The Inner Circle

I believe that the people you surround yourself with are a reflection of yourself and that it is very important to build a circle that likes what it sees when each person looks at all the others within it. If you have some toxicity in your circle it can contaminate the whole thing and therefor you need to have the confidence to keep toxic energy at a distance. I try to take the advice of surrounding myself with people that I admire and want to mirror in some way.

I started a real estate business with a friend from church and creating and maintaining that business has built a great friendship. There is a lot of money involved when you are buying homes as investments and you must trust your partner implicitly. Trust is a foundation for any relationship and as we have built a larger business, we have leaned to trust each other even through mistakes that either of us might make. Our friendship started in the kids room at our Catholic church on the campus of the University of Georgia. She had two children and we had two children and it was easier to go to the kids room and watch church on the screen than to manage the chaos in the pews. We found a group of like minded people in the kids room, who got everybody dressed and out to church, but didn’t want to burn the energy required to keep small children under control, so we let the kids play and we chatted with other adults during the down times in the mass and everyone still got to have their Jesus biscuit when communion was served. I was not a member of the Catholic Church at this point so it really fit me. My friend is an Irish woman who came to the states to marry a man and go to law school. She came to church without the husband and I really enjoyed talking with her, not just because of the accent, even though it is really cool, but because she was very entrepreneurial and driven which are attributes that I like close to me. We became closer as she divorced her husband, maybe she was showing the courage to separate herself from toxicity. My wife and I supported and physically helped her move and expanded our friendship with dinners and holiday parties spent together. We started our business as friends from my neighborhood were selling their house and had one closing fall through, so me and my Irish-lawyer-mom started a business together based on a good deal being presented to us. My friend had built a solid real estate business with her now ex-husband, so she understood all the intricacies and figured we would never get a divorce. To be honest, we have created a solid portfolio of properties, but I value her friendship much more than the assets. I have also learned about finance, short term, mid term and long term rental structures as well as tax sales, flips, remodeling and many other real estate related items while managing our little LLC.

During covid my real estate partner found another man and walked all the streets of our town getting to know him and she brought someone new into the inner circle that is full of light. Our family travelled to Ireland a couple of years ago to go to the best wedding I have every been to as it was a multi-day event that was full of love and sharing. Our little LLC has also funded two wonderful trips to Mexico where we have watched the whales migrate past the end of Baja California in Cabo and shared some of the finest meals of my life. Many of my small business adventures have not turned out to be hugely successful as I don’t have a yacht or a house at Lake Tahoe, but I count my real estate LLC with my friend from church as a huge success for all that I have learned, shared and continue to manage together. We still have some debt on our properties, but we have managed to offload them onto a property manager and they are sustainable. We do not collect large sums of money at this point, but by the time we both retire, there will be income there just in case Social Security is defunct.

Expanding further around our inner circle we have in-laws and parents of kids that grew up with our kids. My wife’s brother and sister-in-law are the original members of our circle. They are the Godparents to our first child and would be the people to care for our children if we both perished. My brother-in-law is the financial markets business and I have great interest in the markets, so I am always interested in what he has to say, what he is reading and how he is interacting with money. I take all my investing advice from him and manage all my retirement funds because he assured me that I can do as good as an expensive financial advisor. That respect for my intellect is a key reason that he is a solid member of my inner circle. He could have written me off like his father did when I was arrested, but he had spent time with me before my debacle and he knew that I loved his sister and that I had the capacity to rebuild even with the felony following me around. Respect goes both ways and it is a great building block to real relationship. My sister-in-law is my wife’s best friend, maid of honor in our wedding, and mother to three of our nieces and nephews. She is joy! She laughs and loves always and is the yang to my brother-in-law’s numbers based life. She is the people person that holds her in-laws family together as well as hers. These people like to drink a lot, but I can not only have sober people in my inner circle or it would not have the love and life needed to be well rounded. I can not drink anymore, but I do enjoy watching these two get inebriated. My brother-in-law goes down the conspiracy trail which I love to travel on with him, while my sister-in-law goes deep into familial story. Both are hilarious and well informed – the alcohol takes away the filter giving us a glimpse into their true thoughts. Both of our in-laws have different political views than my wife and I, but I have learned to listen to their perspective and express my perspective only when they want to hear it. Forcing my viewpoint into someone else’s dome isn’t constructive. I find it useful to have opinions, but not to die defending them. I once brought a neighbor over for a meal with my mother and father-in-law knowing that his extremely liberal beliefs would clash and the ensuing afternoon was much less pleasant – my wife was pissed and her parents were ready to drive back the twelve hours they had traveled to spend time with us. It is not worth the division when instigated on purpose – there is enough conflict even when I am not trying to stir it up.

Our inner circle has had a fusion within it because of our kid’s relationships. My wife and I have built a relationship as old as our children with another couple in town with similar aged children -two twin girls the age of my daughter and one older girl the age of my son. We had merged our two families when the kids were young and had created a bubble during covid times that made it very livable, even enjoyable. The husband of the couple and myself have a very male relationship and have built some hobbies together as well as learned each other’s hobbies. We work in construction related fields and love sports – so the friendship foundation was built quickly and efficiently for us based on our wives building a very strong bond before we ever met. The kids on the other hand were forced to be friends because their parents were friends, and for many years, they were kids together having fun. It was off balance on the male/female ratio being that my son was the only boy and there were four girls, but my son is all boy so he was good for the girls until he wasn’t – that happened at fifteen – the fusion. Having your inner circle explode because of tension between the kids was heart breaking and still is, but once adolescence hit the two oldest blew up our merged identity and they have decided to never be in the same space again leaving the rest of us out in the cold. Thank god the two oldest are graduating from high school this year and my wife and I can go back to our friends.

I have other components to my inner circle, but the final component to the core circle that my wife and I share is our children, Sammy and Jayda. These two do not want to be in the circle together, so actually keeping the circle intact is a constant struggle. Is it actually a fluid circle if the components are struggling to break free? They will break off from the circle like a cell duplicating, but for now they are getting all their nourishment from our circle and we try to embrace them even when hugs are few these days. I am glad that I hugged my children so fervently when they were young. I kissed them at bedtime every night because I knew that it would go away some day and that day is here – I have parasite teenagers that pull as much from me as they can but don’t allow me to love them anymore. Of coarse, I still do, and I fight through all the strife for those little glimpses of admiration or at least acceptance where they open up and give me the scoop of their lives. A late night in the kitchen with a grin on their face having just experienced something special in their development – they might share just a sliver and lean into me when I ask for a hug. I understand that they are pushing away to build their own identities and I try to give them space to do that, but it is hard to watch all the stupid shit happen right in front of you without being able to stop it. I have a large personality, but both of my children can eat me whole – they are big and full of life, curiosity, and all the emotions that come with being human. Youth multiplies these emotions while I have learned to breathe into emotion, my children are battling with them and in the safety of their home the war is on full display.

My son was my little man until he reached adolescence and spent a year traveling around the southeast playing travel hockey. We would leave on Fridays and come back on Sundays and drive thousands of miles over the whole season. I loved the time with Sammy, but he was building up a lot of observations of what he disliked about me. I make sounds that he can’t stand and I always have an opinion about how he should conduct himself – he disagrees with most of them. He has been shunned by our close friend’s daughter and it has hardened him. He is pushing away and not creating any friendships at the same time. He has allowed his mother in though – they walk most evenings and I think it will be enough to save him. His mother’s love is pure and it will be enough to bridge him to adulthood. My daughter is harsh because she has been picked on by her brother since birth – his greatest joy for many years was to get a rise out of his sister. But she kept increasing the volume of her rise to the point of blood curdling, so now even he steers clear of her. She lets out her rage on her mother and it is hard to understand from the outside looking in. I am not sure why she is so pissed at the person that loves her the most but she pushes away with a violence and language that is obscene and makes most people gasp when it is described to them. She will break out he “C” word as a weapon and wield it often and fighting violence with violence just gives energy to the fusion. I’m sure that other fathers would handle it differently, but I have an anger problem, so I tend to not engage when she is trashing her mom as I see no solution when they are both turned up to ten. I stay outside of the conflict instead of inserting myself and then I try to mediate once things have calmed down and they are apart from each other. My daughter is not rational with her treatment of her mother, so I do not get why my wife is so affected by her belligerence, but she redlines quickly and I certainly try to avoid her redline at all costs. I have become my daughter’s key parent in these adolescent years as I love to be her fan at her soccer games and I know that her rage needs to be met with love. Some how though, the children stay in our inner orbit as they still need us, not just for material things, which is the majority of the case, but for guidance even if they don’t admit.

My personal inner circle expands out beyond my married inner circle, so it would be the outer ring around my inner circle. This group includes my work group, my pickle ball group and my men’s group. I spend a massive amount of time working, so as I have gotten older, I have come to the realization that I have a choice of where and whom I work with. I have expertise in multiple industries and I can choose to work for someone or to work for myself and build something. Building something from scratch is stressful and takes a lot of energy, so I have chosen to work in a larger organization where I know and care for many of the employees. I feel like I am an integral part of a team and I appreciate many of the other teammates, some of whom I feel as connected as family. I love the feeling of connection and going the same direction together, it is when humanity is at its best.

I also play an exorbitant amount of pickle ball – it has become my SSRI, my serotonin release and it is the key to my brain health and weight management. My pickle family is quite a cross section in our town – college professors, school teachers, psychologists, dentists, financial analysts, other salesmen and many owners and presidents of their own enterprises – moms, dads, teenagers, college kids and millennials that all come together on a tiny tennis court to hit whiffle balls with fancy paddles. The community around the sport is amazing – all different ages, sizes, shapes and colors coming together to compete at a simple sport that has proven to be resilient and challenging as skill levels rise. I love the four person game that is scheduled each week and makes for the most shit talking and I also love that you can drop in almost any night at our local courts and find a bunch of enthusiasts honing their craft in game after game. Playing with many of these people for the last five years makes the relationships real – there are hugs shared and enough laughing to extend life dramatically.

The final group of my ring is my men’s group. I have posted about this group in a post called, “Mankind” and these men have become my trusted friends. The connection and depth of how well we know each other through sharing is life changing. I don’t feel alone in this town because there is always a man that will break bread with me if needed. There are music shows to be seen and birthday parties at the swimming holes to attend. There are also days in the garden and days in the sauna and the cold plunge all adding to the connection that is key to my thriving.