The Sun Will Rise
Why bad days don’t get the final say
A lot of people write to clear their head. Some do it to learn, to teach, to document process. For me, there are days where writing is simply a way to slow my thoughts down enough to make sense of them.
That was yesterday.
Some days just flat out suck.
It started with my family settling in to watch a playoff football game for my favorite team, the Buffalo Bills.
As the game was starting, I felt a gritty, sand-like feeling in my mouth. I realized a tooth had chipped. A great way to start the night, I thought.
At halftime of the game, I went to one of our favorite pizza places to pick up pizza. We love their basil sticks. When I got home, we realized they came with no basil. Just cheese. Such a small thing, but somehow it felt like the final straw.
As the final seconds of the Bills game slipped away, it hit me that the heartbreak that I and fellow Bills fans know all too well was not ending anytime soon.
Being a Buffalo Bills fan has never been easy.
If you’re a fan, you already know this feeling. Wide right. Losing four straight Super Bowls. The Music City Miracle. Thirteen seconds. And now, it was the catch that wasn’t.
As the game ended, my wife was consoling my crying son in the pantry. My daughter was yelling at the TV in frustration. I was sitting on the hardwood floor trying to process how a day I had looked forward to had unraveled so quickly.
That was it. I was done. I just wanted the day to end before anything else could go wrong.
To top it off, as I got into the shower, I noticed the shower head was leaking.
Bad days stack like that. One thing bleeds into the next. Small problems feel bigger than they are. Emotions compound.
Bad days in markets work the same way.
A position moves against you. Headlines pile on. Conviction gets tested. You lose money. Suddenly you want to shut it all down, sell everything, and start fresh tomorrow.
But tomorrow is not where the edge is.
The edge is surviving today without doing something you regret.
That night, my son decided he wanted to try sleeping in the basement while my wife redoes his room. Football and Buffalo Bills themed, of course. We pulled out the fold-out mattress, shut the lights off, and called it a night.
Watching him sleep, I felt grateful. Warm house. Healthy family. A career I enjoy. A loving wife. The stuff that actually matters, even when everything else feels noisy.
That perspective did not erase the bad day. It just put it in its place.
The truth is, most days are not great days or terrible days. They are boring days. Nothing happens. No headlines. No drama. Those are the days we take for granted. Those are also the days where progress quietly compounds.
I got my tooth fixed. I called the plumber. My family and I will have to wait until September to cheer on the Bills again.
And next year, I will be right back there watching, hopeful and invested, just like every other Bills fan. Because staying is the whole point.
That mindset is the same one I bring to investing and business. I do not need every day to be good. I just need to stay disciplined on the bad ones and to keep showing up on the boring ones.
This morning, I grabbed my daily coffee at my favorite spot, did my reading, and started working on the next Spilled Coffee newsletter. The sun rose outside my home office window, just like it always does.
Tonight, my family and I are going to sit down and watch a movie together. Nothing special. Nothing eventful. Just time together. The kind of night you barely remember, but would miss immediately if it disappeared.
Yesterday no longer mattered.
We move on.
If today is a tough day for you, that’s okay. If tomorrow is one too, that happens.
Just remember this.
The sun will rise.
And you get another chance to show up.
The Coffee Table ☕
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