Many of you know that my wife Robyn had surgery on her foot just before Christmas, on December 19th. After the surgery, she had many weeks of no-weight bearing rest, followed by several weeks of light activity. Now don’t tell her I’m complaining (she gets enough of it at home already), but as many of you have experienced, major surgeries or illnesses add a lot of stress to everyday home life. The normal routine of shared labor and responsibility must shift, leading to less than pristine performance, while on top of that sleep suffers, emotions run rampant, and at first, it seems like things only get worse.

On Friday, February 27th, the S&P 500 closed down about half a percent from the previous day’s close. I was out of the office that day, as I joined Carter, Robyn, and Aunt Libby on a trip to the State Farm Arena in Atlanta to see the K-Pop band Twice perform. Libby, the musical connoisseur and concert-going enforcer of the family, had to be included. I think every concert Carter has attended thus far has been with Aunt Libby. I checked in on the market throughout the day, and remember it being thankfully uneventful.

We are already headlong into the new year. Even though my general assessment of how things are going and where they are heading is “more of the same,” the level of excitement has not disappointed. If you can stomach the ongoing political theatre here at home, you’ll notice there seems to be no lack of new material, while news from around the world is doing its best to keep pace. Although I’m calling attention to the mess we are all in, I will also share my developing understanding (opinion) and acceptance, that this “mess” is the human experience. I don’t intend that to be a pessimistic statement. The human experience has always been this messy, but we make it work and we grow and we prosper. And one of the biggest reasons we can make it work is the part of the human experience that we call “humanity.” Despite our messy competition and fighting, our past, present, and future only exist because we collectively prod, urge, and carry each other over the finish line, and we do so with compassion and charity. Things will be good.

Warren Buffet released Berkshire Hathaway’s Thanksgiving Letter on November 10th. It is of course sprinkled with his usual little gems of business and investments wisdom, but by far its greatest worth is in its examples of honest and humble thankfulness. Buffet is 95 years old and has a legendary and superlative track record of managing and investing in businesses, but the majority of his letter is spent giving thanks to the hometown, country, family, friends, and good luck that have all directly enabled his success. I was particularly moved by the gratitude he shows to himself, which I share in the quote below:

​Life is very busy these days. Although I am personally busy in my own life, I’m speaking much more broadly when I say this. I’m sure many of you are thinking, “well, life has always been busy.” Maybe that’s true, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say life is “busier” these days than it has historically been. The easiest answer for why this seems to be the case is our technology. We have access to 24-7 news streams, the oppression and allure of social media, at-your-fingertip purchases for anything we dream up, and the ability to immediately address any question or need we might have.

​I have, throughout my life, been a great procrastinator. You may remember that Kendall remarked on having this tendency many times in his own letters, and it also seems Carter has inherited the trait. I like to optimistically view it as a well-honed survival mechanism against aggressive deadlines, but that is just my coping excuse. I know why I procrastinate, and I assume it is the same for Kendall and Carter, as I’ve witnessed them both in action. We procrastinate because we view the problem before us in its entirety, including our perceived solution to the problem. That can be overwhelming, as most problems have so many facets, and solutions usually have many separate pieces and steps. The obvious cure for that overwhelming sensation is breaking things into smaller goals and steps and moving forward. Small achievable goals and successes make us begin to feel that the task is not insurmountable, and that feeling steamrolls and builds on itself until we attain completion victory.