04/04/2026
One April, you’re a scrappy kid.
With a smoldering idea in a gut full of fire.
The next, you’re a grizzled & graying war-horse.
Staring down a quarter-century.
Of “ Where the hell did those years go “..??
That first decade.
A mosh pit that never ends.
You stagger across blurred anniversary lines.
Spit blood as the next year kicks in.
The pivots.
The scrambles.
The duct-taping & zip-tying.
Hemorrhaging pieces of your mind & soul.
Bleeding time.
Bleeding cash.
All the while, the market circles.
Like a pack of wolves sniffing for weakness.
No mentors.
No textbooks.
No YouTube.
Just you & the pit.
Elbows & velocity.
Stay vertical or get trampled.
Somewhere in the scrum.
Without accreditation or ceremony.
You become “ a businessman. “
A series of mutations under evolutionary pressure.
You shed Skin so fast.
You stop recognizing yourself.
25 years in the arena.
One can't resist casting eyes back.
Fully expecting to exhume a clean narrative.
A tidy arc.
But it’s a thick fog.
& the only things that punch through.
Are the faces.
Those who stood.
Shoulder to shoulder with you.
Inside the blast radius.
Then, who peel off quietly.
Some went in a handshake way.
Some who vanished in ways that don’t sit right.
No clean exit. No real closure.
One is gone - gone.
In that hard final way.
All now just ghosts in the machinery.
Rattling around in the dark corners of the shop.
Forever feeling their absence.
Like a missing tooth, your tongue can’t stop checking.
You don’t process these chapters.
As much as you shoulder them.
But the clients.
Wow.
The clients.
Some drifted in for a single encounter.
A brief collision of needs and circumstance.
Others stay & become familiar in the best way.
Names on the calendar.
That feels more like flow than obligation.
They lift something in you.
They don’t just fill a date.
They spark the day.
They make you want to show up a little taller.
A little bit sharper.
A little more present.
And yet.
Still, there are the rare ones.
The ones who don’t drift in.
They arrive.
They slam straight through the surface.
& land deeper than a business has any right to dream.
Immediate and undeniable.
Like something in you.
Recognise something in them.
Before your mind can catch up.
They grab hold of a thread.
And through repetition.
Through presence.
That thread gets pulled taut.
The distance erodes.
Professional boundaries, once so clear.
Start to round at the edges.
You learn their rhythms.
They learn yours.
Vibrant conversations & quiet confessions.
Life leaks into the space between the work.
And if you’re honest enough.
Bold enough.
You begin to call it what it is.
Family.
Somewhere outside the income ledger.
Past the noise.
Past the routine.
Past all the years of just keeping things afloat.
Something else took root.
A kind of living ledger.
One that kept track of grit.
Of lessons paid for in full.
Of days that didn’t break me.
Even when they should have.
25 years of detailing.
Against all warning signs & probability.
I.m still here.
And the weight of that.
The wholeness of that.
It is too much to hold at once.
Gratitude.
Settled deep in my bones.
Thank you for this beautiful life.
