My app on my phone said yesterday that you are the size of an eggplant. I am not sure about that but I do know that your mom talks more and more about you moving and sometimes, when you cooperate, I can feel you move. Most of the time she puts my hand on your belly and you stop, as if you know I am there and you are trying to be sneaky. At least that is what I think.
Yesterday I had to do something that was pretty hard. I had to fire an employee. This is not the first time I have let people go. Since I have been a supervisor I have had several times I had to let someone go, but most often they left on their own, or went on medical leave and just never came back. I can't go into details here but they have worked for me for a long time and it was not easy.
Some things are not easy. Some times you have to make calls that you would rather not make. You have to break up with someone whom it is just not working with, you may have to let someone go off a job, or you may have to make a tough call that they are not going to like. It is not an easy thing, but it has to be done. It's good that these things are not easy. If you could break someones heart, or fire them, or make a tough call or mark a paper failing, with no heartache at all I would have to question your humanity.
Ultimately, you have to do what is right, make a decision based on how you see it. It's not easy, you will get some things wrong. That is just a fact. You may choose to leave someone only to realize you made a mistake later and it is too late to fix it. There is such a thing as too late to fix it. Sometimes you have to make a call and live with the consequences for the rest of your life good or bad. As the Boy Scout motto says, "Do your best". Some things need a quick decision. If you find yourself agonizing over what to eat for breakfast, pretty soon it is not going to be breakfast anymore but lunch or dinner.
Some things can wait, others can't, know the difference. Sometimes someone else will make that decision for you. When I worked at Bombay I used to not put things on hold. If I wanted it and it went on sale and it took me a bit to buy it then it was mine, but if someone else bought it it was theirs. If I did not care when it sold, I did not really want it in the first place. Try this: If you can flip a coin and not feel excited or let down by either result, it does not matter to you. If you flip an coin and it comes up one way and you are disappointed by the result, then pick the one you feel excited about.
My point here is that sometimes you have to make a call or miss your opportunity but don't let the need for a decision hold you back from making the right one. If I waited until I was sure about every call I make in sword, I would not make many calls that were not picture perfect. Sometimes it is on you to make a call. Sometimes you will make the wrong one, but in the end it is what it is. If you find yourself in a place where things are hard to decide, take solace in the fact that it is not easy. If you have to make a decision on a report in school, don't wait forever to decide on what to do, but just make a decision, so you can get started on it. Better to decide and be able to start working on it than to decide at the last minute and do it poorly because you started so late. If I am a judge in a sword match and I am not totally sure what happened it is OK to not make a call, ask the fighters to clean it up and move on.
Some things warrant waiting, they warrant making the right and well thought out call, others not so much. You have to look at your priorities and decide which for you is which. At the end of my life I am pretty sure I will not regret taking so and so to the High School dance, but what I will regret is the times I did not ask the person I wanted to because I let my fear get in the way. You may never know what life will give you if you ask, but you have to decide if it is worth the risk. Sometimes the decisions will be hard, sometimes they will be the wrong ones, but it is the hard ones that make us human, and it is from those hard decisions that we are able to see through to our own humanity.
Love you kiddo-
Dad
