Meant to Be

I saw a post by an author I used to read named Daniel Pink talking about the best eleven books that you must read this year (or before you die — I can't remember exactly) and I sifted through the books. I bought all of them as he seems smarter than I am and I try not to question smart people all that much in their area of expertise. When the books arrived I was taken by this one called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It was a book on writing. The first thing I noticed was that she cussed a lot. I liked that. It made her feel like she might be my people. Next I noticed how hard she thought being a writer was. She watched her father write and her father's friends commiserate about writing. She also grew up watching her father write hard honest pieces that sometimes offended people in his attempts to tell the truth.

But the thing I took from the first third of the book was that she taught a class on writing and the main piece of advice was — write. Seriously. Just write. She gave a bunch of ideas that anyone could write about and said to just set a time aside every day and just do it. I couldn't help but smile. So simple yet so true about so many things. Most days, she threw out what she wrote in that hour. But sometimes an uncle or friend or conversation would jump off the page and she would later read through it and find it the perfect voice or moment for a character she was developing.

I used to write all the time. In high school, before we called things depression, I had moved out to live with my dad and was home alone all the time. I had just moved from Texas to California on a whim to stay with him and didn't have a friend in the state. That summer I taught myself to juggle, a little guitar, and I wrote a lot of poems. Crazy how you try to fill your time before we had smart phones. It was almost impossible not to grow in some way through boredom.

And there it just happened. Anne was right. I just found the thread to pull. Just write and it might fall in your lap.

Growth doesn't require boredom.

My son Carter wants to be a musician (I think). During his freshman year of college in Nashville he oddly had a similar experience where he was feeling pretty down and alone at school. I understood completely. New things can be hard, especially when you start alone. What Carter did have was a love for music. He had made four songs and put them up on Spotify under the artist name Drumwright to let the world hear them. Sadly, the world didn't really notice. We talked a lot about it. He loved making the music, but in reality he was just treating it like a hobby. He made songs, but no other content. No images, videos, no social outreach, and no gigs to play to try and get the word out there. But he loved making the music. He could get lost for hours just working on a minute of a new song. I asked him what he thought would happen if he applied the Bird by Bird strategy to his music. He decided to spend 2-3 hours a day after classes on building an album to release. We decided to work together to try and learn how to promote the current four songs so that when the album was ready for release we would have some clue on how to launch it effectively.

Around the same time something exciting happened in my life. There was a winery site in Napa called Edge Hill that I was very excited about, but didn't have the funds to purchase. I had been in talks with the owner for a couple months and he had gone into escrow with someone else as I was trying to figure out how to raise funds to purchase it. I had failed because I was doing what Carter had been doing. I was treating the purchase of one of the most historic winery sites in Napa like an afterthought. I had made four calls to friends and collectors I knew asking them what they thought and if they would like to purchase it with me. When the owner told me he was entering into an agreement with another buyer I figured I had lost it and it was meant to be. I think it is a little ridiculous that we entertain those thoughts. For the next six months I texted the owner every month to ask if the deal had closed. In October of 2025 he wrote me back saying it was funny that I reached out because after being strung along for what felt like forever, the initial buyer had backed out.

Meant to be means nothing. I don't believe that much of anything is meant to be.

The only things that are meant to be are the decisions we make and the level of effort and intelligence we use to lift those decisions towards any chance of success. Carter's music isn't meant to be. Me purchasing Edge Hill isn't meant to be. Maybe there is a category like me getting three cancers that could fall into some mental bucket out there with a "Meant to Be" label on it, but I kind of doubt that too.

To do hard things — to start something new — to learn how to juggle, play guitar, write, create music, start a company, create a product, make a friend, build a platform, fight for a cause — any and all of these things — you have to decide one thing.

Are you willing to grow? Will you decide to sit down for one hour a day like Anne suggests and grow? I know, she said to write. But I interpret what she is saying as making a conscious decision to grow.

If you do make that decision you will not be sitting in a room alone like I was in high school. At your fingertips you now have platforms purpose-built to help you.

I told the owner of Edge Hill to give me 30 days to raise $25,000,000 to purchase Edge Hill. When I told my team they thought I was nuts. Oddly, only my family just nodded like it was a normal thing to say and told me to go for it. That was all I needed. I spent 10 hours on ChatGPT trying to understand real estate funds, waterfalls, management fees, and a bunch of other jargon I hadn't dealt with before. I gave my first pitch to a potential investor in that same week. It… wasn't good (sorry Victor). I got 8 no's straight in the beginning including the people that said they wanted to do it the first time around. In the end I had racked up 70 people saying no, and if it weren't for Delilah telling her dad not to give up, it may have never happened. By the end of February (not 30 days) I had enough secured to sign the LOI for Edge Hill.

Carter spent 90 days building an album. During those 90 days we researched how to get songs on playlists, the hurdles to promoting on Spotify, and how to get singers on different tracks versus just samples.

It was right about the time the fund was mostly raised and Carter was launching his first album that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and told I needed to have major surgery to remove it. It was hard. I think the hardest part was how much I felt.

I felt so much growth from October to March just to be body slammed (literally). And maybe it was meant to be. Maybe I was meant to get this cancer right as so many people were counting on me. Maybe I was supposed to get it to have the opportunity to decide that I would use the experience to grow.

The truth is, I don't know if it was meant to be and have decided it doesn't matter. Meant to be or the universe singling me out, the only thing that has ever changed the outcome of anything is what you decide to do with what you are handed. You can be a victim of it, or you can grow from it. That is the only choice that was ever really yours.

I began writing again. I did what Anne said and just wrote about what came to mind with no purpose. Just like I have in this piece today.

On the fourth day, Jettison & Survive was created and the seeds of what I wanted to do with the rest of my time were planted.

The fund closed with 20 amazing investors. Carter's album, out under the name Drumwright, has over 20K streams so far and we are still learning. But man is it fun that he is allowing me to be a part of it with him. My first real book, The Empty Center, will publish soon. The second book, Conversations with Clark, is already two thirds of the way done.

I have leaned into what I didn't have in high school. Then I had an excuse that there was no access to learn things quickly. There wasn't a tool out there that could answer my questions and help guide me in a very pointed fashion to try and climb any hard challenge with knowledge and support.

There is no excuse for any of us now.

It is just a decision.