A Few Good Things About Today

I met with one of the young entrepreneurs I've gotten to know over the past few years this morning at a cafe near my apartment, while my teenaged sons slept in. Now school is out, they are luxuriously experiencing the early days of summer, truly one of life's great fantasies, if you are young (or a teacher).

Through the eyes of my children, I've been enjoying this time of year for some three decades now. As they get excited about not being required to be somewhere and do something, my mind drifts back to my own childhood, and how I felt once the end of the school year rolled around.

I was a dreamy kind of child, lost much of the time in my own head. Sickly by the age of nine, I probably lost some of my social ability to connect with other kids during a long stretch when I had to stay in bed, and learn from a tutor, as opposed to teachers at a school.

I'm sure I was lonely, not being able to play with friends, but I also developed a powerful fantasy life, imagining everything from entire leagues of sports teams with multiple teams playing whole seasons, to a newspaper covering politics (from a conservative perspective), to a strange world of interconnected pathways through the cornfields that stretched far beyond the backyard of our house on the outskirts of Bay City, Michigan, to the train tracks to the south.

***

My entrepreneurial friend has an idea for a digital magazine. I hope we can work together on it. I decided today to take some of my dwindling pool of resources and invest them in the company he runs. Because I believe in him and that the company he heads will be very profitable over the coming years. It was a risk that others had advised me not to take, but I made the decision to take this risk.

Life isn't always best-lived in a risk-averse mode. Sometimes, we all have to step out of our comfort zones and try new things.

Today, despite grave financial pressures, I chose to take a risk because it gives me hope in someone and something. It connects me to the future, which I also experience through my children and grandchildren.

Since our part of the future, once we are old, is limited, my real motivation in making this investment is on their behalf -- my kids and their kids. I very much want to generate some wealth for them over the next decade or so, while I can reasonably expect to remain healthy and active.

***

By the middle of today, it was time for the first of my two showdowns with the IRS, which is auditing my ex-wife and me for the first year we were divorced, 2009.

When the notice of her audit arrived, she cried. When mine arrived, I exploded in anger and broke a ceramic planter out back.

That is one measure of the difference between a man and a woman.

I assured her I would help her handle her audit. Today we met at the federal building and met her auditor. He was a likeable fellow, middle-aged, with a friendly smile and what I think was an Oklahoma accent.

After less than an hour, we'd resolved everything. It appears she will owe little, if anything, in back taxes plus fines. If she does have to pay, it's because one of the companies she freelanced for in 2009 failed to send her a corrected form, covering $750 in income that she apparently earned in 2009, even though they never paid her until 2010.

IMHO, that company, based in New York, should pay for their error, and not her.

But one way or another, this first part of my two-part Orwellian nightmare this auditing season appears close to being over.

***

You know the best part about today, a sunny day here in San Francisco?

Thirty-six years ago I became a Dad. And it doesn't get any better than that!

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