This is what feeling chosen feels like, for reference.
Retiring from the Navy gave me something I hadn't had much of for years, control over my own schedule.
My wife still works. Her days are full of clients and appointments, and there's still plenty to take care of at home afterward.
So while she's working, I can run the errands, handle things around the house, and have dinner ready when she gets home.
It's probably not the retirement story people expect to hear.
But instead of spending our evenings catching up on chores, we can eat together, talk, or just relax without another list of things hanging over us.
For years, so much of my time was spoken for.
Now I get to use that time to make her day a little easier.
I'm the one who retired, but we both get a little more of our evenings back.
Lex retweeted
Retiring from the Navy gave me something I hadn't had much of for years, control over my own schedule.
My wife still works. Her days are full of clients and appointments, and there's still plenty to take care of at home afterward.
So while she's working, I can run the errands, handle things around the house, and have dinner ready when she gets home.
It's probably not the retirement story people expect to hear.
But instead of spending our evenings catching up on chores, we can eat together, talk, or just relax without another list of things hanging over us.
For years, so much of my time was spoken for.
Now I get to use that time to make her day a little easier.
I'm the one who retired, but we both get a little more of our evenings back.
Lex retweeted
Someone spends two years learning guitar.
They finally get good enough to play the songs they've always loved.
A friend hears them and asks when they're starting a YouTube channel.
It's meant as a compliment.
But the person wasn't trying to build an audience or start a business.
They just wanted to play guitar.
Of course, turning something you enjoy into an income can be a great opportunity.
But is making money from a hobby the natural next step when you get good at it?
Or is it just the first thing we've gotten used to suggesting?
I’m sorry if you grew up in chaos and had to carry emotions that were never yours.
Where you learned to read everyone’s feelings, assign meaning to them, and then manage the story you created around them.
Constantly trying to control an outcome in a game you could never win.
Lex retweeted
Any person, place, or thing that you "say" is an enemy:
Is something you created internally.
Do we mistake a lack of awareness for malicious intent?
Nasty reactions aren’t always malicious and that doesn’t excuse their impact.
But how can you expect someone to draw a dog if they’ve never seen one?
Is condemning what we don’t understand any better?
Lex retweeted
There is never an enemy outside of us.
We create them internally. I on the daily have ask myself what I'm doing with resistance that shows up i front of me here on X.
Be like water.
I’ll be honest, I don’t always listen to understand. It’s not intentional.
But I’m trying to make questioning my own motives a habit. My hope is that with enough practice, even when I’m on autopilot, my natural instinct will be to listen to understand rather than respond.
Lex retweeted
The most expensive sentence in some meetings is "Sounds good to me" from someone who already sees the flaw.
The room moves on.
A month later, the same concern returns as a missed deadline and a problem nobody accounted for.
They didn't avoid the difficult conversation.
They just delayed it until it cost more.
How much of what I believe is actually understanding, and how much is my ego protecting what I’ve already built?
My attention is required to complete a task. It takes effort. Effort I genuinely don’t mind giving, but effort nonetheless.
Then I switch to another app.
Scroll. Easy. Effortless.
And suddenly, nothing gets done.
I’m beginning to notice that transition now. That moment when I reach for distraction instead of staying with what requires my attention.
I pause and recognize that I’m seeking something.
Im giving myself a choice: return to what matters or step away from my phone entirely.
Because the scrolling was never really what I was looking for.
Lex retweeted
You can work incredibly hard and still make zero progress.
Because effort isn’t always the problem.
You can spend 10 hours improving something that isn’t holding you back.
Meanwhile, the one thing preventing everything else from growing gets ignored.
Find the bottleneck.
Put your effort there.
Repeat.