“Let’s just meet in the middle.”

It sounds reasonable. Fair, even. Balanced.

It is also, in most cases, completely detached from reality.

Not because compromise is wrong—but because the math behind it is misunderstood, and more importantly, because the numbers themselves are often meaningless.

The Setup Everyone Recognizes

A home is listed at $2,395,000.

A buyer comes in at $1,850,000.

Predictably, the seller doesn’t engage emotionally. They respond with structure. A counter at $2,350,000.

Now both sides feel like something has happened.

Lines have been drawn. Positions established.

And almost immediately, a quiet assumption enters the room:

“We’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle.”

So let’s do the math.

The gap is now between $1,850,000 and $2,350,000.

The midpoint is $2,100,000.

That becomes the gravitational center of the negotiation.

But here’s the problem:

Nothing about that number has anything to do with the value of the home.

The First Mistake: Negotiating Against Yourself

At this point, both parties are no longer negotiating the asset.

They are negotiating the spread between two arbitrary numbers.

• The list price is not necessarily value

• The offer is not necessarily value

• The midpoint is definitely not value

It is simply math.

And once both sides accept the premise of “meeting in the middle,” they have quietly agreed to something far more significant:

The outcome will be determined by arithmetic, not by value.

The Math Gets Worse, Not Better

If both parties keep “moving toward the middle,” something interesting happens.

The middle moves.

After several rounds—3, 5, 7 exchanges—the likely settlement range doesn’t stay anchored at $2.10M. It drifts. It creeps. It reshapes itself depending on who concedes, how often, and how aggressively.

This is where the amateur negotiator feels like progress is being made.

In reality, they are just iterating inside a system that has no connection to the underlying asset.

This is not strategy.

This is motion.

John Nash Would Recognize This Immediately

John Nash’s work, which earned him the Nobel Prize, wasn’t about splitting differences.

It was about equilibrium—outcomes shaped by strategy, incentives, and behavior.

In a Nash framework, rational players don’t blindly converge to the midpoint.

They look for moves that change the structure of the game itself.

John Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his groundbreaking 1950s work on non-cooperative game theory, specifically defining the “Nash Equilibrium“. This concept determines that in any strategic interaction, players achieve an optimal outcome by not deviating from their strategy, assuming others keep theirs fixed.

Key Concepts of Nash Equilibrium (Game Theory):

• The “Nash Equilibrium”: A state where every player in a game is making the best decision they can, based on what they think everyone else will do. No player can improve their outcome by changing their strategy alone.

• Non-Cooperative Games: Nash focused on situations where individuals act independently and compete, rather than acting in collusion (unlike traditional, earlier game theories).

• Equilibrium Existence: He used advanced mathematics (topology) to prove that, even in complex, multi-player, non-cooperative games, there is always at least one stable equilibrium point.

• Beyond Zero-Sum: While early game theory focused on “zero-sum” (one winner, one loser), Nash expanded this to “variable-sum” games, where all players could potentially win, or all could lose, depending on their decisions.

Impact of Nash’s Work:

• Application: The Nash Equilibrium is essential to modern economics, political science, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary biology.

• Real-Life Relevance: It explains situations where rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it is in their best interest to do so.

Which brings us to the moment where the negotiation either stays amateur…

…or becomes something else.

The Pattern Interrupt

Let’s go back to our numbers.

• Buyer: $1,850,000

• Seller: $2,350,000

The amateur move is obvious:

Move halfway. Drift toward $2.10M. Continue the dance.

But what happens if the buyer does something different? Instead of moving toward the midpoint, they move through it.

The next offer comes in at:

$2,214,000 knowing that is the value of the home too or close to it.

Not random. Not emotional.

Deliberate. Of course if the buyer comes back incrementally the seller can move past the halfway point in favor of the buyer to get the same dynamic change in the conversation.

What Just Happened?

Two things, immediately.

First, the buyer (or seller) broke the pattern.

They are no longer participating in a “meet in the middle” sequence. The rhythm is gone. The predictability is gone.

Second—and more important—they just reframed the conversation.

That number is not halfway. It is value based presumably which is the subject of another paper - Why Everyone Ignores the Obvious Value - The Defeat of Low ballers and High ballers.

It is a statement.

“We are no longer negotiating your number versus mine. We are negotiating what this asset is worth.”

Whether that number is right or wrong is almost secondary. If it is the value to either party is what matters first, and if it is defensible based on economic analysis then it wins.

What matters is that the negotiation has shifted from arithmetic to value.

The Likely Outcome

At that point, one of two things happens.

If the seller is still playing checkers, they try to drag it back to the midpoint game. They respond with another incremental move, trying to restore the rhythm.

But if the seller understands what just happened, the conversation changes.

Now the discussion becomes:

• Why that number? Is it the Value?

• What supports it? Is it proper economically?

• What does the market say? Simple Price Per Square foot Reasonable?

• What are we actually trading here? Life’s Next Steps for a Seller, Sandcastles on the Beach for a Buyer.

And the final outcome depends on who can define and defend value. If the other side tries to reset the conversation back to the midpoint game, the disciplined move is simple: “thanks, but no thanks,” and walk away.

It no longer clusters around a mechanical midpoint.

It clusters around whichever side can better define—and defend—value.

That could be:

• Above $2.2M

• Below it

• Or nowhere near any “middle” that was originally implied

But importantly in this example, the next call will be from the seller’s representative trying to revive the deal. Stop playing checkers and play chess instead. But you might need a chess coach.

The Real Conclusion

“Meet in the middle” feels fair.

But fairness is not a pricing strategy. It is not the value of the home.

And the middle of two uninformed numbers is not insight—it’s coincidence. It is at best checkers.

Most negotiations fail not because people are unreasonable, but because they are solving the wrong problem and they are trying to solve it by going back and forth too many times.

They are solving for distance between positions instead of asking a much more difficult question:

What is this actually worth?

Both Buyer and Seller What is it Worth? What can be Rationally Defended?

Final Thought

The amateur negotiator moves toward the middle.

The professional negotiator decides whether the middle matters at all.

And sometimes, the most important move in a negotiation…

…is the one that makes the middle irrelevant.

We speak about “the economy” as if it is shared, observed evenly, and broadly understood. It is not. What most people experience is a localized version shaped by where they live, how they spend, and what they are repeatedly exposed to. Over time, that experience becomes internally consistent, and consistency creates the illusion that you are seeing the whole system.

We are all guilty of RAS Bias. But is it thoughtlessness? That is the real question.

Are you Seeing the whole system? No one is. I am not. You are not.

The reticular activating system (RAS) filters what you notice. It prioritizes what aligns with your environment and suppresses what does not. Over time, it becomes highly efficient at reinforcing a narrow field of view.

You are not observing the economy objectively—you are observing the version your life has trained you to see. Sometimes it is over zealous and sometimes those are limiting beliefs but not everyone can be a millionaire.

In places like 30A, Seaside, Brentwood, or Mountain Brook, that version works. Food quality is assumed. Time is supported by other people’s labor. Systems operate in the background. Nothing about this feels excessive. It feels efficient. That is how the distortion sets in—not through extravagance, but through repetition.

The Economy We Actually Live In

Gayle and I live inside a system. Along 30A and in Costa Rica, the work we do and the lives we lead exist in a narrow, high-functioning segment of the market. The homes, the transactions, and the people we interact with are not representative of the broader economy. We understand that. But we do not lack awareness because we train our RAS to remain aware of the broader need. We work and are concentrated in a slice where liquidity is strong and friction is low.

We buy groceries without recalculating each decision. We do not always think of others do we? We eat well without thinking through trade-offs. Our home is maintained. Our time is supported. It feels normal because it is consistent. And then we go to Costa Rica, and nothing materially changes.

Different country, different backdrop, same structure. The home is there. It is managed. Life continues with continuity whether we are present or not. That should clarify something.

We are not moving between different economic realities. We are carrying our position into different environments. Which means we are not interacting with the baseline economy in either place. We are operating within a contained layer of it. A good layer. A functional layer. But a limited one. We strive to remain aware of and to interact with all layers of the economy with humor and humility. That is where we begin to disconnect from some that chose stratification over participation.

The Economy We Don’t See

At the same time, there is another system operating under very different conditions. In that system, decisions are governed by constraint. Food is not assumed; it is managed. Variability in income or cost is not an inconvenience; it is destabilizing.

The margin for error is narrow, and small disruptions carry consequences that compound quickly. This is not abstract. It is logistical. And from within a system where those constraints are not present, it is difficult to fully understand how that works day to day. Not intellectually—mechanically.

Try running the math on maintaining a consistent, quality diet at lower income levels and the model does not reconcile cleanly. That gap is the point. Not because it is surprising, but because it is largely invisible. The same reticular activating system that allows our lives to function efficiently also filters out most of that reality. Not intentionally. Structurally. Is that OK?

The Problem Is Not the Bubble

Let’s be clear about something. There is nothing wrong with living well. There is nothing wrong with success, or with serving clients at a high level, or with operating in markets that function efficiently. That is not the issue. The issue is believing that what you experience is representative. It is not. Neither at the high end or the low end.

And if you do not correct for that, your understanding of the economy and indeed your understanding of the human condition will remain narrow, your assumptions will drift, and your decisions—whether personal or professional—will be built on incomplete information. That is not a moral failure. It is a perceptual one.

Reprogramming What We Notice—and What We Do

The reticular activating system does not change because you agree with an idea. It changes because you repeatedly expose yourself to something different until it becomes part of what your brain recognizes as relevant. You may have to program it. “I enjoy meeting new people everyday now”. That without limits will cause you to start encountering new people.

That applies directly to how we give. Most people treat giving as occasional, situational, or emotional. At the far end of the spectrum some view it as status.

It shows up when it is convenient, or when something feels immediate enough to break through the filter. That approach does nothing to change perception because it is not consistent enough to matter. If you are serious about seeing the economy accurately, then part of your identity—not your surplus, your identity—has to include participation in the part of the system you do not naturally experience.

Said more simply, buy the beach house but do not discard the people in the community that make it possible for you to exist here.

That means directing time, attention, and capital in a way that is structured, repeatable, and embedded into how you operate.

Organizations like the Point Washington Medical Clinic in Santa Rosa Beach

exist inside that reality. Its function is straightforward: it provides medical care to working individuals and families who do not have reliable access to healthcare despite being part of the same local economy that supports the communities we live in. These are not disconnected people. They are part of the underlying system that makes the visible one function.

When you engage with something like that consistently—not once, not symbolically, but as part of how you operate—you are doing two things at the same time. You are contributing in a way that matters, and you are retraining what you see.

Because now your RAS has something new to register. Now the other side of the economy is no longer theoretical. It is present. And that is a good thing. To be here is great. To integrate to the wider cause of the community is our goal.

Seeing Clearly While Living Well

You are not going to live forever. But by all means live well. I do not judge anything. Really.

I do not judge real estate professionals that have a different style of doing business than us…you know 100 phone calls a day and buy now now now and, well, go ahead and dance on the edge of stripes like some encourage these days.

Integrity is not good or bad. It is the ability for the outside world to be able to look at you and predict behavior.

That is the one variable in this that is not negotiable. Behavior,

The homes, the markets, the transactions—all of it exists within a finite window. It is entirely acceptable to live well within that window. But core behavior that points to integrity is who you really are.

There is no virtue in pretending otherwise. Try not to live inside a narrow version of reality and ignore the broader system that makes that life possible. It makes your integrity more approachable and more humble.

The economy you experience is real. It is simply not complete. Live in it and enjoy what you have created for your family. I am not saying money is bad…far from it.

Just remember where it is placed in thought.

And once you understand that, the question is no longer whether the system is divided. It is whether you are willing to structure your life in a way that reflects that knowledge—both in how you see and in how you give.

Because if giving is not part of how you are wired, it will remain occasional. And if it remains occasional, you will never actually see the system you are operating inside. You will just continue to benefit from it.

Negotiation in real estate is often framed around a simple concept: meet in the middle. But this assumption ignores how behavioral economics and game theory actually influence outcomes.

In this episode, the focus shifts from arbitrary pricing movements to a more disciplined approach grounded in value. Referencing concepts associated with John Nash, the discussion explores why most back-and-forth negotiations drift away from logic and toward inefficient outcomes.

This episode covers:

• Why “meeting in the middle” is not a reliable negotiation strategy

• How repeated counteroffers tend to push outcomes above the perceived midpoint

• The role of behavioral economics in buyer and seller decision-making

• Why negotiating based on numbers alone leads to poor positioning

• How anchoring to property value creates more efficient outcomes

• A simplified framework for structuring a decisive offer or counter

Core thesis:
Negotiation outcomes improve when both parties operate from a clear understanding of value rather than reacting to arbitrary price movements.

Who this is for:

• Buyers and sellers navigating high-value real estate transactions

• Anyone involved in negotiations where price anchoring distorts decision-making

• Individuals interested in applying behavioral economics to real-world decisions

Timestamps:

0:00 — Introduction
0:26 — Tax Day context and episode framing
0:37 — Negotiation myths in real estate
0:49 — Reference to A Beautiful Mind and John Nash
1:25 — The “meet in the middle” assumption
1:40 — Example: $2.4M listing vs $2.0M offer
2:15 — How midpoint thinking distorts value
2:41 — Game theory and repeated negotiation cycles
3:13 — Losing sight of property value
3:28 — Counteroffer sequences and shifting midpoints
4:44 — Why the midpoint rises over time
5:01 — Strategic insight: limiting negotiation cycles
5:09 — Commitment to value vs reacting to numbers
5:45 — Key principle: don’t negotiate numbers
6:07 — Example of value-based counter strategy
6:27 — Behavioral economics as the foundation

Hashtags:

#BehavioralEconomics
#NegotiationStrategy
#MarketPsychology
#DecisionMaking
#RealEstateTiming

People come to me.

Sometimes they know my story. Sometimes they only know a piece of it. Some know nothing of it. But again and again people who have lost someone or are in the process of loss find their way to me and ask some version of the same question.

How do you live after this?

And after many of those conversations I finally realized something very simple.

There are really only two possibilities in life.

Two.

Either we die and there is no existence, or we die and there is.

That’s it.

Those are the only two possibilities.

So think about it.

If a person we love dies and there is no existence after this life, then what is the point of mourning that loss forever and failing to live the only life we will ever know? And this again.

If they no longer exist, they cannot see our sorrow. They cannot know our pain. They cannot experience anything at all.

So why would we spend the rest of the only life we have refusing to live it?

But if there is an existence after this life, then what is the point of mourning endlessly because our loved one is gone?

If they continue on somewhere beyond this life, then they know something we do not yet know. They know that one day we will join them in something we cannot even comprehend. So magical what they have is that they certainly do not concern themselves with us because they know it is a fleeting step in a larger journey.

They worry not about us in the way we worry about them. They would not want us frozen in grief when we still have life left to live. Either way, the conclusion is the same.

Live.

Andy said it best to Red in The Shawshank Redemption:

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Life deals each of us a hand of cards.

Sometimes the hand plays well. Sometimes it does not.

We do not get to choose the hand.

Stephen Colbert once said something that stayed with me when he spoke about losing his father and brothers as a young man:

“You cannot pick the things you are grateful for.” meaning you have to be grateful for you entire life….all of it.

Loss is one of those things.

But what we can choose is what comes next.

So this is what I tell people who come to me now carrying grief.

Give yourself permission to live a more joyful life than you had before no matter the circumstances of what you see as your loss. Because if the people we loved no longer exist, they cannot care whether we mourn forever.

And if they do exist somewhere beyond this life, then they already know something we will eventually learn.

They know we should live.

They know we should seek joy.

So seek more joy than you had before.

After all, the choice is simple.

Get busy living. Or get busy dying.

I want to thank my late wife Brenda for taking me on and bringing me along to make me a better man for my next life. I would like to thank my wife Gayle for understanding my thoughts of this and my wonderings about my life’s journey and for taking me into the future.

The End.

Right now, unit volume continues to outpace 2025 across multiple months, while median pricing remains anchored around the $2M range. Inventory expansion is introducing more choice, but not enough to shift the overall market out of balance.

What’s happening right now

26 single-family vacation home closings so far in April

Median price holding at approximately $1.975M (functionally $2M)

April 2025 had 76 total closings; April 2026 is pacing to exceed that at ~79+ closings

May already has 47 homes under contract set to close (vs. 55 total closings in May 2025)

Key market dynamics

Pricing StabilityThe $2M price point continues to act as a natural equilibrium—half of transactions above, half below.

Rising Transaction VolumeJanuary, February, and March all exceeded prior-year volume, with March up approximately 50% year-over-year.

Forward Contract StrengthMay is already near last year’s total volume before mid-month, indicating continued demand strength.

Inventory ExpansionProjected April ending inventory: ~700–705 homesThis suggests ~8.5–9 months of inventory depending on final sales pace.

Segmented Market Conditions

Updated, well-positioned homes: seller-leaning conditions

Older or renovation-needed homes: buyer-leaning conditions

Overall market: balanced with micro-market variation

Who this is for

Buyers evaluating timing and negotiating leverage across different property conditions

Sellers assessing positioning relative to increasing inventory

Investors tracking volume trends and pricing stability in the 30A corridor

Market referenced

30A (Florida Gulf Coast vacation home market)

Timestamps

0:00 — Opening remarks and episode setup0:37 — April closings and median price1:03 — April pacing vs. 20251:27 — May projections and pending contracts2:06 — Year-over-year volume trends3:05 — Inventory projections and months of supply3:53 — Segment breakdown: buyer vs. seller markets4:27 — Closing remarks

Hashtags

#30ARealEstate#GulfCoastRealEstate#MarketInventory#BuyerSellerDynamics#RealEstateTrends

“I’m in real estate investing.” Or something like that or Bitcoin…whatever it is we first have to understand what they mean and we have to level the playing field. Let’s do that for real estate “investors”.

They don’t say it defensively. They say it the way someone states a fact, like where they live or what they do. And most of the time, nobody challenges it, because it sounds right. They own property. They’re collecting rent. They’re “in the game.”

But I’ve learned to pause at that sentence, because it hides a more important question:

What are you actually doing?

Not what you call it. Not what you intended. What are you actually doing with your capital?

Because when you slow that question down, most of what people describe as “real estate investing” starts to look a lot less like investing and a lot more like something else entirely.

So rather than argue about it, let’s just walk through it.

Same starting point, same time horizon, no tricks. Just different behaviors and what they produce over time.

Three People, Same Starting Point

Imagine three people sitting at a table thirty years ago, each with $50,000. They don’t know each other. They don’t coordinate. They just make what they each think is a smart decision.

The Passive Investor (Stocks)

The first person does the least interesting thing of the three. He takes the $50,000 and puts it into a broad market index. No story, no edge, no timing. He doesn’t try to be clever. In fact, the defining characteristic of his strategy is that it doesn’t require him to be clever. He lets it sit, he adds nothing fancy, and over time the market does what it has historically done. Thirty years later, he has something in the neighborhood of $872,000. Nothing dramatic happened along the way. That’s precisely the point.

The Homeowner

The second person takes the same $50,000 and buys a house for $169,000. He moves in. Over the next thirty years, he does what homeowners do. He makes his payments, pays his taxes, replaces things he didn’t know existed until they broke, and slowly reduces the loan. The house appreciates along the way. At the end of thirty years, he owns it free and clear and it’s worth roughly $550,000. He did well. He built equity. But if we’re being precise, what he did was commit to a payment and stay in one place long enough for time to work in his favor. There’s discipline in that, but there’s not much in the way of investment decision-making once the initial purchase is made.

Indeed the analysis is more complicated because money goes in every month for many things and for many years.

The Rental Owner

The third person looks at both of those and says, “No, I’m going to do this properly.” He buys the same house, but instead of living in it, he rents it out. Now we’re in what people like to call “real estate investing.” And for a while, it feels that way. There’s activity. There are decisions. There’s the sense that something is being managed.

But if you actually watch what happens over time, it’s more mundane than the label suggests. Some months the property is occupied, some months it isn’t. Some years the numbers look clean, and some years something expensive interrupts that narrative. If he’s disciplined, he improves the rent over time and maybe even generates a modest surplus. Over thirty years, the loan gets paid down, the property appreciates, and he ends up with something between roughly $550,000 and $630,000 in equity. If he’s more thoughtful and reinvests whatever excess cash flow shows up along the way, he can push that outcome closer to a million dollars. It is not complicated math, but at least he was getting someone else to nearly pay or mostly pay everything. Mostly.

That’s a good result. It deserves to be called that. But it’s also worth noticing what didn’t change.

He bought something.
He held it.
He waited.

The structure is the same as the first person with the index fund. The only real difference is that he inserted himself into the middle of the process. More effort, more friction, more variables—but still fundamentally a strategy that depends on time doing the heavy lifting. What was not considered to make it even more equivalent was to put in place a “property manager” to take nearly 5-15% per year to help manage the property so the “investor” could step away and just watch just like the index fund investor. Leaving that aside, let’s just continue on.

The Problem with the Debate

And this is where most of the conversation about “stocks versus real estate” quietly goes off track. Because by this point, everyone is comparing outcomes and arguing about which one is better, without noticing that they are comparing two versions of the same underlying behavior: put capital to work and let it compound. There a tons of ways to do that and these are just two ways and they are not directly comparable. Just like a Beachfront home at $3,400 per square foot is not comparable to a fixer at $350 per square foot just 1 mile away. Bitcoin is not the same as gold either.

What we are debating is ego.

Still, the stock investor is very hard to beat, and the numbers reflect that.

The Builder Appears - the 4th Person

But there is a fourth person at the table we haven’t talked about yet, and he is doing something that doesn’t look like any of the others.

He also starts with $50,000. He also operates in real estate. But he doesn’t buy a house to live in, and he doesn’t buy one to hold. He buys land, builds a house, and sells it. At the closing table, after costs, he nets about 16.5%. Not on paper. Not as an estimate. In cash. Those costs in this conversation also include the cost of capital acquired from others (Financing).

Then he does something that seems almost too simple to matter.

He does it again…….and again….and…Now we are talking about Velocity of Capital and the Cash Conversion Cycle which is all that matters.

The Shift from Waiting to Turning Capital

The first few years look unimpressive. One project at a time, capital tied up, progress that feels slower than it should. But each time he completes a project, his capital base increases. And because he is not waiting for appreciation, but actually realizing profit at each cycle, that increase is tangible and immediate.

After a while, something changes. The capital is no longer just enough to do one project. It can support two. Now two projects are moving at the same time, each producing its own margin, each feeding back into the same pool of capital. A few cycles later, it becomes three. The timeline compresses from long stretches of waiting into a sequence of shorter, repeatable events: build, sell, redeploy.

At that point, he is no longer participating in the same kind of activity as the other three. He isn’t waiting for value to appear. He is creating it, capturing it, and then deliberately putting it back to work.

If you’re wondering where I sit when I say “real estate investing,” it’s here. Not because it sounds better, but because it behaves differently.

The Outcome

Thirty years later, his outcome doesn’t look like a variation of the others. It looks like it belongs in a different category altogether—on the order of four million dollars or more from the same initial $50,000.

Nothing about the asset class changed. It was “real estate” in all three other cases. What changed was the behavior.

Where the Argument Breaks

And that’s the part that tends to get lost.

Why? Because what most all people are actually doing with “real estate” investing is not fundamentally different from what the stock investor is doing. They are accumulating wealth over time, with varying degrees of efficiency.

When people say that stocks outperform real estate, what they are usually observing—accurately—is that passive, time-based compounding in the market outperforms most people’s experience of owning propert and indeed even renting it out. The reality is they are both “passive” wealth accumulation models and I will go to the mat defending stocks against the typical model, but if you ask me does real estate investing outperform the stock market I will say Yes!

Because the builder is doing something else. He is not relying on time as the primary driver. He is relying on margin and repetition. That introduces a different kind of risk—execution risk, timing risk, operational complexity—but it also produces a different kind of outcome.

The Numbers, Side by Side

No interpretation needed. Just structure and outcome. It baffles me why people that have done this just once do not keep going. Because you know why? They may lose one or two hands at Blackjack along the way.

Final Distinction

So the distinction isn’t really between stocks and real estate.

It’s between strategies that depend on time, and strategies that depend on action.

You can call both of them “investing” if you want. People do. The terminology isn’t the important part.

But the math is.

A Final Thought Experiment

If you want to pressure test this idea, take it out of theory.

Imagine someone who, around 2010, had roughly $294,000 of equity. Not a fund, not institutional capital—just accumulated equity, and not even all of it, just enough to pursue an idea that at the time may not have fully revealed itself.

Instead of holding property and waiting for appreciation to do the work, they began to build, sell, and redeploy capital. Not in a dramatic or highly visible way, but steadily, repeatedly, and with a consistency that only becomes meaningful over time. The scale was above entry-level housing, yes, but the underlying approach was not complicated. It was the same basic cycle, executed again and again.

Along the way, additional equity—approximately $2.3 million—might be introduced oh lets say near halfway through around 2017. Not as a perfectly timed infusion, but as a continuation of what was already working.

From there, the distinction becomes clearer. The growth that followed was not driven by passive appreciation, nor by simply holding assets over time. It came from iteration—projects completed, capital realized, and then deliberately put back into motion.

Fast forward to the present, and that original $294,000 might have grown for that investor to rather nice levels. Could this happen? Is this one of our investors? Could it be you? The point is this stuff works even if along the way there were maybe three losses.

At that point, the question is no longer whether money was made. The question is whether this resembles what most people are describing when they say they are “investing in real estate.”

Because if the comparison being made is between this and buying an asset and holding it for thirty years, then the comparison itself is flawed.

And no broad equity index, starting from that same point in time and with that same initial capital, produces a comparable result.

That is not luck.

It is structure.

That’s not appreciation.

That’s what happens when capital is turned instead of parked.

Call it whatever you want.

That’s real estate investing.

Call Me

Who this is for:

This episode is for individuals evaluating how they earn, how they deploy capital, and how those decisions affect long-term flexibility—particularly those considering second homes or multi-location living.

Referenced Market:
30A and comparable luxury second home markets

Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction and episode setup
0:51 Defining capital income vs W2 income
1:28 Comfort vs constraint in predictable income
2:02 Real estate as capital-based income
3:07 Why capital income feels uncertain
3:42 Limiting beliefs around steady paychecks
4:16 Early career decisions and risk avoidance
4:38 Transitioning later in life to capital income
5:01 Redefining freedom through income type
5:32 Broader economic context and inflation
6:03 Capital income and second home mindset
6:45 Delayed outcomes and realized returns
7:16 Closing perspective

Hashtags:

#BehavioralEconomics
#DecisionMaking
#WealthStrategy
#RealEstateTiming
#30ARealEstate

This does not need embellishment.

It was real.

I was there in that California king, settling into sleep, comfortable with a new person beside me, perhaps for the first time truly at rest in what had become my new life. And then, with what I believe was the last remaining energy of a person who had cared for me as deeply as Brenda did, I felt it clearly.

A hand in mine. As present as any other hand had ever been.

Not imagined. Not symbolic. Not something I later dressed up into meaning.

I felt it as I was drifting off. My hand in hers. Hers in mine. Clear enough that there was no mistaking it.

And then I heard her speak to me one last time.

“Be happy.”

That was it. Those two words woke me up.

I opened my eyes and looked down. My left hand was resting alone on my stomach. Gayle was on her side, turned away, nowhere near my hand. No confusion. No possibility that I had mistaken the source.

And in that instant I understood what I had not fully understood through the whole journey.

Brenda had been the caregiver.

She had been sending me on my way all along. Through the illness. Through the loss. Through the dark places I barely escaped. Through the voice that pulled me back. Through the strange and necessary steps that led me into a new life I could not yet see. I was a nurse to a person leaving this earth. She knew then and I know it now she was pointing me to new life and renewed joy.

And now, with those final words, she released me.

Be happy. With that, the caregiver was gone.

And she had set me on my way.

The industry keeps telling buyers that signing quickly is professionalism.

A lot of that is nonsense. The Buyer Brokerage Agreement is a dying myth in most states. Legislators are beginning to see this as a consumer protection issue.

It is not professionalism to corner someone into paperwork before they have had a chance to decide whether you are thoughtful, competent, disciplined, or even worth listening to.

It is insecurity.

And insecurity dressed up as policy is still insecurity.

The Door Opener Economy

There is a version of modern real estate practice that reduces the agent to a door opener with a contract in hand.

Show the house. Get the signature. Secure the position. Hope the relationship forms later.

That is backwards.

The relationship should come first.

The trust should come first.

The evidence of competence should come first.

Instead, too many brokerages are training agents to behave as if the first objective is not to understand the buyer, but to trap the buyer before another agent gets there first.

That is not service. That is fear.

What The Industry Does When It Gets Scared

When industries feel pressure, they do two things.

They centralize control, and they rationalize it.

That is exactly what has happened here.

Compensation uncertainty increased. Litigation exposed weaknesses. Public scrutiny grew. So instead of responding with better representation, clearer thinking, and stronger advisory standards, many brokerages responded with paperwork. They aligned to NAR even in states like Florida where a buyer brokerage agreement is not required. They did not think of the profession as a state regulated industry but instead as a national trade organization set of failures patched up by bad lawsuits.

More signatures. Earlier signatures. Harder pressure.

The message is obvious:

“You need me now, before you even know whether I am any good.”

That is a weak argument made by a weak system. As NAR crumbles so will this bad behavior.

What The Rule Actually Exposed

The NAR rule was supposed to create clarity.

What it actually exposed is how many people in this business do not trust the market to choose them freely. If 85% of agents fail within 2 years and most agents are part timers playing in the business do they really deserve to be considered? Sure some of them are great. But most are seeking paper work to force their way into the business.

If a buyer can meet three agents, listen carefully, compare judgment, and decide later, many agents are at risk. Risk means that sometimes your income stumbles and is not smooth but over the long arc of history you win.

So the push becomes: get the paper signed before the comparison begins. Do not strive for competence. Strive for creative scripts to get a signature.

That is the real story.

Florida, Alabama, Mississippi

Florida does not require buyer brokerage agreements by state law.

Alabama moved clearly in the direction of consumer access by stating that a consumer or customer may not be required to enter into a written brokerage agreement in order for a licensee to show property.

Mississippi moved in a similar direction by resisting the idea that access to property should automatically be conditioned on an early exclusive contract.

That is not accidental. Those states are recognizing something the industry keeps trying to avoid: A person should be allowed to meet professionals before being bound to one. That is not anti-agent.

That is pro-consumer.

Just to see a house after meeting someone for the first time at the home (Mistake 1) there should be no requirement to sign an agreement. There should be a requirement from the buyer to be open to the relationship, open to the conversation, open to understanding that at a point in time a real estate professional should be protected in the relationship and the real estate professional should be open to be competent.

Do you have more that 2 seconds and do not need a hook to become educated? Watch this. This is Real Estate One Oh One.

The Trust Test

I am going to a new cardiologist in Florida soon because I am not convinced my current one is looking deeply enough at the broader issues involved in health.

That is normal.

That is rational.

That is what adults do.

They seek competence.

They ask better questions.

They look for depth.

And if they are not satisfied, they move on.

I would change real estate agents for simpler reasons than I would change a physician.

Why would I demand less scrutiny in a large financial transaction than I would in a medical relationship?

I would not.

Neither should anyone else.

Competence Is Not An Instagram Metric

This is where the social media economy has done real damage.

A polished video is now mistaken for judgment.

A large following is mistaken for discipline.

Confidence on camera is mistaken for competence in contract structure, negotiation leverage, inspection strategy, title review, financing risk, tax reality, and long-term ownership judgment.

Those are not the same thing. The market has started manufacturing celebrity agents because attention scales faster than wisdom.

That is how a figure like Ryan Serhant becomes culturally useful to the industry. He is not the cause. He is the product. He is what happens when visibility becomes a business model of its own.

But a consumer still has to answer a much simpler question:

Who do I actually trust when the details matter? Not who entertains me. Not who trends. Not who performs confidence best.

Who thinks clearly when the stakes are real?

Never Foreclose The Better Option

People should be careful about signing away optionality too early.

That is true in contracts. It is true in investing. It is true in medicine.

And it is true in choosing representation.

Never foreclose getting to know new people who may serve you better.

That is not disloyalty. That is discipline A professional worth hiring should be able to withstand comparison.

If he cannot withstand comparison, he should not be locking anyone in.

Final Thought

The agents and brokerages most aggressively pushing immediate buyer agreements are often telling on themselves.

They are revealing that they do not fully trust their own ability to earn the relationship in the open market.

So they seek structure before trust.

Control before competence.

Paper before proof.

That is the behavior of a scared industry.

And buyers would be wise to notice it. But be warned. A great real estate professional that knows they are at least Billy Joel will sense alignment and will ask you to commit when the time is right. And that might be after coffee or after a few homes or a few chats or a few visits to #30a.

Not in the dramatic way younger people do it, with uncertainty and games and long stretches of wondering what the other person might be thinking. When you are older, some of that disappears. Life has already done enough teaching for both of you to recognize what is in front of you.

Neither of us had much interest in dancing around things.

That doesn’t mean it was rushed. It wasn’t. But there was a kind of quiet honesty between us that comes from experience. We were both serious about life. Serious about how short it can be. Serious about the idea that time is not something you casually spend once you’ve already seen how easily it can disappear.

We saw each other regularly.

Dinner sometimes. Coffee often. Walks through Seaside or along the beach. The simple routines of two people gradually becoming part of one another’s orbit.

And yes, we had barely managed to kiss goodnight.

There was something almost funny about that looking back now. Two adults who had lived entire lives already, both of us perfectly aware of what relationships eventually become, and yet somehow still moving with the careful pace of people who understood that what mattered wasn’t speed.

It was trust. It was respect. It was the slow realization that something new might be forming.

That doesn’t mean everything was suddenly simple. Grief does not disappear because someone kind walks into your life. Recovery has its own strange rhythms. There were still moments where the past arrived uninvited. There were still memories that could shift the ground under your feet for a day or two.

But those moments were no longer the life I was living.

They were echoes of the life I had lived.

And now there was someone else standing beside me as I figured out what came next.

Looking back, I sometimes think about the strange symmetry of it all. I had been led to one place in life by one person, and then taken from that place by another. The destination was not fully visible yet, and perhaps it never truly is. But the direction had changed.

The Caregiver’s Journey, as I had lived it, was reaching its natural end. The life that followed would be something else entirely.

And one night something very simple happened.

It had gotten late.

We had been talking and laughing the way people do when they have begun to feel comfortable around one another. Eventually the hour crept past the point where driving home made much sense. She was tired. I was tired.

So I said the most natural thing in the world.

“Why don’t you just sleep here tonight?”

Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, this was not some grand romantic moment. There were no candles or dramatic music playing in the background.

It was simply two adults recognizing that it was late and we were tired.

Yes, it would mean sleeping in the same bed. But that was all it meant, sleeping.

So we each went about the small rituals of getting ready for the night. At some point she ended up wearing a pair of my pajamas, which she seemed perfectly comfortable doing, and we climbed into bed like two people who had decided that resting was the only sensible thing left to do.

I kissed her goodnight. We talked for another minute or two.

Nothing important. Nothing memorable.

Just the quiet conversation that happens when two people are beginning to trust the calm presence of the other.

And then I started to drift off.

Comfortably. There was someone next to me in the bed. For the first time since Brenda died, another human being was there beside me as the night settled in.

And it felt… natural.

Peaceful.

Right.

I think it was in that quiet moment, somewhere between conversation and sleep, that my new life truly began.

Not with a declaration. Not with a plan. Just with rest.

Two people lying beside each other, comfortable enough with the world—and with each other—to fall asleep. And as for context for those that might wonder, I think this was likely around Early April of 2015. Brenda had seemingly been gone after last speaking to me harshly about my behavior in October of 2014. Now nearly 6 months later a bit of a sleep over and after what was a 5 year caregiver’s journey maybe nearing its end.

And that, in many ways, felt like the end of this story.

The Caregiver’s Journey had taken me where it was supposed to take me.

From diagnosis…. Through the long years of illness…Through the moment of loss…

Through the dark week where I nearly disappeared…

And finally back into life. I could have closed the book there.

And in many ways, it would have made perfect sense.

But stories—especially real ones—rarely end exactly where we think they do.

Because just when I thought the journey was finished…

Something else happened. One more moment.

One more voice. One more time the universe spoke to me.

And is that where the story truly ends?

There is a new pressure in real estate that did not exist twenty years ago: the pressure to perform publicly.

Platforms like TikTok reward visibility, not accuracy. They reward speed, not depth. And they reward certainty, even when certainty is misplaced.

I have participated in it myself. I have tried to show up, speak plainly, and explain how things actually work.

The result is predictable: modest engagement.

And then I watch other agents post.

Highly produced clips. Confident delivery. Strong claims. Sometimes dangerously strong claims.

They go viral.

So the question becomes unavoidable:

Is the market rewarding clarity — or performance?

What Is Actually Being Sold

A significant portion of real estate content today is not about real estate mechanics. It is about attention capture.

You will see:

• Software being promoted as if it is a strategic advantage rather than an operational tool

• Tax strategies presented without context, caveats, or legal boundaries

• Simplified narratives about “winning” in negotiations that ignore risk entirely

Take one example that appears frequently: bonus depreciation paired with claims of “active participation” to offset W-2 income.

Presented casually, it sounds sophisticated.

In practice, if the underlying intent and behavior do not match the tax position being taken, it crosses into misrepresentation.

That is not strategy. That is exposure.

The issue is not just that this content exists.

The issue is that it is delivered with confidence — and confidence converts.

See my series on Bonus Depreciation. I stand by it and I am 100% certain someone is going to buy on 30a and think they are ok, get audited and get a tax penalty of substantial proportions. I am also certain that when they sell and they wonder why the tax bill that could have been $25,000 per 100K is now $37,000 per 100K of depreciation recapture. I am guilty as charged for being overly complete, but do not follow those that are telling you to be walking on the edge of fraud. Read this series and Let me know if you find it more informative that Tik Tok?

Share

Subscribe now

The Krugman Question: What Incentives Are We Creating?

If visibility is the reward function, then behavior will optimize around visibility.

This is not a moral failure. It is an economic one.

Agents are responding rationally to the incentives placed in front of them.

• The algorithm rewards engagement

• Engagement favors simplification and certainty

• Simplification often removes nuance

• Removing nuance increases risk for the consumer

Over time, the system selects for the most compelling storyteller — not the most accurate advisor.

And once that equilibrium forms, it becomes self-reinforcing.

The Friedman Question: What Are the Consequences?

Milton Friedman would ask a simpler question: what happens when people act on this information?

If a buyer follows tax advice that was designed for a 30-second clip rather than a full analysis, the consequences are not theoretical.

They are financial.

They are legal.

And they are personal.

Real estate decisions are not reversible in the way content is.

You cannot “scroll past” a bad purchase structure.

You live with it.

The Personal Tension

Here is the part that is harder to admit.

When you produce grounded, reality-based content and it does not perform, you begin to question your approach.

You start to ask:

• Am I explaining things poorly?

• Am I missing what people actually want?

• Or is the system simply not designed to reward this kind of thinking?

That tension is real.

And it creates a quiet pressure to adjust — to simplify more, to sharpen the hook, to edge closer to certainty than the facts justify.

Who Is the Audience?

There is another possibility that is rarely discussed.

Much of this content may not be attracting serious buyers at all.

It may be circulating primarily among other agents.

Agents watching agents.

Learning presentation styles. Borrowing language. Replicating tone.

If that is true, then the perceived success of this content may be overstated from a business development standpoint.

Views are not clients.

Engagement is not trust.

And visibility is not the same as conversion.

Reality vs. Performance

So the question becomes more direct.

Is this the new economy of real estate?

Or is it a parallel economy — one built on attention rather than transactions?

Because the actual business of real estate still operates on different rules:

• Contracts must hold up

• Financing must close

• Tax positions must withstand scrutiny

• Decisions must make sense over time

No algorithm can substitute for that.

A Strategic Decision

At some point, every professional has to decide what game they are playing.

You can optimize for reach.

Or you can optimize for accuracy and trust.

In the short term, those paths can look very different.

In the long term, they tend to converge — but not always in the way people expect.

Because credibility compounds more slowly than attention.

But it compounds more reliably.

And when the stakes are high, reliability is what people actually pay for.

Final Thought

The real risk is not that some agents go viral.

The real risk is that serious professionals begin to believe that going viral is the same as being effective.

It is not.

And confusing the two is where the real cost begins.

It happened because of my son.

I love my son, William Turner Jabbour, and his birthday falls on December 14 every year. In 2014 that meant he was turning twenty-two. I had always had a little saying for younger people who didn’t yet have kids.

“Have them by the time you’re thirty-two,” I would tell them, “because when you’re fifty and they’re eighteen you might still need to be cool.”

In December of 2014 I was fifty-two and Turner was twenty-two, so I suppose I still qualified as cool enough to host the weekend.

Turner came down from Memphis with a few of his friends and stayed with me at the house in Sugarwood. The plan was simple enough. A birthday weekend at the beach, a little time with friends, and a dinner out.

Somewhere between my birthday on November 25 and Turner’s arrival in December, Gayle had stopped by the house again. I needed to run over to Lily Pad to pick up one last piece of furniture to finish the place. She came along with me. We walked around the shop, she looked at things, and we spoke very little.

I found a bench I liked.

She nodded and said it was cool.

We brought it back to the house and I set it where it belonged. As she was leaving I mentioned that Turner was coming into town for his birthday and that we were going to dinner at Whiskey Bravo.

“Stop by and go with us,” I said.

She said sure.

Whiskey Bravo was an easy walk from the house. My friend Eddie Upchurch had once allowed me an easement through his yard on Seagrove Village Boulevard that led to a walking path toward the beach and over toward the restaurant. Eddie has since passed away and I miss him. He was one of those good people life places along your path for a while.

So that evening, December 14, we walked that way.

Turner was there, along with a few of his friends. They were all in that wonderful stage of life where the future is still wide open and the world feels like it belongs to you.

Gayle joined us for dinner.

And that night something felt just slightly different.

For the first time since I had met her she was dressed up a bit. Not in an obvious way, just enough that I noticed it and had the brief thought that maybe she looked like she was heading out on a date.

Then I dismissed the thought. We were just friends.

We all sat down and started ordering. The table quickly filled with the kind of food twenty-two-year-olds tend to gravitate toward.

Tomahawk pork chops.

Steaks.

Burgers.

Appetizers.

Everyone was all in.

Except Brian.

Brian was one of Turner’s friends and when the waiter came around he ordered a salad.

I didn’t think much of it at first. But when the appetizers arrived and the table was beginning to fill up with plates I leaned over and asked him quietly,

“Hey man… you ordered a salad. You sure that’s all you want?”

He looked at me and said, very politely,

“Yes sir. That’s all I can afford.”

The entire table exploded in laughter.

Brian had not yet realized the dinner was on me.

He took the joke well, and for the rest of the night the table settled into that easy rhythm that happens when good people share a meal and no one is in a hurry to be anywhere else.

At some point during the evening I remember looking across the table at Gayle. We were watching these kids laugh and talk about their lives and their futures.

And for a moment it felt almost like we were the elder parents presiding over the beginning of something they had not yet experienced.

It was a quiet moment.

But I think that might have been the first time either of us felt the possibility that maybe, just maybe, we would become something more than two people who had met for coffee a few weeks earlier.

When the evening ended we walked back toward the house.

Before she left, Gayle paused for a moment and said something that still makes me smile when I think about it.

“You know,” she said, “in Louisiana we hug our friends. It’s okay to hug, you know.”

And so we hugged goodnight.

That was it.

Looking back now, that may have been the first real date.

Neither of us knew it at the time.

The “Meet in the Middle” Fallacy

A persistent failure in residential real estate negotiation is the assumption that price discovery is achieved by “meeting in the middle.” It is not strategy. It is signaling.

Consider a property offered at $4,000,000. A buyer submits $3,400,000. The typical response is to counter at $3,900,000.

At that moment, the negotiation is no longer anchored to value. It is anchored to arithmetic.

The buyer immediately interprets the exchange as a midpoint exercise.
$3.4M and $3.9M imply $3.65M.

From there, the sequence is predictable:

• Buyer advances to $3.5M

• Seller recalculates a midpoint at $3.7M

• Both parties begin negotiating against imagined averages rather than actual value

This is not negotiation. It is drift.

The distortion is subtle but consequential: the “middle” begins to feel fair. It is not. It is compromise without analysis.

How Advantage Is Lost

The first concession validates the midpoint framework.

That is the mistake.

Once accepted, control is lost. The negotiation becomes reactive.

Neither party has established:

• What the asset is worth

• What outcome is acceptable

• Which terms matter alongside price

Instead, both operate inside an artificial range.

Subscribe now

A Professional Approach

A professional does not negotiate toward a midpoint. A professional defines a number.

Assume the seller will transact at $3,879,000—not $3.7M, not the midpoint, but a specific number derived from market data and seller objectives.

The response is not $3.9M to initiate movement.
It is $3,879,000—deliberately, and stated as fair, objective, and required.

Now the buyer must reassess:

• Is this flexible or firm?

• Is this positioning or conclusion?

• Do terms matter more than price?

The negotiation shifts from arithmetic to intent.

That is where leverage exists.

Time as a Strategic Variable

Pair that position with a defined response window—five days.

Now the buyer must act:

• Improve price

• Improve terms

• Exit

The interaction becomes a decision, not a conversation.

If the buyer responds within that window but changes structure, what then? That is the “secret sauce.”

And it should be.

The point is not to reveal it. The point is to ask: are you selecting representation based on skill, strategy, and economic understanding—or on commission?

When Terms Disrupt Price

Now introduce structure.

The buyer accepts $3,879,000 in principle but alters terms:

• From “as-is with right to inspect and cancel”

• To a 1% repair limitation

This is not minor. It is a shift in risk.

Price and terms are a single equation.

A higher price with restrictive inspection terms may be inferior to a lower price with full inspection latitude. A professional evaluates both simultaneously. An amateur isolates price.

What Professionals Actually Do

The belief that agents “unlock doors” exists because most transactions lack visible structure.

Competent representation follows a disciplined sequence:

• Establish objective market value

• Define the outcome before engagement

• Construct a complete offer (price and terms integrated)

• Deliver the position with clarity

• Advise acceptance when aligned with value

Accepting a strong, market-based offer is not weakness. It is discipline.

Conclusion

The credibility issue in real estate is not commission. It is inconsistency in execution.

When negotiations reduce to midpoint movement, the public sees activity without skill. That perception is earned.

The distinction is structural.

A professional defines value.
A professional structures terms.
A professional controls timing and positioning.

That is why outcomes differ.

On 30A, we achieve a higher sale price relative to original list price than over 98% of agents and teams. Out of 1,691 transacting agents, that places us roughly in the top 32. Among top performers, differences are measured in tenths—but those tenths matter.

Work with us. Work with others near that range. That is not the point.

The point is whether you know how to evaluate who you are hiring.

Buyers lose opportunities by ignoring pricing guidance just as often as sellers do. Value does not change based on which side you occupy. It is determined by the asset itself.

If you enter a buyer-broker relationship without understanding the economic and behavioral guidance you are receiving, you are operating without structure.

And structure—not access—is where results come from.

Coffee, conversation, evaluation.

That is not process.

That is strategy.

Leave a comment

If you’ve walked around Seaside or anywhere along 30A with me for more than about fifteen minutes, you’ve probably seen it. I stop people. I ask questions. I make jokes that sometimes land and sometimes do not. I say things that occasionally put my foot squarely in my mouth.

But there is always a reason.

It isn’t because I don’t care. In truth it is the opposite. I care more than I once did, and somewhere along the way I stopped worrying so much about whether a conversation was perfectly polished or socially correct. Life has a way of sanding those edges off you when you go through something that rearranges your understanding of time.

So I talk to people.

I always did, even before Brenda died. It was part of my nature. But after she was gone, something about that instinct changed. I began sensing something in people — something that is hard to describe but easy to recognize once you’ve seen it enough.

Pain.

Or the echo of it.

You start to notice that people’s lives orbit around invisible centers. Everyone is moving through their own private gravity well. Illness. Loss. Fear. Joy. Hope. Sometimes all of it at once. And when those orbits cross, even briefly, you can feel it.

Years later — 2025 to be exact — I would meet someone named Emily during one of those moments. I approached her the way I approach most people: a little direct, a little playful, probably a bit too forward if you didn’t know me yet.

“Who are you?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

She wasn’t having it.

She fired right back at me, matching the tone and then some. To her it probably sounded abrupt, maybe even rude. To the people who already knew me it was just Richard being Richard.

But later, when we had a quieter moment and I apologized for my approach, something else surfaced. We realized we shared a thread of life that neither of us had known about when we first crossed paths.

That’s how people come together.

Not through polished introductions or carefully constructed networking conversations. Through shared gravity. Through the recognition that somewhere along the way both of you had been through something that rearranged your understanding of the world.

Sometimes that happens because Richard is simply being Richard. Occasionally that means a foot in the mouth before the introduction is finished. But intention tends to reveal itself eventually.

But I didn’t know any of that yet in 2014.

In late October of that year I returned to Memphis one final time.

The apartment lease ran until October 31, 2014. I had left it behind in the fog of Brenda’s death, but eventually there comes a moment when unfinished chapters have to be closed. So I rented a U-Haul, packed what remained of that life, and began the drive back to Florida.

Witches and Goblins and me on the road.

That drive was surreal.

When you drive long distances alone, music has a way of becoming a narrator. Songs from other parts of your life surface unexpectedly, and suddenly lyrics you’ve heard a thousand times carry entirely different meaning.

“Two Tickets to Paradise.”

“Color My World.”

The soundtrack of earlier years played through the speakers while the miles passed beneath the Highlander. And for the first time since Brenda died I felt something unfamiliar creeping into the edges of my mind.

Not happiness.

Not relief.

Something quieter.

Possibility.

I was not going back and forth anymore. Memphis was behind me. The triangle that had defined our life — Memphis, Nashville, Florida — had collapsed into a single point.

Florida.

My new life.

You can only see the pattern looking backward, of course. At the time it just felt like a long drive and an ending that needed to be completed.

But I remember at least one day that followed as clearly as if it happened yesterday.

Only looking back.

November 14, 2014.

It was a Friday afternoon. Probably around three or four o’clock. I walked into Seaside from the house in Sugarwood for what I assumed would be another ordinary afternoon. At the time the old Amavida location still stood where a jewelry shop sits now beside Pickles.

I walked inside and took my place in line.

This was my habit even then. I would joke with whoever happened to be nearby. A man in a Tennessee Volunteers cap might hear something like:

“So how about that football dynasty Arkansas gave us on that fumble?”

Translation: a little harmless jab, an invitation for the other person to play along.

Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t.

But that afternoon there was someone standing in front of me in line.

A woman.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

She had clearly been watching my antics with the other people in line and was not particularly impressed.

“I live here,” she said. “In Panama City Beach.”

A few barbs went back and forth between us. Before long we found ourselves sitting outside at one of the tables with coffee, me continuing my usual routine and her giving me what can only be described as a sustained stink eye while somehow tolerating my presence.

Eventually the conversation settled.

We introduced ourselves properly.

And in that moment I told a complete stranger something that would have seemed impossible for me to say just weeks earlier. Many would say, “Ok… bye now.”

“My wife died last month,” I said. “After four and a half years of illness. I’m just trying to stay in life and be out there.”

That was the truth.

Only a few weeks earlier I had been close to disappearing entirely inside that house in Sugarwood. The week of moss and opioids had brought me within reach of becoming Brooks.

But the voice had pulled me back. Now I was Red, riding the bus into a life I did not yet understand.

The woman across the table listened carefully. She was a nurse practitioner, and she responded with the kind of quiet empathy that only someone in that profession seems able to offer without making it feel like pity.

Her name was Cynthia Gayle Adams.

I did not know it that afternoon, but four years later she would become my wife.At the time, however, none of that existed. We finished our coffee.

“Well,” she said, “maybe I’ll call you sometime. We can get you over to Rosemary to play some tennis or something with the guys.” It sounded simple enough. Just a stranger offering another stranger a small bridge back into the world.

And that is exactly what it was.

A few days later she called again.

My birthday was approaching, and some friends had been encouraging me to host a small dinner at the house. I had decided to cook Lebanese food, which is not a casual undertaking. Anyone who has ever rolled grape leaves or made kibbeh from scratch knows it can take the better part of a day.

When she heard about that plan she offered to stop by and help.

Whether she thought I needed assistance or simply wanted to see if I was serious about the cooking, I never asked.

She came by that day.

In truth she mostly watched. Lebanese cooking is something of a production, and there was not much room for helpers once the process started. We talked while I worked — rolling grape leaves, shaping kibbeh, preparing the dishes that would soon fill the table.

I do not remember anything of the banter. There was no grand moment. No sudden realization. Just conversation between two people who had met a few days earlier over coffee in Seaside.

When she left I shook her hand and thanked her for coming by.

The dinner party happened the following evening.

A couple of days later she called again.

“Your birthday is coming up,” she said. “Let me take you to dinner.”

I don’t believe either of us thought of it as a date at the time. But looking back, of course it was. She came by the house and we drove to The Vue restaurant.

It was Tuesday, November 25, 2014.

The day I turned fifty-two.

The universe had told me earlier that year in a dream that I would be alone at fifty-one. And it was right. It never told me I would meet my next chapter by fifty-two.

Brenda had died before I turned fifty-two. But on the evening of that birthday dinner something else had quietly arrived.

Hope in all its glory.

I just didn’t know it yet. I was getting there on my own. I was open to life a bit.

Looking back now I can see something that was invisible at the time.

I thought I was just beginning to rebuild my life.

What I didn’t realize was this:

The bus had already arrived in Zihuatanejo.