The Long Way

Five years ago my world crumbled.

By the end of 2024 I had piled up $110,000 in mostly consumer debt and a marriage that had come apart. In November of that year, I started walking back. On December 23, 2025, my wife and I remarried.

I’m still walking.

This is the correspondence.

The Long Way arrives roughly every two weeks. It is not optimization. It is not tips. It is not a five-step framework for anything.

It is one person mid-story, writing it down honestly enough that someone else might recognize their own.

Some weeks the letter is about a number — the exact dollar amount, the months until debt-free, the days since the worst day. Some weeks it is about a kitchen, a parsonage, a house we used to live in. Some weeks it is about Mozzie. Some weeks it is about God, though I won’t preach to you. Some weeks it is about a tool I built when the off-the-shelf thing wouldn’t do.

All of them are about the same thing: the harder path. I didn’t choose it — it’s been my default setting up to here. I’ve stayed on it on purpose, forging my own way through. At forty, I’m ready to get off the highway and onto a slower local road.

The Long Way is being written. The first letter goes out when it’s ready — and not before. If you’d like a heads-up when it lands, drop your email here. It joins my general updates list — rarely used, only when I really have something to say.