Matty Thinks

The advice I gave a young coworker after learning the same lesson the hard way. I began investing in my own retirement too late. I never intended to retire and still do not. Because of that misconception, I failed to sign up for a 401K that matched my contributions generously for nearly half a decade. In doing so, I delayed the most valuable period of long-term investing. The earliest years…

There is a law older than any institution that has tried to claim it. It runs through the wisdom literature, through the shop floor, the seminary, and the kitchen table where someone older than you said something you did not understand until a decade later. It belongs to no single school. It keeps showing up because it is structural, the way gravity is structural. You do not have to believe in…

I believe it is common to have a mentor who has no idea they are one. But those arrangements, however common, are not honest relationships. There is weight in the word. We would do well to acknowledge it. I recently read that it is possible to be a begetter and to not be a father. I agree. And it was that distinction that started this. Relationships are full of nuance and complexity. We…

There are only ever two choices. I know that sounds reductive. I love nuance, the infinite threading of complexities through one another, each strand pulling against ten others until the whole thing becomes a woven, living canvas.  Reality resists simplification. And yet. Strip it far enough and you always arrive at a binary.  This or that.  The long road or the short one.  The way that…

Starting last night, just after dinner, a powerline tipped over. The lights flickered and outside the windows a firework display intermittently began. At first that is exactly what it sounded like. Behind the closed curtains it even looked like fireworks. When I pulled on the heavy light blocking cloth it was a much brighter display of sparks. Quite different from the powder powered…

I was aware of Simon Sinek. Watched a few clips and videos where I heard him speak. Never read his books until last year when an ASQ member leader suggested we read Start With Why. That night, we went around the table discussing why ASQ. I wanted to read the book but I didn’t. My instinct shifted after the sample on Audible. I wasn’t looking for inspiration or a corporate rallying cry. I needed…

Christmas was never about coziness. It began as a disruption. A sacred family in a damp, dark cave. The Bread of Life laid in a trough for wild animals. Light entering darkness. Order putting on the clothing of chaos. Restoration and renewal, bought at a cost older than the world. That is the ancient pattern. Meaning is not received freely. Meaning is borne. Blood and water must be…