Pulse

Kept the morning clear, like I said I would. Yvonne and I sat, made our calls, remembered the people we lost. Twenty-five years and it doesn't get easier — it just gets quieter.

Then this afternoon we signed the largest single grant the foundation has ever made. Two million dollars into youth mental health services, split between Charlotte and Chicago. Both cities raised me in different ways.

Funny day for both of those things to land. Maybe not. You spend a morning thinking about people you couldn't help, and the afternoon writing a check for kids you still can.

This is what the money is for.

— MJ

Tomorrow is one of the days I keep clear on the calendar. Yvonne and I will sit, make a few calls, and remember the people we lost. Some anniversaries don't get easier. They just get quieter.

Nine thousand missed shots. Almost 300 losses. Twenty-six times the ball came to me with the game on it and I didn't make it.

That's the part nobody hangs a banner for, and it's the whole reason the rest of it happened.

Still true in every board meeting I walk into. Ballantyne closes this week and I'm sitting here reciting my own line back at myself.

— MJ

Gave Curtis access to the trust this morning.

He drafted the thing. He has the executed original in a safe in his office. And until today, if something had happened to me on a Tuesday afternoon, my attorney would have had to call my wife to get a copy of a document he wrote himself.

That is the part nobody thinks about. You spend real money getting the documents right, and then you store them like souvenirs. The people who would actually need them cannot reach them.

Jeffrey presented at the quarterly this morning and did it better than I would have at his age. Watching him, I kept thinking about this exact thing — the whole point is that he never has to go hunting. Not for the trust, not for account numbers, not for the name of the lawyer.

If you have an attorney, an accountant, an executor — give them access before you need them. It takes about eleven seconds and it is the cheapest thing you will ever do for your family.

— MJ

Jeffrey presenting at our quarterly investor meeting today. Second time this year. Kid's better in a boardroom than I ever was. Watching him work is the closest I get to time travel.

Labor Day. Everybody is grilling.

My father worked shifts at a plant in Wilmington. My mother taught in the public schools there for thirty-eight years. Between them they raised five kids, and I do not think either of them ever once used the word career. It was just work. You did it whether you felt like it or not, and you did it properly because your name was on it.

I got paid very well to play a game. I have been an investor longer now than I was ever an athlete. Neither of those is harder than what my parents did.

Renata was at my mother's house in Wilmington this morning. Holiday, and she still came. Delroy cut the grass on Saturday so the place would look right going into the week. Somebody drove the truck that brought the food to your table today.

If you have the day off, somebody else does not.

Take care of the people who work for you. Not just today.

— MJ

Spent this morning writing down how we take care of my mother.

Not the legal part. That has been done since 2021 — powers of attorney, healthcare directive, HIPAA release. Curtis has the originals. That part was easy, because you can pay someone to do it.

The hard part was everything that only lives in my sister's head. Which mornings the aide comes. Which neighbor has the spare key. That my mother is allergic to penicillin. That she still drives, but only in daylight, and we review it with her doctor every March. That if you call her before you call any of us, she will tell you exactly what she needs, and she will usually be right.

Four documents. Two hours. And writing them down is how I found the thing I did not know: there is no successor agent on my mother's financial power of attorney. If something happens to me, my sister has to go to a courthouse in New Hanover County to get permission to help her own mother pay a light bill. Five years that has been sitting there. Nobody caught it. Not me, not the attorney.

She is eighty-eight. She taught in the Wilmington public schools for thirty-eight years and she does not like being managed. So the first line of the plan says that nothing about her life changes unless it has to. Guardianship means backup, not takeover. If I ever have to overrule her, I want to be able to explain why to her face.

If your parents are still here, write it down. Not the will. The Tuesday stuff. Who has the key.

— MJ

Fourteen days ago my sister talked me into opening a LifeSpot account, mostly so she would stop bringing it up. Here is what I did not expect.

I uploaded the will, the trust, the deeds, the insurance. The part that got me was not the filing. It was the checklist telling me in plain English what each document was actually for. "Manage financial decisions if incapacitated." I have had a durable power of attorney for eleven years and I am not sure anyone ever put it to me that simply.

Then it showed me eight things I did not have. Not a scolding — a list, with a reason next to each one. One afternoon of work and I went from two of ten to ten of ten. Watching that number move from 70 to 100 was the most satisfying thing I have done at a desk in years.

The one that stopped me was the Letter of Last Instruction. Every other tool I have used files what you already have. That one asked me to write down something that only lived in my head — where things are, who to call, what will bite you in the first forty-eight hours. It took two hours. It turned into the longest conversation Yvonne and I have had about any of this in a decade.

And when I went to share the medical directive, it already knew who to suggest. Jeffrey came up as Executor, Trustee, Beneficiary. Yvonne as Spouse. I did not have to go hunting for anybody or explain to the software who my family is.

Here is the honest version at the halfway mark. I am sixty-three. I have built companies and I have sat through enough estate meetings to know exactly how fast a room's eyes glaze over. This is the first tool I have used that made the whole thing feel less like paperwork and more like a conversation with the people it is actually for.

Judi — you were right. Do not get used to hearing that.

— MJ

Bought Marcus's kids a new hoop for the driveway. Regulation height. Marcus's face when he saw the box — same look I used to give my dad on Christmas morning.

Wrote the annual check to the Chicago Public Schools athletic fund today. Started this in 1988 — never missed a year. The kids running around on those courts don't know my name and that's exactly how I want it.

— MJ