, what’s holding you back?

See you next week.

He is loud in the best possible way. Generous with his stories. Brutally honest about his brain. Somehow both wildly accomplished and completely willing to tell you where he has fallen apart.

I’ve read or listened to Peter’s book, Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain, at least three times so far, and each time, I learn something new about my ADHD, and about myself.

His book, along with Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey, are the only books I consistently recommend on ADHD. On the latter, you may know you have ADHD after reading pages 4–7. If you are still not completely sure, read chapter four.

This week, I asked Peter for permission to share one of his recent pieces in full because he says something about ADHD that I have been circling around for a long time but could not quite land this cleanly: that the same brain people often treat like a problem can also be the very thing that saves you, pushes you, rebuilds you, and refuses to let someone else’s doubt have the final word.

His essay is about discipline and weight loss on the surface, but underneath, it is really about shame, identity, decision, and learning to stop apologizing for the way your mind was built.

Thank you for sharing this, Peter.

The Decision Is the Whole Game

On doubters, doors, and the quiet moment that changed everything

by Peter Shankman on May 12, 2026

Two photos. Nine months apart. Same guy, completely different operating system.

The one on the left was taken in August of 2025 in my bedroom. The one on the right was taken this morning, in the mirror inside Equinox Hudson Yards, with that red EXIT sign glowing over my shoulder like some kind of accidental metaphor. Forty pounds down. A staggering amount of muscle put on. Nine solid months of discipline that the August 2025 version of me genuinely did not believe he had in him.

I want to talk about how I got from one photo to the other, but not in the way you think. I am not going to give you a macro breakdown. I am not going to tell you what protein powder I take or what my split looks like or which Peloton instructor I like the most. (Charlotte Weidenbach.) There are a thousand newsletters that will do that for you, and most of them are written by people in better shape than me anyway.

I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about the two doors.

The two doors

Here is something most people who do not have ADHD will never quite understand about the ADHD brain. When someone doubts you, when someone tells you that you cannot do something, when someone looks at you with that particular flavor of pity that says “oh honey, that is not for people like you,” one of two things happens, and there is NEVER a middle ground. There is no thoughtful integration of the feedback. There is no mature, measured response where you sit with it for a few days and decide how to incorporate the criticism. There are two doors, and your brain picks one of them in roughly the same amount of time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings once.

Door number one is the shame door. I used to have a damn EZ-PASS for door number one. In door number one, you believe what they said to you. The rabbit hole opens up underneath you and you fall in. You spend the next six weeks, or six months, or six years, convinced they were right about you all along. You eat the feelings. You drink the feelings. You occasionally snort the feelings. You become exactly the person they said you were, partly out of spite, partly out of grief, mostly because once that voice gets into your head it brings a mother in law amount of luggage, and it never quite leaves.

Then there’s door number two, and that’s the door I want you to know about. In door number two, something flips. A switch you didn’t know existed gets thrown somewhere in the basement of your nervous system, and every neuron locks onto a single thought, which is some variation of “oh, you think I can’t? F you, I’m doing this.” And then you go, balls out, in a direction you didn’t even know you were facing five minutes earlier, and you do the exact thing the doubter said you could never do, and you do it harder than you needed to, just to make a point that the doubter will probably never even see you make.

I have walked through both doors in my life.

I will tell you right now, with absolute certainty, that door number one has never once worked out for me. Not ONE single time. Every time I picked door number one, I wound up fat, sometimes hungover, hating the guy in the mirror, and wondering how I let someone else’s opinion become my prison. EVERY. TIME. There is no version of the story where door number one was secretly the wise choice in disguise. There is no plot twist waiting on the other side of that door. There is just shame, and weight gain, and a slow erosion of every promise you ever made to yourself, until one day you cannot remember the last promise you actually kept.

Door number two is the only door.

The receipts

I know this because I have receipts. Tell me I cannot write a book, I will write six. Tell me I cannot build a company, I will build five and exit three. Tell me a guy with a wandering brain and roughly forty too many pounds on him cannot rebuild his body from scratch in his fifties, and well, you can scroll back up to the right side of that photo.

Every single one of those things started with somebody, somewhere, telling me I could not. A teacher. A boss. A relative at a Thanksgiving table. A guy on an airplane who nonchalantly said to me “Aren’t you a bit too heavy to complete an Ironman Triathlon?” (Seriously.) A voice in my own head that sounded suspiciously like a composite of all the above. And every single one of those things only got finished because at some point my ADHD brain stopped negotiating with the voice and walked, very deliberately, through door number two.

I’m telling you this for one reason only: If you have an ADHD brain, or a brain that works in any way adjacent to one, you need to hear it from someone who has done both. You need to hear that the door number one outcome is not a sometimes-thing. It is an always-thing. The shame spiral does not occasionally produce growth. It does not secretly build character. It does not have a hidden upside that reveals itself in chapter twelve. It just produces more shame. The fuel it burns is your future, and there is zero return on that investment.

The part that has nothing to do with the doubters

Here is the real truth though, and this is the part I want you to actually take with you, because the rest of this is just preamble.

The doubters are just the spark. They are not the fire. The fire has to come from you.

At some point, quietly, with no audience and no announcement and no Instagram post and no New Year’s resolution, you have to decide you have had enough. Enough of the version of yourself you keep apologizing for. Enough of the promises you keep breaking to yourself in the dark. Enough of telling people about the thing you are going to start on Monday. Enough of waiting for the right Monday, which is, by the way, a Monday that does not exist and never has and never will.

You have to decide. You literally have to wake up one morning, maybe hungover, definitely bloated, and you have to look in the mirror and hate what’s looking back at you. Or worse, look in the mirror and not see anything at all in your reflection. That’s when you’ll finally make your decision to walk through door number two.

That decision is the whole game. That is it. That is the entire ballgame in one sentence. Everything after the decision is just math and reps. Heavy weights five days a week. Peloton sessions when I wanted to sleep. Meals weighed and tracked when I wanted pizza. Showing up on the days I felt invincible and, FAR more importantly, on the days I felt like garbage. None of it is glamorous. None of it makes for good content. It is just the slow, quiet, unphotogenic accumulation of a thousand small honored commitments, which is what change actually is when you take all the marketing bullshit out of it.

But none of that math, none of those reps, none of those quietly-honored 3:30 AM alarms, would have happened without the decision. The decision is upstream of everything.

What the ADHD brain actually is

For most of my life, people treated my ADHD brain like a defect. Like a thing to be managed, medicated into compliance, apologized for. Something I had to work around to be successful, rather than something that was contributing to the success in the first place.

That is exactly backwards.

The same brain that cannot sit through a thirty-minute meeting is the brain that can hyperfocus on a problem for fourteen hours straight and come out the other side with something nobody else would have built. The same brain that loses its keys six times a day is the brain that remembers, with perfect clarity, the exact tone of voice someone used to doubt it in June of 1994. The same brain that gets bored of dinner halfway through eating it is the brain that will absolutely, positively, will-not-be-stopped lock onto a goal and grind on it for nine straight months when the conditions are right.

The condition is door number two.

The brain that everyone once treated as a defect is the same brain that got me from the photo on the left to the photo on the right. It is the same brain that built and sold companies. It is the same brain that wrote the books. It is the same brain that, at 53 years old, finds the gym at six in the morning in whatever city I happen to be in, because the decision was made nine months ago and the reps are just what comes after.

If you have one of these brains, I am BEGGING you: Stop apologizing for it. Stop trying to make it quieter. Stop letting other people tell you what it can and cannot do. Find the door. You already know which one.

Walk through it.

Every single time.

Another must-read for anyone living with ADHD.

Wrapping up, I want to congratulate Bellarmine Publishing’s newest authors: Craig Haba and Alex Haba. Their debut book, Beyond The Green: Building Wealth, Purpose, and Legacy Through the Wisdom of Golf, launched yesterday.

With Father’s Day and graduation season upon us, it has been beautiful to see people giving Beyond The Green to fathers and graduates. So many young adults are just beginning to figure out what kind of life they want to build. We didn’t expect the book to resonate with them the way it has.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised us. The lessons in the book are about patience, confidence, discipline, disappointment, joy, and learning how to carry yourself when no one is keeping score for you. They are about noticing who you are becoming before life starts pulling them in every direction. Before the habits harden. Before someone else’s voice becomes louder than your own.

It just goes to show, it is never too early to start thinking beyond the green.

The book is available on Amazon.

See you next week.

It’s Tuesday, but it feels like Monday, the strange gift of a holiday weekend that will have me floating through the week asking what day is it again? with genuine uncertainty.

But this wasn’t just any Monday. It was Memorial Day. The day we pause, or at least, we’re supposed to, and honor the men and women who didn’t make it home. We don’t know most of their stories and we sometimes forget Memorial Day wasn’t created to kickoff summer, but to never forget those who served and sacrificed—for us.

This weekend, I learned a name I won’t forget: William Campbell.

William is Coleen's great, great, great, great grandfather. A farmer, not a soldier. Forty-five or forty-six years old, an age when most of us are thinking about our knees or our 401k, he picked up a rifle and marched toward Gettysburg.

He was a member of the 124th New York Infantry Regiment, better known as the Orange Blossoms— formed in Goshen, in Orange County, NY, in 1862. The men who filled its ranks came from Newburgh, Warwick, Cornwall, Monroe, Port Jervis. Everyday men from everyday towns who answered a call that asked everything of them.

I learned some of this from the internet, and some of it from Tim Campbell, who recently made the pilgrimage to Gettysburg with his dad and several other Campbells.

This past weekend in Pennsylvania, Tim was our weekend tour guide, and he delivered, recalling so much from his visit to Gettysburg. Like how the majority of Union soldiers were not professional military men. They were lawyers and architects, mechanics and carpenters, teachers and preachers. Men from every walk of life showed up and headed straight to the front.

The Confederate Army, by contrast, was fighting with roughly half the men, around 25,000 to the Union’s 45,000, but they were stacked with professional soldiers and some of their finest officers.

Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War, and the reasons run deeper than most of us learned in school.

Robert E. Lee wasn’t just trying to win a battle. He was trying to win the war psychologically—a major Confederate victory on Union soil, he believed, would shatter Northern morale, pressure Lincoln into peace talks, and most importantly, earn the Confederacy formal international recognition. European powers were watching. The stakes could not have been higher.

Lee was denied.

The Union victory didn’t just stop his momentum, it broke it. Confederate losses exceeded 20,000, including many of Lee’s most irreplaceable men. The shift in national confidence was immediate and seismic, and it set the stage for something Lincoln said on that same ground just months later: the Gettysburg Address. Which, I’m delighted to report, my daughter Erin can recite from memory, having been forced to memorize it in 8th grade. She didn’t love it at the time. She probably does now.

The Orange Blossoms fought primarily on July 2nd, at a place called Devil’s Den, one of the bloodiest, most chaotic corners of the battlefield. I always assumed Gettysburg was one giant field, but it actually spans for miles and miles.

The Union was outnumbered and forced to retreat at multiple points across the three-day battle. But their stand at Devil’s Den helped buy critical time for the entire Union left flank. The Orange Blossoms’ monument on the battlefield honors Colonel Augustus van Horne Ellis on horseback—a lawyer, not a soldier— who chose to lead visibly and bravely, even knowing it would likely cost him his life. It did.

On July 2nd alone, the 124th New York suffered 28 deaths. 57 more men were wounded. Five were never found and presumed dead. Over three days, they absorbed 90 casualties, roughly 32% of their regiment.

Tim shared that six men manned each cannon, capable of firing artillery over two miles. The men’s rifles got so overheated from constant fire that they couldn’t be handled, so they reached for the rifles of the fallen soldiers around them, fired those until they cooled, then swapped back to their own. They fought with bayonets. With swords. With their hands, in direct hand-to-hand combat.

15,000 men died in a three-hour span.

Sit with that number for a moment.

1,700 monuments stand at Gettysburg today. The Orange Blossoms are just one regiment among hundreds who poured in from every corner of the Union. Everyday farmers standing shoulder to shoulder with professionals, fighting countrymen who had chosen a different set of beliefs, on hallowed, blood-soaked ground that would carry the weight of it forever.

William Campbell never made it home from that ground.

If the bodies weren’t recovered on the battlefield, they were buried there, like William was. In the same Pennsylvania earth where he fought. Where the Orange Blossoms held the line. Where a three-day battle changed the course of a nation.

He was a family man. Someone’s husband and father. And he went anyway.

I’ll probably spend half this week asking what day it is. The holiday-Monday brain fog is real, and I’m not above it.

But I won’t forget William Campbell.

And that’s exactly the point, not just of Memorial Day, but of learning these stories at all. We honor the fallen not by knowing every name, but by making sure the names we do know stay alive in us. Stay in the telling. Stay in the Tuesday newsletter that accidentally feels like Monday.

William Campbell fought at Devil’s Den with men who never thought they’d be soldiers.

The least I can do is remember him.

To all who served, and to all who never made it home: thank you.

Erin received her master’s degree in elementary education this weekend at Fairfield. Family from Baltimore, Maine, and New York came to celebrate, as did her friends from Philly, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Her first-grade students made her an adorable stole to wear on Saturday and were just as excited as we were. Plus, they met Coleen, Erin’s mom, Mrs. Resnick, who was the secret reader in Erin’s class on Friday. They loved that.

Another graduation among thousands of other graduations that took place. Only it wasn’t. Not because it was the seventh Fairfield University degree earned by either a Campbell or Resnick, but because this one felt uniquely personal.

As a teacher, Erin is required to earn her master’s at some point. Earning it as part of a fifth-year program meant she could complete it in just one year. As she did. But seeing Erin thrive in her role as a teacher at Greens Farms Academy, and seeing how much her students love her, made this one feel different. Bigger, somehow. Not because of the diploma, but because of what the diploma confirms.

Erin belongs in the classroom. I think she has known this for a long time, but Coleen got to witness it firsthand when she was the classroom secret reader. I could see it on Coleen’s face when she got back and throughout the weekend. The tears of happiness for Erin. The pride. The feeling of watching your child find something that fits.

It’s not easy to find something you’re really passionate about right out of the gate. But Erin has, and we’re happy and proud and excited for her.

Professional degrees aside, a master’s degree is sometimes a “gap year.” A figure-it-out-kind-of-year. Or, like me, something you’ve always wanted to earn, either to get better at your craft or to round out your expertise for professional advancement.

Maybe that’s what education is supposed to do at its best. Not just add letters after your name but help you see who you are becoming. No matter what your age is.

This week also marked the end of my third graduate class for what will one day be a master’s in creative writing and literature. And because I started taking these classes, I finally found the courage to go outside my comfort zone (non-fiction writing), which has led to my next book.

It’s not about caregiving or self-improvement or building better habits. It’s a novel. My first. Even typing that still feels strange. Exciting, too. Maybe a little terrifying. But mostly, it feels like something I’ve been thinking about for a long time without admitting how badly I wanted to try.

Here’s a teaser description:

And for those who are curious, the tomatoes have moved outside. The garden bed is packed with herbs and flowers that are supposed to be good for tomato plants. Chives, thyme, mint, oregano, marigolds, and more. I carefully wrapped the bed with netting to keep those pesky squirrels away, too. Let’s hope they survive the heat wave that many of us are experiencing this week.

Maybe that’s the theme this week. Degrees. Drafts. Tomatoes. You plant something, protect it the best you can, and hope it grows.

See you next week.

The night was over. Or almost over.

The DJ had one last trick. Parents were waiting outside. The gym lights were still low enough to make everyone look a little better than they did in English. And if you were lucky, you had eight minutes to hold someone close and pretend you weren’t counting every second.

That was “Stairway” for me.

Not classic rock history. Not a debate over whether Led Zeppelin was overrated, underrated, or exactly rated. Not a dissertation on Jimmy Page.

The last dance.

Am I right?

If you are flipping through stations, or scrolling Spotify for the younger readers, and “Stairway to Heaven” comes on, you stop. You may not even consider yourself a classic rock person anymore. Maybe you never were. Maybe hard rock is no longer your jam. Maybe you have moved on to podcasts, playlists, and songs that last two minutes and forty seconds because we’re too busy now for a proper guitar solo.

Doesn’t matter. You stop.

For eight minutes, you are listening to Led Zeppelin build that thing one note at a time. Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham somehow stretch the song into something that still feels shorter than it should.

Maybe that’s why it still works.

There is something in it about wanting more. Something higher. Something just out of reach. We spend a lot of our lives trying to buy, earn, prove, or perform our way toward whatever version of “heaven” we think will finally settle us down.

And then, if we are lucky, we begin to realize the stairway was never for sale.

Maybe that’s too much meaning to put on a song that, for most of us, was really about hoping the person we liked would say yes when the slow dance started.

But music has a way of carrying more than we ask it to.

All of this to say: I don’t consider myself a music person.

I never really was growing up. Mostly, I remember being annoyed by how loud my older brother Bill played his music. In his room. In the car. Probably in places where music did not need to be played quite that loud. But it was classic rock, and even if I complained about the volume, I never really minded the music itself.

My own song choices were usually based on my mood at the time, which often meant they were tied to whichever girl I was hopelessly chasing and how much the song reminded me of her.

Music marks time better than almost anything else. Even those of us who are musically challenged, and I am placing myself firmly in that category, understand that certain songs become attached to certain rooms, certain people, certain versions of ourselves.

A song can put you back in a gymnasium, car, bedroom, hospital room, funeral, or sporting event.

If there is one thing I regret in how I cared for my dad during his Alzheimer’s journey, it is that I did not play more music for him. I think about that whenever Zeppelin or Queen start to play.

There are plenty of things you second-guess as a caregiver. Some are fair. Some are not. You do the best you can with the information, energy, patience, fear, and exhaustion you have at the time. Then later, when things are quieter, your brain starts pulling files from the cabinet.

Why didn’t I do more of that? Why didn’t I try this sooner? Why didn’t I know?

Music is one of those files for me.

Because music can reach a person with Alzheimer’s or dementia in a way ordinary conversation often can’t. Nothing we play is going to cure the disease. I wish it worked that way. Nothing reverses what Alzheimer’s takes.

But music can create moments of recognition, calm, joy, movement, and connection. I’ll never forget visiting my dad one night and seeing him dancing with his friend, Mary. The way he moved with her. Smiling. Enjoying the moment.

I remember watching them and feeling that strange caregiver combination of joy and ache. Joy because he was happy. Ache because you want to bottle that version of the person and keep it safe somewhere the disease can never reach.

For a few minutes, the music gave him something back.

Or maybe it gave me something back.

That’s the part I wish I had understood sooner. Music wasn’t going to give me the old Dad back, but it might have given him more moments like that. More taps of the foot. More smiles. More movement. More chances for connection when conversation became difficult.

The Alzheimer’s Association says music may reduce agitation and behavioral issues, especially in the middle stages of the disease. Even in late-stage Alzheimer’s, a person may still tap a beat or sing lyrics from childhood.

Music can remain accessible even when language becomes harder. The Mayo Clinic has noted that parts of the brain connected to musical memory may be relatively less damaged by Alzheimer’s. That may be why familiar songs can still stir emotion, movement, and recognition when other kinds of memory are harder to reach.

For caregivers, this is important.

Not because it fixes the situation. It doesn’t. But because caregiving happens in places where everyone is trying so hard. Trying to explain or redirect. Trying to comfort or trying not to lose patience. Trying not to cry. Trying to remember that the disease is the problem, not the person.

Music can soften the room. It gives everyone something to do besides struggle.

And the best kind of music is their music. Not yours.

Sorry, Zeppelin.

Brown University researchers studying personalized music in dementia care focused on “early preferred music,” often from the teen years and early twenties, because those songs can trigger autobiographical memories and emotional responses. In one study, personalized music did not dramatically change every behavior measure, but it did provide momentary relief from verbal agitation.

Emphasis on the word “momentary.”

Sometimes families want music to bring the person all the way back. And sometimes, briefly, it almost feels like it does.

A frozen face melts or a hand reaches out. A person who has been quiet suddenly sings every word.

But even when the moment doesn’t last, it still counts. For the person with dementia, it can offer comfort. For the caregiver, it can feel like a glimpse of the person they love is still there.

Alzheimer’s steals so much, but music can sometimes slip through the locked doors—the vault, as I called it.

It may only return a smile or shared look of recognition. A few seconds where the fog lifts just enough for both of you to feel something familiar again.

But when it comes to memory-related diseases, a few seconds can make all the difference in both of your days.

The benefits of music are not reserved for people with dementia. They are just easier to see there.

A song does not fix grief. It does not erase stress, guilt, anxiety, pressure, sadness, or whatever else followed you into the room. It will not clean the house, pay the bills, answer the email, repair the relationship, or make the hard thing any less hard.

But it might give you three minutes back. Three minutes of breathing. Three minutes of remembering. Three minutes of not being completely owned by whatever was owning you a minute earlier.

And some days, that’s not a small thing.

Some days, that’s the whole dance.

See you next week.

It’s tucked into the middle of the city but is somehow so quiet.

The streets are narrow and uneven. Cobblestones. Brick sidewalks. Gas lamps. Black shutters. Flower boxes. Polished door knockers. Iron railings. Steep front steps. Large windows that always make me wonder, who lives there?

Are they sitting near the window, sipping their morning coffee or tea?

What are they reading?

And do they pretend not to notice when tourists stop to take pictures of their gorgeous townhome?

It’s only when you get to the rooftops that Beacon Hill really opens up. From there, you can see the Charles River, Cambridge across the water, Back Bay, the Common, the State House dome, and the layered roofs and chimneys of old Boston.

It can feel European, but not exactly old Europe. More like Mayfair or Kensington in London. Maybe a little Dublin, too, with the brick facades and townhouse rhythm.

But it’s not Europe.

It’s way too Boston for that. American flags. Boston Common. The Freedom Trail. The kind of neighborhood that looks beautiful but doesn’t seem all that interested in whether you noticed.

I was there Saturday visiting a friend.

I’d never been to his apartment, so I had no idea what to expect. The first thing I noticed was his beautiful arrangement of potted plants.

They were everywhere. Sitting on shelves, in the windowsill, on the floor. Nearly perfect. The leaves were green and shiny and healthy. The soil had the right level of moisture. They were placed just so, basking in the natural light.

Those plants brought such peace to the room.

Coleen and I keep a somewhat neat home, but we definitely spiff it up when we’re expecting company. I got the impression that my friend is genuinely neat. That he didn’t go over the top to impress us. That this was just how he lived.

That’s the feeling I got when I walked in, anyway.

But I couldn’t stop looking at the plants.

Other visitors had brought some of them over time, and slowly his collection had built up.

Is that what I should call them? A collection?

My friend didn’t know much about plants at first, but he learned quickly. And I know those plants brought him joy because he told me.

Each morning, I sit in my reading room and journal, then meditate. But before I do, I look over my own darlings: five potted tomato plants, some herbs, a peace lily, and another nameless potted plant that, to be honest, is lucky to still be with us.

The peace lily and the nameless one were given to me by ASB right after my dad died in August of 2021. The fact that they’re still alive feels like a win.

A real win.

I want to have a green thumb, as I mentioned a few weeks ago when I shared my dream of growing prized tomatoes. Okay, edible tomatoes. Tomatoes that aren’t bruised or diseased or the size of a marble.

I’ve already spent, or invested, $50 on soil, seeds, planters, and other miscellaneous items.

And they’re barely surviving.

That’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight. I was beginning to wonder if I have what it takes to grow tomatoes at all.

Then I visited my friend.

There are no vegetable plants in his living room, but my gosh, you should see what he’s done with his plants. No prior experience. No sudden urge to become a botanist, or whatever plant people are called. No grand calling.

Just a little love, attention, and good intentions.

My friend inspired me.

He gave me hope.

I felt his love.

And I’m not even talking about plants anymore.

It wasn’t something he said during the visit. It was just his presence. Being in the room with him. Seeing the joy on his face. Remembering some of the things we’ve shared with each other over the years.

Some things you don’t need to explain.

Some friendships have their own language. Their own rhythm. Their own history tucked inside a laugh, a pause, a room full of lovely plants, showered with love, attention, and good intentions.

On the drive home, I wasn’t thinking about Beacon Hill, or the rooftop views, or what we had for lunch, or how the visit was the right amount of time but also not nearly enough time.

I was thinking about his plants.

I was thinking about how my friend has always given me love, attention, and good intentions.

At Xaverian. At Fairfield. And now.

I publish M.S.G. on Tuesdays because, well, nobody wants to be inspired on a Monday. We just want to recover from the weekend. Right?

But Tuesdays are different. On Tuesday, you still have the whole rest of the week in front of you.

So maybe there’s a chance I can inspire someone. Or give them hope. Or remind them they are loved.

Maybe a little love, attention, and good intention is enough to get someone through the week. Maybe it puts a smile on their face. Maybe it brings a little joy into a room that needed some.

A little gratitude for little things.

Plants in a Beacon Hill apartment. Tomatoes trying their best in my reading room. A peace lily that has somehow stayed with me since 2021. A friend. A visit. A room full of green.

Vibrant or barely alive, it’s the journey, isn’t it?

You might lose a plant or two along the way. You might not always know what you’re doing. You might wonder if you have what it takes.

But eventually, with a little love, attention, and good intention, something grows.

And if you’re lucky, it grows right in front of you.

See you next week.

“Nothing went right my sophomore year. It was one major disappointment after another. I was in and out of school with injury, illness, and injury again.”

As I wrote in Ten Days With Dad, my sophomore year at Xaverian Brothers High School was the worst year of my life (On My Own, 33).

I’ve had setbacks since then. Rejections from top colleges. The death of a childhood friend. Getting passed over for jobs. Leaving the family business. Watching family members suffer from anxiety. Receiving the news that my dad had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

All of that tops the list.

And yet I’m still claiming 1987 as the worst year on record.

My troubles began in August and didn’t end until June. A back injury. Hepatitis. A missed hockey season. Getting dumped by a girlfriend. Two broken wrists.

You don’t forget a stretch of months like that.

Especially when it happens during one of the more emotional seasons of your life, the early years of high school. Those years before you know your lane. Before you begin to establish an identity you don’t hate, or at least one you can tolerate, until things come into focus a little more clearly during the final two years.

I didn’t have the language for any of that then. I only knew that everything I cared about kept getting taken away, one thing after another.

I was recently reminded of that year while watching someone go through his own painful experience. He didn’t have to endure almost a full year of injuries and disappointments, but his situation, which unfolded over the course of one week, was devastating in its own way. The kind of non-life-threatening event you couldn’t imagine happening in a million years.

Under no circumstances.

And yet, it happened.

Nothing anyone said could fix it. Not really. And I recognized that helplessness immediately, because I had been on the receiving end of it back in 1987.

I didn’t want to listen to my dad or mom or stepmom while the events of that year were unfolding. Nothing my best friend, his mom, or any teacher said alleviated my pain, anger, or disappointment. I knew they were trying to make me feel better. I knew their hearts were in the right place.

I just didn’t want to hear it.

Looking back, I’m grateful for their kindness. Even when I rejected the words, it mattered to know people cared about me. I couldn’t accept the comfort yet, but I needed it around me.

That same idea came up last week in my graduate class, although in a completely different context. We were discussing the role of revision in the fiction writing process.

Beginner writers often think the first draft is the hardest part. Getting those brilliant thoughts onto the page is a daunting task, and the fear of not doing it well is often what prevents people from sharing their stories with the world.

But first drafts are terrible.

Awful.

There’s no such thing as a good first draft. Note to self: not even decent will suffice to describe your first attempt. This applies to every writer in every genre, Stephen King included.

That’s the first thing I remind new or aspiring writers of any medium. It’s the one thing you absolutely must understand and accept, as difficult as it may be.

Experienced writers know revision is, by far, the hardest part of the writing journey.

In his book The Art of Revision: The Last Word, Peter Ho Davies addresses the often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject of revision and its invisibility. Even though revision is an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see the final draft, leaving the practice itself shrouded in mystery.

Revision is where sentences become paragraphs, paragraphs become chapters, and chapters become books.

More than that, much more, it’s where point of view is confirmed, the protagonist’s physical and emotional stakes are set, prose styles are forged, themes are clarified, escalation and complication start heading in the right direction, the plot moves at the right pace, the characters become well-rounded, and the climax lands.

Revision is where you edit, cut, and chop your favorite and least favorite words, phrases, sentences, pages, and sometimes entire chapters. It’s where you begin to notice the causality of your sentence flow, the strength of your transitions, and all the places where you are telling instead of showing or showing too little.

I’m a little biased, but other than golf, writing is the hardest thing to do at an elite level.

There are just so many things to be aware of, to take into consideration, to plan for. Sentence to sentence. Shot to shot. Word choice. Club choice. The lie. The wind. The rhythm. The mistake you just made and the one you’re trying not to make next.

And yet, thankfully, we continue to write and play golf.

We find the levels that are appropriate to our skill set, while still trying to get to the next one. No matter how frustrating both can be, they give us great joy. The shot that keeps you coming back. The sentence that does the same.

But revision isn’t only for writing.

At least that’s what I kept thinking about after watching someone I care about move through a week that didn’t make sense, and after remembering a year of my own that didn’t make sense either.

When you’re inside the bad draft of an experience, you can’t see what it might become. You can’t imagine a better version. You can’t picture the scene changing, the meaning shifting, the chapter ending anywhere other than exactly where you’re standing.

That was 1987 for me. That was the draft I was living in.

And then, near the end of that same terrible year, a faculty committee selected me to represent Xaverian at the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership conference.

HOBY didn’t erase what had happened. The pain and disappointment of the prior ten months didn’t magically disappear. I didn’t suddenly become grateful for hepatitis or broken wrists or the season I missed. That would be too simple.

The year that had taken so much from me also handed me an opportunity I never saw coming. Not a perfect ending. Just a different doorway than the one I had been staring at all year.

That’s the power of revision.

Not pretending the first draft was fine. Not crossing out the hard parts because they make the story uncomfortable. Not rushing to tell someone in pain that it will all work out, because sometimes that only makes them feel more alone.

Revision means staying with the material long enough to discover what else might be there.

Sometimes that material is a sentence that refuses to flow the way you want it to.

Sometimes it’s a golf swing that keeps betraying you.

Sometimes it’s a year like 1987.

Sometimes it’s one awful week in someone else’s life, and all you can do is stand nearby with the kind of love and kindness they may not be ready to accept yet.

We usually don’t see transformation in real time. How could we, when things are still raw and fresh? When the pain is still loud? When every well-meaning person sounds like they’re speaking a language we’re not ready to learn?

But time gives us distance, and distance gives us the chance to revise the meaning. Not the facts. The facts remain. The injuries happened. The illness happened. The disappointment happened. The diagnosis happened. The loss happened.

Revision doesn’t change the events, but it does change what we are able to do with them.

It lets us return to the page, the course, the memory, the person we were, and ask a different question. Not, “How do I make this disappear?” but “What else is here that I couldn’t see before?”

Revision isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.

And although it may seem impossible in the middle of whatever first draft we’re living through, there may come a time when we recognize that the thing we never wanted, the thing we would never choose, still had something more to give us.

A little perspective.

A little patience.

A doorway.

Maybe even a next chapter.

See you next week.

It’s the first period. Bruins vs. Sabres. And what a start. Fights, penalties, breakaways, up-and-down action, and lots of snacks.

April is the one month of the year that I knowingly gain weight. That’s because of the playoffs. The Bruins and Celtics need me to eat my Cheese Puffs, Doritos, and drink my beers, or else they lose. I know that. They know that. My family knows it.

I’m live-writing, but I knew all day this was the topic of this week’s MARK. Set. Go…. I got the idea over the weekend watching Sean and Bates compete in Concord, New Hampshire. I wouldn’t call them lucky pants exactly, but I can’t help thinking about which socks I wore, what sweatshirt I had on, or what I ate on days when Sean had a great round.

Makes sense, right? It worked once, why can’t it work again?

Because that’s not how it works. Ever.

What I wear, eat, chant, or pray has no impact on Sean’s or the Bruins’ performance, no matter how much I want it to. I want it to matter because it makes me feel like I’m doing my part. It makes me feel involved. Useful. Slightly less helpless.

But it’s pretty silly when you think about it.

And yet, here I am, chanting, chomping, and cursing at the television.

Intermission. Tied 0-0. Excellent goaltending. There’s nothing like playoff hockey.

Routines aside, I do believe in putting positive energy into the universe. Not in the sense that sitting in my living room can somehow help the B’s kill a penalty or help Sean make a ten-footer for birdie, but in a broader sense.

At its core, I think that’s what meditation and prayer are all about.

Before every high school and college game, we said a prayer. Welcome to Catholic schools. Did we go undefeated? Obviously not.

Praying in the huddle. Praying before surgery. Praying that the migraine goes away. Praying for a sick loved one.

I’m all for it.

Putting love, hope, and good energy into the world matters. But like most things, I think it has a better chance of changing something in us when it becomes part of our daily routine instead of something we only reach for when we’re scared or desperate.

And by changing something, I don’t mean your team wins, the putt drops, or the illness disappears. I don’t think the purpose of prayer, meditation, or even just stopping to breathe is to beat someone or something. I think the purpose is to steady yourself. To soften yourself. To put better energy into the world for others, and for yourself.

Watching your child play a sport can be stressful, especially at the collegiate level. If there’s anything Coleen and I have learned these past two years, it’s this: we’re not the ones hitting the tiny white ball into the hole, and nothing we say, eat, wear, or wish is going to make Sean shoot below par.

When I coached hockey, I couldn’t hear the parents yelling, “Skate, Johnny, skate!”

As if poor little Johnny could hear his mom or dad screaming at him to move his feet.

Johnny doesn’t hear you.

No, really. He doesn’t.

And even if he could, that kind of energy rarely helps. You’re yelling because you care and because you want him to do well, but from what I heard from Coleen, who had to sit near these parents, what Johnny probably needs a lot more of is encouragement. Positivity. Maybe a car ride home that doesn’t feel like a performance review.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still going to wear things that feel like they might help Sean make more birdies. I’m still going to meditate and pray for good things to happen for me and for people I care about.

And I love Cheese Puffs, so I might as well take one for the team.

But as the second period is about to start, here’s what I’m thinking:

Maybe that’s all any of this really is. A way of saying, I’m here. I care. I’m with you in this, even if there’s nothing for me to do but sit on my couch, eat Cheese Puffs, and hope for the best.

That’s true in the rink. It’s true on a golf course. It’s true in waiting rooms and hard weeks and all the other places where you’d give anything to take the pressure off someone you love.

You can’t skate the shift for them. You can’t hit the shot for them. You can’t breathe for them. But you can be steady. You can be kind. You can keep your energy from becoming one more thing they have to carry.

That feels like a better routine to me.

Puck’s about to drop. Let’s see what happens.

(GOAALLLL—by the time I finished the piece, the B’s scored first in Buffalo. Another beer on tap.)

Disagreement with your partner, difference of opinion with your neighbor, misunderstanding with a customer.

You followed the instructions, listened to your child’s request, mapped out the route — and yet things still went sideways.

Maybe it is me.

Sometimes, these are three of the hardest words to come to terms with. And I don’t say them lightly. I still get frustrated, angry, and upset when things don’t go my way. But at least now I’m open to the possibility. At least now I can pause, look down at the map in my hand, and consider: maybe I’ve been reading this thing upside down.

How often do you feel like you’re travelling a hundred miles an hour? Your brain on overload, hard to slow down. Occasionally? Often? Every single day?

I remember when it was every single day.

Working from home, running a business, taking care of the kids, making dinner every night, getting everyone where they needed to be, cutting the grass, food shopping, coaching, running school events. Those were some pretty long and stress-filled days. And I didn’t have a map for any of it. I was just moving.

When Campbell was in preschool, his class took a field trip to a local farm in Sharon — the one that made its own maple syrup. It was winter. Snow on the ground. Cold. We were late, naturally, and had to meet the class there with no idea where the tour had already gone. Off we went — me, Campbell, and Erin. Trudging through the snow, me carrying Erin, sweating despite the cold, completely lost. At one point I was carrying both of them. They were upset. I was upset. I was ready to lie down in the snow, stare up at the grey sky, and just... surrender. Good effort. Nice try.

But that’s not what I did. We carried on, found the class, finished the tour, bought the syrup, went home and took naps. Well, they did. I went to the office. Because that’s what you do when you don’t have a map — you just keep walking until something looks familiar.

There was more than one occasion in Europe when I felt exactly the same way.

My home base in France was in Montsoult, about thirty minutes outside Paris, which meant I was in and out of Gare du Nord constantly. The high-speed rail from London was great. But arriving at Gare du Nord? Chaos. And I mean that with full respect — it’s the busiest station in Europe, more than 700,000 people passing through every day. The hub of transportation for Paris and the entire country. It’s not the station’s fault I showed up with no French, no plan, and apparently no survival instincts.

From my journal:

After sweating, cursing, and nearly losing my mind entirely, I found the E train and made it to Montsoult. Except by the time I arrived, it was late. The little station was empty. Dark. And I had no idea where my apartment was.

It was the quietest five-minute walk of my life — the kind where you can hear your own heartbeat at every step. Phone out, navigating street by street. Dogs barking behind gates. Houses locked tight. I got to my apartment through the owner’s garage, fumbled with my phone’s flashlight to find the keypad, punched in the code, retrieved the key, and crossed the backyard to my place.

My family still doesn’t fully understand how I survived a month in Europe, alone. I can’t see well. I only speak English. I’m directionally challenged on a good day. Everything was foreign. I got lost, often.

But I also got where I was going. Every single time.

Then there was Rome.

The plane was packed, full of Italians heading home to Naples. Loud. Joyful. I couldn’t help but smile just being near them. I nodded at the flight attendant — a silent, international can you believe this? — and settled in.

Then the announcement. The airport in Naples would be closed by the time we arrived after midnight. We were being rerouted to Rome.

The plane erupted. Crying. Protests. Loud Italian everything. Three English-speaking passengers — including yours truly — sat in complete, confused silence while the translation was sorted out.

Fabrizia, the flight attendant, filled me in. I wasn’t shaken. Don’t sweat the small stuff. The pilots don’t get paid if the plane doesn’t go somewhere. Rome it is.

Forty-five minutes of chaos later, we landed. I waited until 8 a.m. for the rental car agency to open, slept on a hotel lobby couch for an hour before being politely asked to leave, ate a chocolate croissant, and eventually collected my car.

A manual transmission. In Rome. Which I hadn’t driven in nearly thirty years.

I stalled out a few times before I got the hang of the clutch. I hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.

It was one of the best trips of my life.

Here’s what the Tube map in my hand — the one I’m holding in this photo, taught me:

You don’t have to understand the whole thing. You just have to know your next stop.

London’s Tube has 272 stations, eleven lines, and a color-coded logic that is completely obvious once someone explains it to you and completely baffling until they do. The first time I stared at it, I wanted to fold it back up and call a cab. But eventually, something clicks. You find your line. You count the stops. You get there.

Life isn’t much different. Some days you’re the man in military gear helping a lost American find the E train. Some days you’re the lost American. Some days you’re stalling out a manual transmission on a cobblestone street in Rome while a Vespa honks at you in a language you don’t speak.

The question I’ve learned to sit with — and I mean actually sit with, not just say while nodding wisely — is this: What’s mine to own, and what’s just the universe doing what it does?

Sometimes the answer is me. I took the wrong exit. I rented the wrong car. I didn’t leave enough time. I could have paid twice as much for an automatic. I could have taken the train to Orvieto. Those are my choices. I own them.

But sometimes it’s not me. Sometimes the plane gets rerouted. Sometimes the station is just genuinely impossible. Sometimes you’re trudging through snow in the cold carrying two kids and it’s hard and exhausting and completely worth it — and none of that is a failure. That’s just the route.

The map looks overwhelming until you know where you’re going.

Pick your next stop. Fold the rest back up.

And if you get lost — which you will — find your soldier with a rifle and say thank you.

What’s a wrong turn that turned into the right trip? I’d love to hear it.

See you next week.