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Today’s track: Mood Swings — Marcus King
We’re 52% done with the year. I saw it on Twitter yesterday and it stopped me cold. By the time you’re reading this we’re already past that — it doesn’t even have the decency to wait.
Fifty-two percent. Gone.
So let me ask you the uncomfortable version of it. Are you 52% of the way to your goals? Did you spend 52% of your days this year the way you actually wanted to? When you laid your head down last night, did you feel like you tired out your body, stretched your brain, made something, told the people you love that you love them — and actually saw them?
Or did the day just kind of happen to you?
Think about what you could cut. Not the big dramatic stuff — the little leaks. The scroll. The thing you say yes to and resent the whole time. The hour that evaporates and leaves nothing behind. Cut one of those and you get real time back — time you can put toward something that makes you feel like the day was well spent.
Because here’s the good news buried in that number: there’s a whole second half left. Plenty of runway to get these rookie numbers up. Way up.
So going into this weekend at 52%, decide right now what you’re catching up on. Your fitness. Your earnings. Your reading. Your steps. Cutting the processed junk. Whatever the thing is that you’ve been quietly disappointed about — the second half is where you make it right.
Since I’m asking you, let me go first.
Where I’m behind is reading. Real reading — the great works, the books that rearrange the furniture in your head, not the thousand smaller things that quietly eat a day. That was the goal this year: more time with the stuff that actually matters. And I’m doing it. I’m picking up books. I’m reading. I’m creating things I’m proud of. So I won’t sit here and tell you I’ve failed. But I could do better, and I know it. There’s a version of me who reads more and scrolls less, and he’s the better one.
Then there’s my steps. Last year I averaged 11,233 a day. The average American gets about 4,000. So on paper I’m lapping the average — but I’m not even hitting my own floor of eight to ten thousand right now, and that’s the number that’s been nagging me.
Here’s why. I had a big surgery. And this weekend, for the first time since they cut me open and put me back together, I’m walking the dogs. First real walk in weeks. I don’t know how it’s going to feel — probably slow, probably humbling — but that’s the number I’m getting back up, one loop around the block at a time. My second half starts Saturday morning with two dogs and a driveway.
That’s the whole point of 52%. It’s not a grade. It’s a starting line for the back half.
And no more hot dogs. I mean it. Processed meat and colon cancer are not strangers — the science on that is real and it’s not friendly. Skip the hot dog.
So here’s my ask for the back half. Forty-eight percent of the year is still sitting right there on the table — that’s not scraps, that’s a whole second act. A hundred and seventy-some days left to move the number that’s been nagging you. Steps. Pages. Dollars. Reps. Calls. Whatever yours is. Don’t wait until January to make a resolution you could start Saturday morning. Let’s quit treating the back half like garbage time. Let’s take advantage of every single week we’ve got left. Let’s get our numbers up — all of them. Let’s get it.
Bring me more of what you’re working on. I’m loving everything everyone’s sending me right now. Keep it coming.
And hey — one more thing. The Atlantic just warned that America’s going “postliterate.” Daily pleasure reading has fallen from 28% to 16%, and nearly a third of adults can’t paraphrase or infer from a multipage text anymore. You just read this entire newsletter, top to bottom. So congratulations — you’re in the 16%. You’re already doing great, and it’s not even lunch.
I feel like I can be myself around you,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-morning-bergeron/pl.u-pMyl2GlSW1N3qv
PS: Louisville market check. First week of July looks quiet — new listings basically flat year over year (422 → 427), sales up a hair (336 → 342). The year-to-date numbers are where the real story is. We’ve put 13,802 homes on the market this year vs. 11,801 a year ago — that’s 2,001 more listings. Sales? Only 372 more (7,488 → 7,860). Inventory is piling up roughly five times faster than demand is absorbing it. The absorption rate slipped from 63% to 57% — more homes coming, a smaller share of them clearing. Translation: buyers have more leverage than they’ve had in a while, and the sellers who overprice are the ones eating sixty days on market. Price it right and it still moves.
PSS: Random one — anybody have a taxidermied standing bear they’d sell cheap or donate? If so, hit me up.