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Every two weeks, I share reflections and curated links on meaningful work, living intentionally, and other topics that interest me.

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The Opening Move

James and I will be leaving for Madrid in a few hours.

I get to spend four days traveling with my 16-year-old son, including a Real Madrid match at the Bernabéu.

Los Blancos are playing against a La Liga club that isn't very good. They’re currently nine points behind Barcelona in the standings. And last week, they were knocked out of the Champions League. To them, the match doesn't matter much.

But that’s ok. It matters to us.

James and I have watched nearly every Madrid match this season. It started as something to put on and turned into our thing. Texts exchanged about the latest line-ups. Mbappé's goals. Injuries to key players. A growing frustration with the team's inability to win.

When he leaves for college in a year, I'll miss this more than I know how to say yet.

In Madrid, we'll meet my friend Miguel, “The Global Madridista,” who runs a Real Madrid-focused English-language YouTube channel with over 150,000 subscribers. James thinks of him as a minor celebrity. I suppose he is. To me, he's just Miguel, and we'll be sitting next to him in the Bernabéu.

The other reason I'm looking forward to the trip is harder to name. It has to do with being out of context.

In college, a roommate and I spent six weeks backpacking across Europe with a Let's Go guide and no real plan. Some nights I didn't know where I'd sleep. Most days, we'd step off a train in a city selected the day before and just start walking. I've rarely felt more alive.

The freedom wasn't really about the places. It was about being removed from every role I had at home. For a bit, I was no longer the son, the student, or the version of myself my friends expected me to be.

In a new city with nowhere to be, you notice things. You notice yourself. You also notice that other people live by a different logic, which is worth taking seriously. That stayed with me long after my Eurorail pass expired.

I want that for James, too.

This summer, he'll spend three weeks at an engineering program in Germany, his first real stretch away on his own.

Madrid is the opening move.

I want him to see that the world is larger than the one we've built for him, and that being briefly off-balance in someone else's country is one of the best things that can happen to someone at sixteen.

I also want him to see his father as someone who used to sleep on trains, who has friends on other continents, and who can find his way in a foreign city without rigid plans.

Four days isn't enough for revelation. But it's enough to be somewhere together where neither of us is in charge, watching a match that doesn't matter.

That's the point.

And a Farewell Photo...