2026 Updates

I spent most of the holidays alone. I saw the boys, but otherwise I kept to myself. I did a little writing, a little LEGO building, played some video games. Solitary things. I caught myself thinking: this is probably what my retirement will look like.

I don’t plan on retiring anytime soon. Six more years, at least. There’s no reason to rush it, not with the way things feel right now. I make decent money. And once I walk away from this job, I doubt I’ll ever find another that pays the same. That reality alone keeps me planted.

Max and his girlfriend are struggling. She was laid off from a good-paying job over the summer and hasn’t found anything steady since. Max has had his own run of jobs, none of them lasting. He doesn’t want work that’s hard. He wants easy work. Something that doesn’t take much out of him.

That’s been a constant point of friction between us. I’ve never left a job without another one lined up. Right now, he’s technically a salesman for a gutter company, but there are barely any leads. I think they fed him a few at the beginning just to get him in the door. Since then, nothing.

I think they are supplementing themselves by doing Uber Eats. Delivering food to people like themselves who are living hand to mouth. 

I still believe you don’t get anywhere without working hard when you’re young. I know hard work doesn’t buy what it used to. I know the math has changed. But I also know the alternative. And it’s worse.

I don’t know that financing his decisions is helping either. If anything, it feels like I’m reinforcing the same thinking his mother has always had: someone will catch you. Something will work out. Everything with Max has slid downhill since he moved in with his new girlfriend. I’m starting to think she’s part of the gravity.

Max has always been quiet, but I have noticed a shift in his personality since they have been together. 

He wouldn’t see it that way. But in the year since he moved in, he’s left a stable job for a string of bad ones, burned through what had to be close to fifteen thousand dollars in savings, and now they’re a month behind on rent.

That’s not bad luck.
That’s a direction.

Personally, I hope they breakup. Max should move back home and get his act together. One day she is going to get tired of being broke and move on anyway.