Fortunate son

[bill_schubert]

I agree with Fogerty's ideas and his stance in Fortunate Son. But, there's no way around it, I'm the antagonist in his son. I was born on third base and have felt like I should have done more with it. But I've brought along some people who needed help and still do.

Two lunches this week. On Saturday I met with two of my previous employees. We still get together on occasion. One of them has a fiance who also comes to the lunch. On reflection I'm the only one without PTSD and all the resultant symptoms. We talked about that. It is an open group. The couple are both refugees from Johova's Witness families and have been excommunicated and no longer have any relationship with their families. The other two had bad childhoods. Really bad. Everyone's gotten to the point they can talk about it over lunch but it is a bit weird for me.

Then there is today's lunch. Polar opposite. It is with the three business people I met at networking years ago. We meet every month and discuss business and families. The three of them are wildly successful and the same age as my two kids. An insurance agent who has enough money to throw a bunch into another business, which will also be successful, just so his wife can have her own business. They are just taking off and learning what they need to know about the food product business but it will be a million dollar business soon enough.
Then there is the pest control guy whose multi million dollar business is growing by 30% per year. He no longer really needs to do anything with it now as he's done all the work to make it operate on its own, the way business should be He does the marketing and some sales because he wants to buy will soon be staying home more. He has three adopted children in addition to the natural ones. The three adopted ones need some more hands on so he's going to do that more. He's got all the choices he could ever want.
Then there is the woman who owns her own bookkeeping service with half a dozen employees and enough income to employee a consultant, me, to help her grow and get more of her businenss as a process than it is now.

All the people of both lunches are happy, growing, and doing good things in their own area.

And I get to hang out and watch and applaud and enjoy and occasionally make some pithy comment. Their token father figure Buddha.

I received a paycheck today from the bookkeeper. The first half of our agreed upon first initial project pay. There might be more projects but I said let's just go this far for this much and see what we thing. And so I received way too much, of course, for what I feel like I contributed but she's happy and I'm motivated to do more. And it is fun.

If I were one of those people who walked on eggshells waiting for the floor to collapse when things are going well I'd be terrified now. But I'm not. I lean into good fortune and opportunity so I'm pretty happy right now.

And very grateful.

I came home from lunch, opened the door, and was greeted by Beaux galloping towards me in his happy dance to see I'm home.

Icing on the cake.