In the past two weeks, I've played eight rounds of golf with my youngest son.

Several of them were with the whole family, with almost daily trips to the range in between. I expect to play another five rounds this week, which is the last week before school starts.

Yes, this is a flex post.

He started playing casually a few months ago. Then a few weeks ago he caught the bug for real. The kind where he's not asking if we can play; he's asking when.

The first few times he asked, I told him no, because I already had a full calendar those days.

Then I did the math I've learned to do. A teenager who wants to spend time with you is not a permanent condition.

It's a window, and windows can close at any time.

I think his passion for golf will stick. He's got the temperament for it, and he's improving fast enough to stay hooked.

But what if I'm wrong?

What if two months from now he's onto the next thing?

And what if that thing doesn't involve me?

That's the part that moves me to act right now.

Not the fear that he'll quit golf, but the fear that this current version of him, the one who wants his father driving the golf cart, is seasonal.

I don't get to know how long it lasts. Neither do you.

The only information I have is that right now, my kid wants to be around me, and that is not a thing I'm willing to schedule around a Thursday call that could happen next month.

You don't get a warning that it was the last time.

You just eventually notice it stopped.

So I cleared my calendar. It wasn't elegant.

I canceled meetings that didn't need to exist, rescheduled the ones that could wait, and had my team cover the rest.

One person told me it was disrespectful to move a meeting two days out when we'd put it on the calendar a month ago. He doesn't seem keen to reschedule. This will likely cost me some money, and I'm okay with that.

I wouldn't have made these moves ten years ago.

I would have yielded to my calendar and kept my commitments. I spent a lot of time and energy being extremely available to people who will not be at my funeral.

I don't miss the old version of myself.

There is no shortage of flex posts these days. A lot of fancy cars, watches, boats, etc. I have nothing against them and think they serve a purpose for a lot of people.

When I was 25, I was making 500 cold calls a week, and I had a picture of a BMW 5 Series I'd promised myself once I hit certain numbers. That picture gave me the inspiration I needed.

It got me through a lot of tough days and rejection.

The sacrifices were always supposed to buy something. For a long time, I wanted them to buy me a car. These days, what I want them to buy me is a Tuesday afternoon.

They bought me the ability to say yes without asking anyone's permission.

That's the flex nobody posts, because there's no photo of the meeting you didn't take.

In lieu of a picture of my new Lambo, here's a picture of a kid whose favorite thing in the world currently requires his dad to be free on a weekday.

If you're the kind of person who rolls their eyes at the fancy boat pics, you'll probably do the same here, *and I get it.*

But if you're grinding right now because what you actually want is more time with the people you love, then this one is for you.

I could clear these two weeks because of sacrifices I made twenty years ago and last week.