Looking Forward

Friday, the sale closed.

Last week I told you the house had taken over my life and my cortisol. This week it finally let go. The signatures are done, the keys have changed hands, and the place where we lived for twenty-two years belongs to someone else now.

The new owners are wonderful people. My wife and I met them, and there was something familiar about where they stood. They are at roughly the same stage of life we were in when we built the place, standing at the beginning of a story that now belongs to them. I handed the keys to a house I know by heart to people who are about to learn it the way we did.

I keep thinking about another house. The one I grew up in sold thirty-five years ago to a family that still lives there. By any measure that matters, it is their house, and it has been for a long time. But my boyhood dog is buried in that yard.

You can sell the house. You cannot sell what you left in the ground.

Somewhere beneath thirty-five years of someone else’s life, a small part of that place is still mine. I suppose that is what I handed the new owners without telling them. Not only a house, but a claim they may feel someday too.

My wife and I talked briefly about what the closing felt like. For her, it was relief. Relief from the last two months and, if I am honest, relief from the whole year. We should have seen 2026 coming.

The fire alarm went off less than five hours into it. At five in the morning in London, the two of us scrambled down thirteen flights of stairs because we had wanted a room with a view. The price of the view was the climb down. We laughed about it on the sidewalk. We were not laughing by February.

My own reaction to the closing was harder to name. Relief was in there, but so was sadness, along with a few other things for which I still do not have good words. That is the strange arithmetic of selling a house you loved. You can be glad it is over and sorry it is over in the same breath. Both are true, and neither cancels the other.

The best part of the sale is what it finally makes room for. For most of this summer, I have been looking backward at old photographs, boxes of memories, and essays that all seem to begin with the word “remember.” It was time, but it is done now. The house is closed, and for the first time in a long while, I find myself wanting to look ahead.

Looking ahead, however, requires something to look toward. That is where the journal comes in.

I have kept one, off and on, for years. It went quiet after I was injured in a fall, and truthfully, it stayed quiet because this blog became the place where I did my thinking. If you have been reading, you have been reading my journal, though not all of it. There are parts of these stories I leave out on purpose. Some things are meant to remain private, and a journal knows the difference between what you tell people and what you tell only yourself.

Like everything else, the journal made the move. Unpacking it seemed like a good time to revisit what I had written at the beginning of the year and take another look at the goals I set shortly after the fire alarm.

I remembered making the list. What I had forgotten was what was on it.

There were seven goals, written in my own handwriting during the early days of 2026. I wrote them during a lull that winter, when we allowed ourselves to believe the worst of the year had passed. It had not. It was only warming up. But I did not know that yet, so I did what hopeful people do in a moment of calm. I made a list.

Reading it now, months later, felt like opening my own report card. Some of it made me wince. Some of it made me smile. A few entries made me wonder who, exactly, I thought I was in January.

Three of the seven are done. The big one, the goal that has taken over this blog for weeks, was to sell the house and find a new one. Checked, as of Friday. Two others are also complete, although they were admittedly low-hanging fruit, the kind of goals you put on a list partly because you already know you can reach them. I am not going to pretend they count for much, but a checkmark is still a checkmark.

Two more goals remain largely untouched. There is still time, although the calendar and I may have different opinions about how much. Then there is golf.

One of my goals was to get better at it. After the fall, I was not sure golf was going to be on the table at all this year, so the fact that I have played is its own small victory. I even worked on my putting, and my putting has improved. The rest of my game, however, has aged. Note to self for next year’s list: Make sure your goals are realistic.

And then there is the one I do not joke about, at least not entirely.

I want to lose weight.

That is not a new goal in my life. If I am honest, it has been a goal for most of my life. But five years ago, I got serious. I set a goal weight, and when the weight came off faster than I expected, I moved the number down.

When I reached the adjusted number, I kept going and said ten more. When I reached that, I said ten more again. That time I lost eight, not ten. Those last two pounds became the finish line I kept chasing. If people would stop bringing cupcakes to work, I might have caught them.

Then came a career change, a more structured and sedentary life, and some of the weight returned. For the most part, I have kept it within a range I can live with. It just is not as easy as it used to be, and the finish line is a little farther away than it was.

So 2026 was going to be the year. I even attached a nice dream to it. Wouldn’t it be something, I thought, to get down to my high school weight in time for my 40th class reunion this fall?

That is not going to happen, but not because of the weight. My son invited me to play golf that weekend, and I would rather look forward than back. The reunion is a room full of who we used to be. A round of golf with my son is who I get to be now. That was not a hard choice.

The weight goal is still on the list, and I intend to keep chasing those last two pounds. Here is what I know, and why I am not writing this as a confession: I have done this before. I know exactly how it works when it works.

When I lost the weight five years ago, I did one small thing every morning. I reminded myself of the number. Not with shame and not with a lecture. I simply looked at where I was headed before the rest of the day could talk me out of it. The mornings I did that, I made progress. The mornings I skipped it, I drifted.

The reminder was not magic. It was just attention. And attention, it turns out, is the whole game.

That is the real reason I am telling you any of this. The list had been sitting in the journal since January, waiting to be read. Now it has been. Three goals are done, two are barely underway, golf remains golf, and one still matters enough that I am willing to tell you about it.

The value was never entirely in the checkmarks. It was in picking up the book and asking the question out loud: What am I actually working toward?

So here is what I am going to do with the rest of 2026. Every morning, I am going to look at the list. Not to grade myself or turn breakfast into a performance review. I only want to make sure that, on any given day, I am working toward at least one of the things I said mattered.

That is the whole method. It worked when I lost the weight, and it stopped working when I stopped looking. A goal you do not look at is just a wish you wrote down once.

Before long, I imagine I will need some new lines on the page. I want to find time this fall to set a few fresh goals, some to close out 2026 and others to carry into 2027. That is the part I am making my peace with. The work is never really finished.

You reach a goal, or you do not. Either way, morning comes and asks you the same question again.

I spent the summer looking back at the photographs, the boxes, and the house that belongs to someone else now. I do not regret a minute of it. But the boxes are unpacked. The keys have been handed over. The journal is back on the shelf where I can reach it.

And every morning, I am going to reach for it.