A Worthwhile Tradeoff

I woke up an hour earlier than my alarm this morning. 

It’s probably related to the workload I have on my plate right now:  In addition to the day to day responsibilities of running my own business, I am flying out tomorrow morning to attend Coffee Fest Dallas (yes, if the comic book people can have their own convention, then we coffee people certainly can as well!)

Attending these conventions is always fun and educational, and this time I have the privilege of being among the presenters; I will be lecturing on coffee and philanthropy for those not too hung over to attend a Sunday morning session.

I have been dedicating many prep hours to this, in part because I care so deeply about the content; I want it to be compelling and inspirational.  And because of this, I’m paying probably a little too much attention to the details: making sure the font on my Power Point is exactly the correct size; double checking the quality of my photos, text placement, slide appearance, etc.  Go ahead and call it neurotic if you like—I’ll probably accept that label with a measure of guilty pride.

So when this increased workload happens to coincide with the end of the school year for my family, things start to get interesting…  Adding my children’s school schedule with my wife’s end of year teaching responsibilities, I can tend to feel pulled in many directions:  Husband-Father-Business Owner-Conference Presenter…  All of these are competing for my time and attention right now. 

So rather than celebrating that my children are receiving award after award after award at the end of the school year, my first response is to get irritated that I have to attend yet another awards ceremony at school.

Rather than celebrate a minimum day as extra time with my children, I can tend to instead focus on the work that’s not getting done at the office when I am picking them up.

Which is why I’m grateful for this morning.

I woke up at 4:30 with a simple memory from yesterday, a memory of driving up and pickeding the kids up from school.  They did what they always do: they waited at the same spot, all three of them bunched together; brothers.

As soon as they saw me, they sprung to action, moving from the railings near the cafeteria and bounding along the sidewalk to an area where I could pick them up along the curb.  (Something about three little heads all bobbing together is so stinking precious…)

They piled into the car, with conversations about the day immediately ensuing: who hit the game-winning home run in the teacher/student softball game, how one would have scored had his teacher not tagged him out, how the kids on the sidelines cheering during the whole game were a bit annoying—you know, the type of conversations we like to refer to as kid business.

And it hit me this morning:  Since my oldest is moving on to middle school next year, today is the last day all three kids will be at the same school at the same time.

I’ll never get to see their three heads bobbing down the same sidewalk and piling into my car in this manner again.

Today is the end of a season for our family.

The end of a rich, wonderful, and glorious season filled with so many good memories of young boys in elementary school doing, well, kid business.

And I’m reminded today that these memories wouldn’t even exist if I hadn’t chosen to embrace the added stress this year of allowing less time at work in exchange for more time with my boys.

An exchange that I will be forever glad I made…