This is a post to say goodbye (from the blog) for a while. Here is why.
One of the first pictures from the blog in Feb, 2021
A little over two years ago, some pretty terrible things were said. Those harsh words and accusations really shook me- they made me doubt my identity and values, and question a lot of things.
This blog has been my way to work through that. After 85 posts, with confidence, I can say:
Being a dad is the best. I love my girls.
Taylor is an amazing gift in my life.
Church is an essential part of who I am. The people and community are so, so important to me.
There are seasons in life. Good ones, bad ones, and everything in between. That’s ok.
Solid friendships are worth fighting for. This is something Taylor teaches me through the way she lives.
Having something to look forward to is important.
Laughing brings joy to everyone. Laugh at yourself. Laugh with your family.
Counseling is important. Life isn’t easy. Talk it through with someone.
I am only responsible for myself. Not how others interpret/respond/react to things.
Stay curious to learn, or try something new.
Saying sorry means a lot.
Jesus Christ is the most important part of all. Where would we be without prayer? Without worship music? Without keeping that as the cornerstone of our lives?
This blog has been a special outlet for me, and if you have read through it, I hope you enjoyed it as well. Now, I feel like I DO know who I am. I feel like I have confidence in how these weekly posts show the parts that make up my life, and that was the goal for me with this blog since the beginning.
One of the most recent pictures of the girls on the blog.
I don’t want to go down the path of posting weekly updates and measuring views to get results. And, I don’t think you would want to read that either.
What will you do now?
This blog has reminded me how much fun it is to create. So, I want to follow that passion and use it with my professional life by making videos/posts/blogs/social media about the things related to IT that I really enjoy. I don’t quite know what that is going to look like, but time will tell.
What happens to the blog now?
I’ll keep the blog for sure. Going forward, I will do some posts every now and then. Later this year I am going to India for work, so I will be doing a post about that. And another post when we go to Disney World, for sure. Other than that I am not certain. I hope to keep it going though, to pick up at some point in the future. It is a great way to document our family events. Maybe I’ll keep doing that in some way? Stay tuned.
Taylor and I both work from home. Taylor is in sales, and spends a large amount of time on work calls during the day; I am a software engineer, and spend a large amount of time doing deep work (mostly pretty quiet).
It has been this way since the pandemic- Taylor’s company from Greensboro allowed her to work from home; since then, she has transitioned to a new company out of Philadelphia. My company doesn’t even have an office, but on paper, they are out of Texas.
Taylor’s setup is downstairs; I am upstairs. Taylor’s office is very clean and organized. Mine is not.
The great thing about this setup is how much it helps complement our other job: as parents. Often, the day will go something like this:
Taylor: “Do you have any meetings this afternoon?”
Luke: “Looks like my last meeting ends at 1”
Taylor: “Can you pick up the girls from dance at 3:45? I have a call until 4”
Luke: “Sure, thats fine.”
Boom! Ok, that isn’t very climactic, but compared with how challenging things were before, it just makes so many things so much easier. Then, If I need to, I can add an extra hour on before or after the workday to keep things balanced.
Also, it is just 1/2 mile walk to Rosie’s school, so walking to school with her in the mornings is often one of the highlights of the day.
Work Life Balance
Increasingly important has been the drive for work/life balance for me. Taylor often says I have an “Interest based attention span”, and I have a ton of interests. But if I go too far with one of those interests, other things seem to go off the rails. Let me explain.
Here are the key elements:
Professional Life: Work
Emotional Life: Time to be happy, be sad, and everything between
Spiritual Life: Church, time for prayer
Social Life: Time with friends, family
Mental Life: Time to read, grow as a person
Physical Life: Working out, getting the blood flowing.
Ok, that list doesn’t come from any doctor or a book. It’s 100% just Luke making this stuff up.
There are different seasons in life, but if there isnt a little bit of time to fill each of those proverbial “buckets”, I’m not my best self. So here are the ways each bucket gets filled:
For work, I wake up and do continuing ed in the mornings. This world of IT is still fascinating, and there are so many fun things to learn.
At home, I value laughter when we can. Also, the ability to laugh at oneself; this part I learned from Taylor, but allowing the kids to laugh and poke fun at how much I love to sneak some of the kids candy can make for special moments. Time being sad is also ok.
At Church, I am on the prayer team. We get a list of about 80-100 things to pray for each week, for people in the church. Also, I am teaching a class at our church right now as part of our Wednesday night “Connections” classes. Listening to worship music throughout the week totally fills this bucket too.
Taylor keeps us busy socially; marrying her was the smartest things I could have done in life. This bucket gets filled with weekend trips, date nights, and pickleball, which I am going to pick up a little more now that the weather is getting warm.
Mental life is a way to keep grinding the axe. This can be reading, or anything else that tickles my fancy. Taylor calls this the “things I obsess about”. It is the way I stay curious, maybe even a little weird. Listening to podcasts while doing yardwork is an example.
Physical life is just a way to take care of my body. Don’t eat junk food, exercise a few times a week, drink water, sleep good. During the work day, I may slip in a 30 minute run; or some quick yoga moves to stretch my body that tends to sit in a chair all day.
Not every week includes all of the elements, and sometimes there are tradeoffs: more exercise some months, more work some months, more social time some months. But I loosely try and tend to each area of life just as a normal rhythm, and without it, I start to feel restless.
Before jumping into the fun stuff about the dinner party, I didn’t do a post last week. Or the week before. The reason I didn’t write was because I didn’t know what to write- or how to write about it.
My older brother Jake had a birthday. I haven’t spoken to him in 2 years. It is embarrassing to talk about. Some things in life are- embarrassing, sad, broken. The details of how this came about are not worth going into here, but my phone number is blocked, which means I cannot call him or his wife to wish him a happy birthday.
The biggest shame is that it has been allowed to go on for this long. Surely someone, somewhere could have spoken into his life over the past two years and said something to the effect of, “Hey, I know things aren’t great, but he is your brother, and you should give him the benefit of a doubt. Cutting him out of your life isn’t the right thing to do.”
There is a lot more to say about it, but I love and respect him, and do wish Jake a happy birthday.
Party Time
Taylor and I work pretty great as a team. We learned this early on in our marriage, and have recently gotten out of the habit of collaborating for parties after 10 years of having Children and living through a global pandemic. So we thought this might be a great time to have a party. What were we celebrating? Nothing at all.
Taylor has to have something to look forward to. I think we all do- whether it’s a vacation, party, time off of work, etc. Since there haven’t been any weddings in a while out of our friend group, and our group is almost done having kids (are we, Cores?), what fun reasons are there to get together and celebrate? Nothing much, but let’s have a party anyways!
Taylor took the Friday off of work, the grandparents had the kids, and Taylor spent THE DAY cleaning. How this was relaxing, I have no idea. But, Tay the house looked beautiful. You could hardly even tell that children lived there.
She asked that people dress “funky formal”, which was part of the fun. Bowties? I have never worn one before. Funky Formal? Definitely gonna wear a bow tie.
Dinner was catered- kinda. There is a great local place with some tasty, but not too pricey, food. They cater many events, but also have options for a take-and-bake kind of thing. Along with a fancy dessert. And charades. Then, fireworks that I brought home from South Carolina. Mortars that shoot up into the sky are a lot louder than I remember them being.
Chad got a delayed Christmas PresentFirst pic of the nightFunky fresh?GentelmenLadies
Something New.
We have 2 cars. One is 15 years old. The other is 13 years old. They are paid for. My role in the household is to keep the cars running- change the oil, tires, lights, inspections, and ensure there are no “check engine” lights in the car.
I go to the car shop every other month. The cars are running mostly pretty great- but I am sick of it. Going to our mostly awesome car repair guy, and taking a few hours, every other month for ONE of the two cars, I kinda reached the end of my patience. To argue the other side, at least all of the recent maintenance things have been fairly inexpensive recently.
We knew we needed a new car. Taylor wanted a minivan. I wanted the SUV. Neither of us have ever had a new car before (3 years old, anyways). I was motivated because I tend to obsess over things. After many months and wayyyy too much time researching, we finally got out to a place that had the model of minivan, and SUV for us to test drive side by side and see what we like. We even had the kids, and made a unanimous decision: we all liked the SUV better.
So I knew what we liked, and made them an offer: $2k less than their asking price. THEY SAID NO. My children were there, and they still stuck with their guns. Really?
There was another model, almost the exact same. $1k less than their asking price; they still said no.
Some might say, surely you could have financed just a little bit more? Yes, we could have, but I wanted to pay for it, and stick with an exact figure that Taylor and I agreed upon.
The THIRD option was 90 minutes away, in Raleigh. So, I asked my mom if she had anything to do that Friday afternoon, she said no, so we went to Raleigh.
This is the last pic of the Camry. We had it 9 years, added 80k miles, and it only depreciated about $5500. I guess its true what they say: Toyotas really hold their value
Originally I was hoping to sell it myself and get a few thousand more than the dealer would offer, but the last time I sold a car myself- maybe 5 years ago- it was hard to navigate around all the scammers out there, and seemed like a hassle. And the dealership made a better offer than I was expecting.
A nice guy named Jermaine helped us out. We had been in touch the day before. The car was a trade-in, and had just come in the day before that.
He saw what I was reading, and we ended up talking about Jesus for a bit; Jermaine helps to pastor a few churches in the area.
Last shot before leavingAll the paperworkOn our way home
We are pretty happy with it. Coming from a car that is 15 years old, it feels like I am just coming out of the Stone Age: the bells and whistles on cars are pretty amazing. This is a 2021 model, but feels pretty darn new to me. Some of these things have been normal on cars for a LONG time.
Other fun things
These are just some other fun pics from the past couple weeks, with no context.
