In January, I ran into a parked Tesla outside of a store that sold overpriced cookies in Fishtown. Not a big deal (it was just a fender bender), but I felt terrible.

I called the owner to tell her.

She picked up the phone:

You’re telling me.

By any objective measure, it was a rough start to 2026. There was The Tesla Incident. Our fridge broke. We found water leaking through the stucco on the back of our house, which means we need to replace the entire exterior. We lost Deefer, our dog, in January.

So yeah. Rough quarter.

Underneath all of that, a lot happened.

What happened in Q1

Good Morning Philly newsletter

The biggest thing I built was Good Morning Philly, a free weekly newsletter covering the River Wards (Fishtown, Northern Liberties, Kensington, Port Richmond) that ships every Monday at 6 AM.

Deefer passed away on January 19th, 2026. This is my goodbye letter.

I write and publish birthday letters for the kids. Yes, this includes Deefer Dog. You can read Deefer’s 10th birthday letter here. And here are Oliver’s, Annabel’s, Theodore’s, and Madeline’s recent letters.

Eight months ago, we asked the vet when we’d know it was time. She didn’t hesitate:

I wanted specifics. A date. Confidence levels. Standard deviations. But that was all she gave us.

So I did what any reasonable person would do. I started feeding ChatGPT his entire medical history.

Stage 4 heart murmur. A mass on his adrenal gland invading his vena cava. Seven different pills every day. I logged it all. If the vet couldn’t give me a formula, I’d build one myself.

For eight months, it worked. More good days than bad.

—-

Friday. Amy ran upstairs to get ready. I was trying to get the kids to play Mario Kart. Deefer threw up three times. Then he started throwing up his water. And he kept throwing it up.

This is my friends & family newsletter. You probably signed up after reading one of my articles, a LinkedIn post, or after we met. You’ll get a new letter 1-2x per month.

Madeline Mei Jing Lee was born on November 26th, 2025.

I write and publish birthday letters for the kids. You can read Oliver’s, Annabel’s, Theodore’s, and Deefer’s recent letters.

We went to visit our family friends, Ali and Tommy, with your Mima. They’d just finished remodeling their house.

Ali opened her walk-in closet.

“Tada,” she said. Shoes lined the room floor to ceiling—Manolo Blahnik pumps and Jimmy Choo and Louboutin heels, all on perfect display. I wear Hokas for every occasion, but somewhere The Corrs were playing. It left me breathless.

Later, Tommy took us to the basement, showed us his tool collection. Everything perfectly hung, tools stenciled to the pegboard so you’d know exactly where each one belonged. Everything in its place.

My dream house.

When we left, I asked your Mima: “Did they want kids?”

“Ali did,” she said. “Tommy didn’t. They nearly divorced over it, years ago.”

“Then what?”

She shrugged.

—

Your grandad suggested a few names for you.

We didn’t hesitate. We’ll take the calm one.

Your parents are optimists, Madeline. We wanted to conjure some stillness into your personality. This house runs on chaos—usually after dinner, before bed, the volume rising until someone cries. We were hoping you’d bring some balance.

So far, you’ve held up your end of the bargain. Like you knew we needed it.

You’re also the last one. Which means there’s this tension: we know the most about parenting, but have the least time to do anything about it.

I can’t promise Louboutins or an orderly life. With four of you, I’m not even promising college. You all might flip for it—the winner goes.

But I promise you this: you are born into a family that will show up for you. Everyone is cheering you on. There’s so much love here, Madeline.

It’ll leave you breathless.

This is my friends & family newsletter. You probably signed up after reading one of my articles, a LinkedIn post, or after we met. You’ll get a monthly email.

It was only after Chris died last November that I finally got a reply from an old friend. I’ll call him “Alex”.

Eight years of emailing Alex, with no response. Birthday messages. Life updates. The occasional “thinking of you, man.” I never got anything back.

It took a message about the motorcycle accident to break the radio silence.

It keeps me up sometimes. Because there were times I wasn’t a great friend. There were times (cringey, crawl-into-ball-and-die moments) where I chose convenience over loyalty, where I let him down. And I think maybe I earned the eight-year silent treatment.

But there were good moments too. Times I showed up when it mattered. I want to believe it balances out. I’m not sure it does.

The only move left: look at where you failed, and try to fail less. Look at where you succeeded, and do more of that.

That’s what these reflections are for. Once a year, once a month, every day… the frequency is a detail. But you have to look. Reflection is how you steer instead of drift.

This is a review of my 2025 and a public sharing of my 2026 goals.

At the end, I share why I do this and how I review the year.

To summarize: This helps me look back at what worked, what didn’t, and what I want to focus on in 2026.

My friend Chris passed on November 9, 2024, in a motorcycle accident. He was riding slowly out of a parking lot in Los Angeles. They think he hit something. He fell and died. Last week, I went back to New York for his memorial service.

This is my friends & family newsletter. I publish here for reference and sharing. You can subscribe here.

This month we’ve been visiting family in Cork and Dublin. We built our itinerary around the Taylor Swift Eras Tour that played at the Aviva.

I caught my first hurling match at Croke Park (semi-finals between Cork vs. Limerick), which was a blast.