The Myplace Playbook // 077

Hey Everyone,

I live near a golf course. Every day I watch kids tear around the links like they own the place. On weekends I head out to Moyie or Koocanusa and the lakes are packed, boats and floaties and coolers, the whole scene.

And the sky, most days lately, is the colour of a peach.

You know what I'm talking about. The sun comes up orange. The far shore goes hazy by afternoon. There's that smell. Some mornings the mountains across the lake just aren't there anymore.

Here's what I keep noticing, though.

The kids do not care.

Not even a little. They're not checking an air quality app. They don't know what a PM 2.5 reading is. Nobody told them this is a bad week, so it isn't one. It's just summer, and summer is for fun, and they are having the best week of their lives. Week after week.

The adults are a different story. We're on our phones, refreshing the map, watching the little fire icons, reading the AQI number out loud like it's going to change if we say it with enough concern. Should we even be out here. Is this okay. Maybe we wait for a clearer day.

Two groups. Same summer. Same sky. Completely different weeks.

I've been thinking about that gap, because I see the same thing in my work.

Every day I talk to people who are waiting for conditions to be perfect before they make a move.

Waiting for rates to drop. Six holds in a row now, and still waiting.

Waiting for the market to feel calmer. It's summer, half the country's at the lake, it always feels quiet, and they read the quiet as a reason to keep waiting.

Waiting for the smoke to clear, financially speaking. For the moment when nothing's uncertain and every sign is green and it finally feels completely safe to go.

That week isn't coming. It never was.

There is no smoke-free summer in this business. There's always a fire somewhere on the map. A rate worry, an election, a headline out of the States, a number that ticked the wrong way. If your plan is to wait until the sky is perfectly clear, you will wait through every summer you've got.

The kids have it right.

Not because they're brave. Because they're not looking at the map. They're looking at the water.

The people who buy, who move, who sort out their renewal instead of dreading it, they're not the ones who got a perfect week. Nobody gets a perfect week. They're the ones who looked at conditions that were good enough, decided the lake was worth it, and went.

And the ones still waiting for clear skies? They're spending the same summer. Same haze, same heat, same everything. They're just spending it on the shore, watching, while their conditions get no better and the season gets shorter.

Good enough is a real thing. Around here, in a summer like this one, good enough might be the best you get. And good enough is plenty to build a life on.

So here's the only ask.

If you've been waiting for the smoke to clear before you look at your mortgage, your renewal, your maybe-this-is-the-year move, stop waiting for the perfect week.

Hit reply and tell me what you've been putting off until conditions feel right. I'll give you a straight read on whether right now is good enough to move on it. A lot of the time it is, and people are surprised.

Then get out to the lake. Orange sky and all. The kids have it figured out.

-Andrew