The reason
Everything else on this site is a byproduct. If one of my kids reads this at thirty and it saves them a decade, the whole thing paid for itself.
There is a version of a man that his children never meet. The one who was twenty three and broke, the one who took the bad deal, the one who sat in a truck outside the house for ten minutes before coming in because the day had beaten him.
My kids get the finished man. They will never see the drafts. That is the normal arrangement and it is why every generation relearns the same lessons at full price.
So I am leaving the drafts on purpose. Not the polished story. The reasoning, the fear, the arithmetic I was doing at the time. That is the only inheritance that actually compounds.
Standards
Short list on purpose. A family standard you cannot recite is not a standard.
Why it exists, where it came from, and the time we broke it and what happened.
Why it exists, where it came from, and the time we broke it and what happened.
Why it exists, where it came from, and the time we broke it and what happened.
Why it exists, where it came from, and the time we broke it and what happened.
They will not remember the deals. They will remember whether I was there.
Letters
Each letter is addressed to one of my kids at an age they have not reached yet. They are public because a private letter is easy to soften.
What rejection actually means, what it does not mean, and what to do in the ninety seconds after.
How it works, what it protects, what it cannot buy back, and the number that is actually enough.
The tells I missed for years, and the ones I would want you to catch in the first month.
What I did, whether it worked, and the honest version of how close I came.
The archive
A family archive is worth more than a family history, because the archive does not argue. Photos get added here with dates, names, and one line about what was actually happening that day.
Every image on this site is used once and once only. Nothing repeats across pages.