Time Served

What happens when you give everything to an industry that gives nothing back?

30 years.
Three decades of building.
And still, it felt like I was invisible.
Like I was never really here.

That’s what I woke up to in the final years of running my own construction management firm—a hollow ache in my gut and a question I couldn’t shake:
"How the hell did it come to this?"

I made mistakes.
Bad calls.
Trusted the wrong people.
Got burned by the ones I gave too much to.

The worst part?
I handed them the matches.
I let it happen.
I didn’t know how to set boundaries, because no one ever showed me how.
And when the pressure came, I had no crew—just me. Alone. Again.

I carried every burden like a badge.
Wore the silence like armor.
Tried to figure it out on my own.
Tried to fix it on my own.
Tried to survive on my own.

That’s a dangerous kind of grind.
One that doesn’t break you all at once—
It erodes you.
Slowly. Quietly. Relentlessly.

Until one day you look in the mirror and don’t recognize the man staring back.

I didn’t lose my work ethic.
I didn’t lose my integrity.
But I did lose myself.

And that scared the shit out of me.

So I did the only thing I could:
I threw it all to the wind.
Walked away from the role, the title, the version of myself that was barely breathing.
And I went all in—on me.

It wasn’t clean.
It wasn’t quick.
But it was necessary.

Because when the noise stopped, I could finally hear the truth:

I didn’t need a new project.
I needed a reunion—
With the version of me I left behind.
The one who used to laugh more.
Feel more.
Dream more.
And give a damn about something deeper.

That’s when the real work began.
The inner kind.
The rebuilding of a foundation no one ever sees—but everything stands on.

If any part of this feels like your story… I built a place for us.