Sixty days.
That’s all the time we have left before my daughter leaves home for the United States Coast Guard Academy.
I keep saying it out loud, hoping it’ll feel real.
It doesn’t.
This weekend, we just got back from her final volleyball tournament — the US Junior National 18s.
Seven years of club volleyball.
Seven years of high school games, hotels, long drives, lost Saturdays, packed gyms.
Seven years of cheering and yelling and secretly stressing about the costs and the time and the endless travel.
And then..
She served the final ball.
We won bronze.
And I sat there in the stands, crying.
Because I realized…
That was the last time I would cheer for her as my young, teenage daughter.
The last point.
The last serve.
The last everything.
In sixty days, she won’t be down the hall anymore.
She won’t be leaving her volleyball shoes in the living room
She won’t be saying, “Dad, I got some “tea”
She won’t be asking, “Hey Dad, can you come outside and help me with something?”
She’ll be halfway across the country, doing something extraordinary.
And I’ll be here, in the house that suddenly feels way too big.
As entrepreneurs, we’re so busy sometimes.
Building.
Chasing.
Hustling.
We miss things.
Small things.
Big things.
We tell ourselves there will be more games.
More weekends.
More time.
Until there isn’t.
This weekend she turns 18.
18.
I still remember the day she was born, her tiny fingers, her big brown eyes staring at me…
And now…
Now she’s leaving the nest.
And while I am proud — unbelievably proud —
I am also heartbroken in ways I didn’t see coming.
The lesson?
If you’re in the middle of the hustle, if you’re drowning in deadlines and to-do lists…
Look up.
Look around.
Go to the game.
Sit at the dinner table.
Say yes to the invitation.
Because one day, sooner than you think, it won’t just be your business that’s grown up.
It’ll be your kids too.
And you’ll wonder — like I’m wondering right now — where all the time went.
Stay present.
Stay grateful.
Stay close.
They don’t stay little forever.
— Carlos