September 2026

The chill of autumn is settling in and the flannel is coming out. Professional baseball is entering its best month, youth baseball is coming to a close and soccer is in fully kicking. Political texts and ads are being crammed down everyone's throats. Everything you could ever want from the start of fall.

My oldest's fall baseball season has been a bit lopsided to put it mildly. When we play fall ball, we go in with the mindset to just have fun and reconnect kids who played on different teams and for different cities. This has worked well in the past but this year has been different...

This year, because of ages, we are playing in a different league. Somehow our team of 13 year old kids has ended up playing against teams of 15 year old kids. My-oh-my does 2 years make a difference in physicality! It's a sight to behold when my oldest is pitching his hardest against kids with mustaches.

It was going to be a season of growth no matter what- we're swinging heavier bats. We're playing on a full size diamond with a lot more distance to cover. I just didn't expect to be playing against much more developed teams.

That said, the teams we have played have shown the greatest sportsmanship ever. There has been no trash talking or negative attitudes. They have been encouraging and positive to our boys. As painful as the score looks, the actual games have been good. They have been fun and positive. Everything you could ask for in fall ball.

The youngest's soccer season has been going great. It's his first year playing and he's undefeated. He's already won a soccer tournament. He's getting some great playing time in and has almost scored a couple of goals. Talking about setting the bar high right away!

He's growing a lot in his skills and it's been amazing to watch how quickly he's improved his ball handling and kicking! I'm learning the game of soccer too. It's pretty simple compared to baseball. I get the appeal. There's no wacky drop 3rd strike, infield fly, balks, etc. Watching soccer this fall has been a lot more fun than I anticipated!

At work I'm getting pulled in a million directions. I've coined it "work ADHD". I go to do something and immediately get distracted to do another thing, and then get immediately distracted to do another thing, and so on and on. It's really annoying and challenging this month. We're still in the thick of a very large scale project that I expected to have finished and we keep adding more projects into the mix.

I've started to find my groove with managing the peopley aspect of things. I'm working on finding out the best and quickest way to learn how to communicate with new people. It's something I haven't quite nailed down yet. There's also all the process and documentation. Ugh to all the paperwork!

Everyone has a different way of understanding something. Finding that path to understanding is definitely taking center stage in my career. The quicker I can figure that out, the quicker I can start making a difference.

And I do feel like I am making a difference and impact already. Which is a great feeling. I love to solve problems and grow people. I just don't like the crazy context switching I find myself in. It's tempting to use AI to help but I haven't yet. I view AI as a tool to augment my skill set. Which means I need to learn the skill set first.

I also found out this month that my face and a quote are going to be printed on an banner and hung at a big convention coming up. It's... uh... pretty dang wild! It's going to be really weird to see myself that way. It's a good thing I have a "professional me" picture. And it's definitely not something I ever imagined that "professional me" picture would be used for.

To finish off the month, we took a big family trip up north to a cabin. It was a quiet few days of hanging out, playing games, fishing, and biking. The boys were catching the fish like crazy. Once they had their fill it became my turn to drop a line... and catch nothing... unbelievable.

Going up north and enjoying the cool weather, fall colors, and escaping from life is such a wonderful treat. I was really hoping to take in the stars but unfortunately it was cloudy. Next time!

I hope everyone has an "up north" to escape to. Someplace or way to escape for a simple 5 minutes of quiet time and to get away from all the %^*#&$@ political phone calls.

- Ben