What I'm Up To
​Volume 95

Hey friends,
​
Here’s what I’ve been up to since Vol. 94…

1. May Happenings
​I need a quick favor. Over the past two months, we’ve noticed very few replies to this newsletter compared to the past. It could be a blip or maybe we have a technical problem. Please hit reply when you’re done and let me know you’re still there. 👋
​
We kicked off May with a visit from my college buddy, AJ. His daughter is at Southwestern University, and he drove down to collect her for summer break. We met on the square in Georgetown for a leisurely dinner. It was a delight catching up.
​
Last year, Wendy and I won a helicopter hog hunt with Last Shadow at a charity auction. Our friends, Dylan and Rachel, were bidding against us, so we decided to go together. No 🐖 were harmed on this adventure. It was wild buzzing over the tree tops with a silenced rifle, strapped to the open door of the chopper. We got to shoot at some targets over a pond, which was fun. One thing was clear. There are way more hawks and owls per square mile than I ever imagined. 🦅
​

In other outdoor news, we put Better Ranch on the market. If you know of anyone looking for a turn-key game ranch between Dallas and Austin, let me know! We’ll be looking for a smaller place on one of the rivers south of town.
​
On the work front, I had a quick trip to Dallas for our leadership summit. Got to see and catch up with lots of KW friends there. Wendy’s team has been working hard on a database outreach program. It culminated in a week-long call-a-thon where they set 66 appointments, received 59 referrals, and added 106 to the lead pipeline. 📞💪 Wendy and I hosted a charity poker tournament for Explore Austin during our mastermind week. We raised $82,000 for the kids! 💰Thanks to all our friends who pitched in!
​

​
We took a trip to Memphis for Memorial Day weekend to meet my great-nephew, Charlie, and attend my Aunt June’s funeral. My mom was sick so we spent most of our time at Natalie and Katie’s homes. Charlie is just about 6 weeks. 👶 He mostly slept, and I thoroughly bogarted the baby. My great niece Mia really connected with Wendy. The whole time I was watching Charlie snooze, they were playing.
​
My sister Jan dropped a Memphis bombshell I'd never heard before. From the 1920s to 1950, social worker Georgia Tann stole some 5,000 newborn children and sold them to wealthy families. 🤯 One of her most famous victims was professional wrestler Rick Flair.
​

​
My Aunt June went into hospice earlier in the month and passed away a few days before we arrived. Jan drove down to see her and gave me a great gift. She called me and let me talk to June one last time and say goodbye. “MeMomma” as she was known, was actually my great-aunt June. She lost both parents before age 10 and was raised by my dad's family as his sister. Relatives and friends packed into little Salem Methodist Church to celebrate her life. I have many memories of June playing the piano there when I’d visit their dairy farm for “summer camp.”
​
Jan and Wendy livestreamed the funeral for some relatives who couldn’t make it. They had to borrow a cousin's hotspot. “It’s in the white Dodge just outside the door,” she told them. They were rifling through the glove box and a purse when a stranger asked, 'Uh, what are you doing in my truck?' Oops. Wrong white Dodge. 😂
​
A thunderstorm rolled in and chased us back into the church after the graveside. June would have laughed at all of us, dripping wet in our Sunday finest. I can hear her saying, "Go ahead and cry—there's more room on the outside than the inside." 😭
​

​
I finished May on the coast with my fishing crew. Wade fishing in the summer is always dicey. Storms can blow in and you never know what you’ll see in the water. I spotted a blacktip shark from the boat cruising past where we’d been fishing. And the next day, a bull shark started feeding right by us. We hightailed it back to the boat faster than you can spell “JAWS.” The other boat spotted two gators. It’s never boring. We caught plenty of trout and redfish, cooked steaks and made fish tacos. A good time was had. Mike’s wife commented on a text thread, “Nice fish! Too bad your location says Gulf of America.” LOL
​
​2. What I’m Reading
​Read three great books this month. Dissolution by Nicholas Binge is a SciFi thriller with 85-year-old heroine, Maggie. With her husband in memory care, a strange man arrives at her door to tell her he isn’t losing his memories, they’re being stolen. The book has layers upon layers as Maggies travels back through her fading husband’s memories for clues. Wendy and I both enjoyed the tightly crafted book. “‘It occurs to me that at some point, you pick up your child for the very last time. And you don’t know. At the time, you don’t know that it’s the last time you’ll ever do it.’ He was right, of course: Endings don’t announce themselves. They sneak around you; they shuffle their way past unnoticed until, on some cloudy day, you look out on an empty street and realize everything ended some time ago.” ​
​
​

​
​Lean Learning by Pat Flynn proposes finding more success by learning less. Pat shares his frameworks for identifying the minimalist approach to acquiring new skills and getting into action. It’s a great read for anyone who falls for the trap of thinking they have to know everything before they start. “All you need is the minimum knowledge to solve that problem, a willingness to put that knowledge into action, and the resilience to keep going when things get tough.”​
​
Finally, I read Heartwood by Amity Gaige. Valerie, a 42-year old thorough hiker on the Appalachian Trail, disappears just 200 miles from Mt. Katahdin. The novel weaves between three points of view: Valerie, the lost hiker; Bev the game warden charged with finding her; and Lena, a hermit researcher in an old-folks home. “Anyone who wants to walk two thousand miles in a row does it because they find beauty in the unreasonable. All that misery, that’s the point. The high probability of failure, that’s motivation. You had a bad feeling, you said. And you were right!” Unexpectedly, the book is as much about mothers and daughters finding connection as it is about a search and rescue. Great read.
​
​3. What I’m Watching
​Wendy and I watched September 5, a docudrama about the Israeli Olympic Team hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Peter Sarsgaard plays the ABC sports producer thrust into the role of covering a live terrorist act for the first time. Enthralling.
​
I also watched The Accountant 2 (Prime) and Warfare. The Accountant 2 reunites Ben Affleck and John Bernthal as Robin Hood contract killers. They have good chemistry for a summer action flick. And the scene where Affleck line dances steals the show. Warfare is based on the true story of a group of Navy SEALs in Ramadi, Iraq. They get pinned down on a surveillance mission after a failed attempt to evacuate a wounded sniper. Imagine taking one intense firefight scene from Black Hawk Down and stretching it into a full 90-minute white-knuckle experience. Superb filmmaking with a singular goal of evoking the terror of combat. Goal accomplished.
​
Wendy and I wrapped up The Drive to Survive, Season 7 (Netflix). Too much off-track drama for me. Finally, we loved The Last of Us, Season 2 (MAX). As with the video game, the sequel has its detractors. Not us. Season one had the outlier episode with Nick Offerman, “Long, Long Time.” It’s all we could talk about for weeks. Season two featured the flashback episode, “The Price.” Both episodes are beyond poignant for a show about the zombie apocalypse. Hurrah for great screenwriting.
​
Be well, do good deeds, and eat tacos!
Jay

Forward to a Friend

See something that you know a friend would like? Forward to them so they don't miss out. And if you were forwarded this email and want more of What I’m Up To, you can sign up here.

Unsubscribe

If this isn’t for you, feel free to Unsubscribe