Nobody warns you that in two decades you’re gonna be so busy prepping for end of year testing, getting sluggish teens to muscle through academics and finishing strong on the baseball/football/soccer/track field, and other miscellaneous life that you will have no time to sit and reflect on how great you’ve got it.

There’s a temptation to go back to young doe-eyed Ben and say “get married in June, bro. You’ll thank me later”

But as we rush around to 4 sports split between three kids while mashing in full-time work between clients, band gigs/practices, and volunteering at church/booster club/everywhere… I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We had no idea that getting hitched on a plantation house porch that cloudy spring day in 2006 even had a downside, because even after closer inspection: it didn’t.

My mid-twenties were a time of great (to the point of delusional) over-confidence. I spent much time being very sure of everything I thought at the time, from “how I was going to raise kids” to “what type of music is best” to “which politician or preacher I agreed with.”

Much of that confidence proved to be posturing.

Apart from my confidence in Jesus’ blood and righteousness, the only thing that’s proven worthy of my trust has been a girl named Jacqueline Brooks. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, and even faster than before (when I feel sure some friends thought we were rushing things.)

Happy 20 years to us.

The post Twenty Years. appeared first on BenandJacq .

There I was, vibing with everything you had written. Then, out of nowhere, shots fired. The exact phrase, insultingly throw-outable, was “best paired with easy-fit slip in Skechers.”

Whoa whoa whoa. Pump the brakes, Acuff. You can say you weren’t stylish without attacking my favorite purchase over the last year. The jeans were the villain, no need for my shoes to get caught in the crossfire.

My size 12 extra wide Skechers are the best shoe I’ve ever owned. They are comfortable, stylish-enough, and most importantly a key piece of my recovery from foot surgery last year.

So I’m going to let it slide. After all, your previous books and expert wisdom are the main reason I even got in shape enough to lose the weight and make me falsely believe I could just become a sprinter.

Turns out the main takeaway from that above-linked tale is that with a little effort, anyone can hit their out-of-pocket maximum for a high deductible health plan in any given year.

You’d better be glad that I owe a lot of my personal growth and success in parenting, vocation, and just life in general directly to insights I’ve gained in reading and re-reading your books over the years.

Because taking shots at my Skechers is a bridge too far.

(Buy all of Jon’s books and thank me later)

The post (Book Review) Procrastination Proof: Jon Acuff Had Me Until The Personal Attack. appeared first on BenandJacq .

I’ve spent more of my life as a college grad (and ostensibly an adult by any measure other than ability to rent a car in the US) than as a student.

I’ve lived 3X the amount of time needed to mature enough to be offered a learners permit for driving in both my home state as well as the one I live in now.

If I had invested $100 in the S&P 500 index on my birthday and not touched it, it would be worth around $18,800.00 today, without a single other investment.

I’ve been alive long enough for my heart to have beaten (conservatively) around 3 billion times.

An Apple tree planted on the day I was born could have (conservatively) produced 20,000 apples by now.

A coffee tree planted the day I was born could have (conservatively) contributed to 2,000 cups of coffee.

I’ve lived through three distinct careers, first in vocational ministry, then in software/technology, and now Education.

Over my lifetime, I’ve cut or shaved approximately 20 feet of hair from my head (not, of course counting by individual hairs, in which case you’re looking at more than 500 miles of hair). I did around 2 of those feet on two individual days, and there’s a local news story to prove one of those occurences.

Similarly, but more disturbing, I’ve trimmed around 54 feet of fingernails over same period.

I don’t have some pithy note about what it all means, but year 45 was among the best years yet. Here’s to more fingernails, hair, and maturity!

The post Happy Birthday to Me! appeared first on BenandJacq .

“Just do it already.” she said, likely not even looking up from her laptop (for dramatic effect) in my passenger seat.

I had been researching making drastic diet changes primarily driven by my growing disdain for the “healthcare” industry and what felt like my annual bloodwork was just a reason for my doctor to prescribe more pills. My triglycerides were trending up (after a roller-coaster that never saw them even remotely within range for more than a decade) and he was really pushing me to go on blood pressure meds. I had even filled the prescription, but was stubbornly not yet taking the meds.

That day I had not eaten any carbs, and I got to the speaking engagement where my only options were pizza and a Pepsi. Given my need to be functional and not addict-in-recovery for the next 20 minutes of my talk, I downed a single slice of pepperoni and the brown sugar-water, gave my talk, and told myself internally that it is now officially go-time. I could go through withdrawals for the next few days.

My initial commitment was 30 days. I was going to eat nothing but meat, butter, salt, and sparkling water. “I can do anything for 30 days” I told myself. I’m not sure I believed it, but that’s what I went with.

I was hard-core for the first 30 days, and kept that initial commitment (to my surprise, it wasn’t very hard). I relaxed a little after the initial 30 days, allowing some zero- or very-low-carb veggies back into my life. I don’t remember making a new limited commitment at that time, but I didn’t have to. The amount of energy, mental clarity, and weight loss was more than enough motivation.

For the record, I lost about a pound per day for the first 30 days, and then about a pound every three days for the next 3 months. I leveled off at around 60-65 pounds lost, and have maintained that (fluctuating within a 10 pound window) ever since.

Weight loss was never the primary goal. While I certainly needed to lose a couple of pounds, the main motivator was selfish: I wanted to prove my internal monologue wrong.

Also the doctor. I wanted to prove him wrong, too.

See, my “diagnosis” officially changed in early 2024, in a subtle way: he added the word “chronic” to the existing “familial hypertriglyceridemia.” It was already a lie: to my knowledge no other family member of mine has ever had high triglycerides. Adding the word “familial” softens the blow: “It’s your genetics! You can’t help it!” Adding the word “chronic” subtly removes my agency to do anything about it.

“Just take these pills, literally forever.”

He called the pills “treatment.” I knew what they actually were: permission to stay the same.

The only “chronic” thing I have is a sin problem.

Other events in 2024 and 2025 solidified my disdain for the “healthcare” industry, but suffice it to say that I still feel just as strongly today that my priorities in life are

1. Love Jesus with heart, soul, mind, and strength.
2. Love, lead, and serve my family.
3. Bleed out before I ever go inside a hospital as a patient.

It’s not always been easy, and I know me: just making it to 2 years is by no means a declaration of victory. I’ve failed after longer “streaks” more than once in my life.

But today I am celebrating a milestone, and I still have the same level of resolve as the day I started this journey.

Ben's health journey started when his wife finally called him on it. A tale as old as time.
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As an addendum: this post is for me, about me, and by me. If you’re reading any judgement, or medical advice, or self-righteousness… that’s not my intent.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised that there have only been a few moments of judgement of anybody not named “Ben Meredith Senior” in my old pharisaical heart during this journey.

The post Two Years. appeared first on BenandJacq .

I’ve been a Tar Heel fan since before I had the ability to talk or walk. Growing up on Tobacco Road, you had to pick a side. We lived in Winston-Salem, home of Wake Forest University, but my parents had begun cheering for UNC, because they liked Coach Dean Smith. The way he did things aligned pretty closely with the way we thought it should be done.

My fandom was never truly fanatical, mostly just a social inclusion thing: I really wanted something to talk about at school. The rivalries were truly friendly, and gave me something to either be very excited about (thank you, 1993 team, for a great few weeks of bragging rights over the Duke fans in class my 8th grade year) or unhingedly angry at (I see you, Randolph Childress.)

The day I was accepted to be an incoming freshman in 1998 signaled a turning point. I had skin in the game, and began truly cheering for the Tar Heels, and scheduling my life around games. But even then, I was nowhere near the biggest fan I knew. I watched with slack-jawed awe when Weber State knocked us out of the tourney my freshman year. But most of my awe was at the way that it totally ruined the rest of Spring Break for my classmates.

Sure, it was bad, but there are worse things.

When I moved to Tennessee following graduation, I got as close as one might get to true fanaticism, but only because out there nobody cared about basketball. Aside from a handful of Kentucky fans, that was football country.

I still scheduled my life around Tar Heel games, and once called my brother who did play-by-play of the ending of a double-overtime game against Wake, because the local TV station switched over to the KY game, and “internet radio” was not yet a thing.

This time also coincided with what could be argued to be the very beginnings of the best decade in history to be a Tar Heel: I lived there from 2003 to 2005, and got to watch as UNC went from national champs in ’05 to turning around and getting 4 years of Tyler Hansbrough.

Through it all, I’ve been a fan because we did things the right way.

It’s gotten harder to be a fan of college athletics in general over the years. As the amount of revenue being created has skyrocketed, it’s just not as fun to watch. But still I remain a fan, mainly because I thought UNC could make it in this new world of college basketball while still doing things the right way.

A large part of my renewed fandom was literally embodied in the person of Hubert Davis. He was everything that was right about college athletics:

• Rode the bench for much of his freshman year.
• Was explicitly told by his head coach that he wasn’t going to get playing time.
• Worked insanely hard at improving his game.
• Became a believer in Christ through the ministry of faithful college ministers
• Earned his own spot in the starting lineup.
• Went on to a long career in professional basketball.
• Came back to the University when they asked him to, and served as an assistant for years.
• Stepped into an unenviable position of following a legend (who left because the game itself and the general job description had changed so much).
• Competed fiercely without profanity.

Hubert Davis was proof that we do things the right way.

He continued to prove it by filling his staff with faithful men who represented every era of UNC hoops.

Then he overachieved with a better record in his first 150 games than either Coach K or Dean Smith. He punctuated his time at the helm with signature wins against Duke (one of which is commemorated with a framed picture in my office!) where he retired both an arena and a man with back-to-back losses.

I said it that day: Hubert has earned his spot.

I literally do not care (though it does make me sad) that he lost the next game to Kansas in the championship. It didn’t change my opinion of him as a coach one iota.

But I get it. College basketball is driving too much revenue for coaches to be allowed to grow. There are too many advertiser dollars to be lost when you exit in the round of 64, and when you don’t consistently compete for ACC regular season titles.

There’s this myth out there that there’s some magic persona for a head coach that will drive immediate, consistent, elite excellence in collegiate athletics, despite that excellence being a moving target.

As a University, I thought we were above it. We knew that you could build championships on the backs of guys like Luke Maye or Theo Pinson as athletes, and on the backs of guys like Dean Smith and Hubert Davis as coaches.

I thought we’d finally cracked the magic code when the university went the Duke-route of piling up huge sums of cash to pay athletes, and thus attract the top talent.

We’d been through it before: there were folks calling for Dean’s job, folks calling for Roy’s job, etc. I thought we would read the calls for Hubert’s job in the same way: noise from the expensive seats. Bubba should have stood up for Hubert, and instead he caved to the pressure.

I had hope that the transition from Bubba to Steve would be a passing of the “Carolina way” torch and that we’d continue to do things the right way. Instead, Bubba sealed his legacy for me as “the one who ended the Carolina way” by hiring Bill Belichick and firing Hubert Davis.

I won’t ever watch a UNC basketball game with the same level of fandom. I’m going to get really into woodworking or something.

College basketball is a business, and I’m just not sure I’m a fan of this business. The wrong hire here completely loses me, and I’m not sure there is a right hire.

It’s a profoundly sad day to be a Tar Heel.

The post From Dean Smith to Hubert Davis – When ‘Doing It the Right Way’ Stopped Being Enough at UNC appeared first on BenandJacq .

Support Driven is a true community: one that I wish I had invested more into over the past few years. It was a delight to take the stage and talk about the principles of technical support and customer service.

But it was also a turning point in my career.

I haven’t talked much about it online, but in December I started a dream role in a related-but-also-completely-different field.

That story starts years ago, though I didn’t know it. We were (in my role as a Director of Technical Support) in a meeting that had an ice-breaker question. The question was “if you were given a billion dollars, what would you do?”

As I listened to the answers from around the group, my mind was floating around searching for what my answer would be. If I didn’t have to work for a paycheck, what would I do with my time?

As I scanned my memories and life experiences, a theme emerged. Every time I’ve truly been passionate about anything in life, one thing has been true. Across diverse fields, in large contexts and small, one consistent low hum of excitement swells when I am teaching, or more specifically when I am watching someone learn or experience a breakthrough related to learning.

If I could bottle up and sell the emotion I experience when somebody who didn’t know something catches on and learns (and perhaps more fundamentally sees their own capacity for learning), I’d have that billion dollars several times over.

I like learning things, and going things. I truly light up when I get to see others learn things, and be a part of facilitating those “aha moments.”

So when the question got around to me, I said “I don’t know what I’d do, but it would be somewhere and somehow related to education.”

On December 1st I started as the Director of Technology for Colearn Academy, a K-12 online charter school. My whole job is to create, maintain, and extend the systems that cultivate a space where students can experience that intoxicating emotion of learning. I get to set up teachers to create space in students’ lives to get little glimpses of how fun it is to know things.

So why haven’t I changed my job title on LinkedIn, or talked much about my new role on the internet? Perhaps because I was still holding on to my past career. I’ve been defined vocationally as “The Support Guy” and have carefully cultivated myself into a thought leader on technical support and customer service. That wasn’t something I was ready to set aside.

In certain circles (especially in the WordPress software space) my name has become synonymous with “Support.” People will loop me into conversations any time someone has a “hot take” that’s related to customer experience or support. I love that.

The Support Driven Summit was a loud signal that I could, if I so chose, continue in that role of “thought leader” in technical support.

Not to brag, but I had the entire room hanging on every word of my presentation. These were not just folks that I looked up to any longer. This was a room of my peers.

• Heads of Support
• VPs of Community
• Chief Executive Officers

Folks in the room represented hundreds of millions of customers and users, gigantic teams of agents, and are currently leaders in companies you’ve heard of. And I was leading them.

But bubbling under all of it was that dream job. The one I already have. The one that would (maybe) make these Customer Support leaders think differently about me.

I’ve already been out of the corporate technical support game for long enough that, realistically, within just a few more months my experiences are just not going to be relevant to that room.

So you’ll see my posting more about education and I’ll be changing my job title on LinkedIn. The Support Driven Community (and the WordPress Community) will still be a part of me and my story, and I even hope to do some stuff with them in the future.

But it’s time for me to start swimming in the Education waters, and surrounding myself in that world. What a treat to be a newbie: I get to go and learn how to create these systems.

The post Support Driven Summit: a Career Peak and Pivot. appeared first on BenandJacq .

Well son, it’s difficult to explain, you kinda just had to be there.

I got to watch Vince run out of the Smith Center tunnel exactly one time. It was January 17th of my senior year of high school, and my brother (a freshman at UNC) got me a ticket. We were way up in the rafters, but I’ll never forget the game, watching Ed Cota find Vince all over the court. The highlight was most certainly the windmill dunk that triggered Bill Guthridge to empty the bench to get the reserves in the game.

Back to the question: my son was about 7 at the time, and I quietly decided that (financially wise or not) I was going to take him to watch the Heels live.

A couple of years later, on January 8th, 2017, we snuggled into seats way up on the end line side of the court, me and my two oldest boys.

Theo Pinson had been out for much of the season rehabbing a broken foot, and though I think he played a bit at the game before this one, it was really the true “welcome back game.”

With about 5:45 left in the game, Theo Pinson made a core memory happen for my boys when he attempted to remove the rim from the backboard:

My two oldest boys still refer to it as one of the most fun moments of their childhood.

That 9-year-old is about to graduate high school this year. For Christmas, we got two tickets to see the Heels take on the Yellow Jackets in snowy Atlanta.

We snuggled into our seats where we could literally touch the ceiling of McCamish Pavilion. Behind us, a family scooted into the last row. A mom, dad, and three kids (between the ages of about 6 and 12).

With just over 2 minutes left in the first half, Kyan Evans made what all of us thought was a bad lob. From where I was sitting, it looked like Kyan was lobbing it to… me.

But Caleb Wilson (instead of high-fiving the bald guy in the rafters) grabbed the egregiously high lob, twisted it in his hand, and did a spot-on Vince Carter impersonation.

The place erupted. (Note: not a home game.)

My son turned over his shoulder and asked the kid sitting behind him “do you know who Theo Pinson is?”

*blank stare*

“Well anyways, what just happened for you with Caleb Wilson is what happened to me when I was about your age, only it was Theo Pinson.”

As we hopped back in the car to head up the snowy road, I couldn’t help but think I had finally answered my 7-year-old’s question.

What was it like to watch Vince live?

It was kinda like that, son.

The post Three Dunks: a Tar Heel story. appeared first on BenandJacq .

Note if you look closely in that image, you’ll see the wires that run to the headlight and the fog light duct taped to the windshield washer fluid reservoir.

That’s a key part of the story.

After I replaced the headlight, I confirmed that it’s legal to drive without one fog lamp, and said (likely aloud) “when I fix the bumper, we’ll deal with those extra cables”

A couple of weeks later, the dog decided he’d take care of those cables for me, and chewed/jerked them free from their duct tape prison.

In so doing, the dog (nor his owner, nor his owner’s father who resolutely did not want a dog at the time the dog was given to us) was unaware that he’d created the perfect scenario to create a short in the circuit that controls (a) Fog lights, (b) tail lights, (c) license plate light, (d) the front parking lights, and (e) a control that dims and brightens dash lights when the headlights are on.

The next time those headlights were switched on (nobody noticed the chewed wires strewn around our yard, myself included) a fuse quietly blew in the panel beneath the driver-side dash, but not before it took out the bulbs in both tail lights, charring one socket. We noticed none of the above.

Sidenote: it’s fairly brilliant that fuses are a thing. They keep your dog from being able to kill you by accident.

Fast forward a few weeks, and it was foggy one morning. Jacqueline was driving behind Benjamin as they left for school in the morning, and noticed that his tail lights were not on.

So the “problem for some other day” became the “top priority to give us back the correct number of vehicles.” Thanks eager canine.

With the guidance (and borrowed heat gun) of my electrician father-in-law, I spliced together all the wires (except for the identical blues, which I left wire-nutted to confirm before splicing) and then drove the car into the garage for that confirmation.

Reader: I did not know I was going to put the car in the garage for a week.

In my tests, the tail lights still did not work, even after the spliced wires were spliced. It’s probably the bulbs.

That’s when I discovered the blown bulbs, having already determined that the fuse was blown. Trip to auto store #1 commences. At that store, I purchased bulbs clearly marked “off road use only.” Perhaps I wanted to drive my parking-lot-rated tall Camry on some trails.

After returning home ( plus postponing the repair to go live life of chasing children around to sporting events) and discovering my bulb-fail, trip to auto store #1 part two commenced. I got new bulbs and a multimeter. I got the multimeter just in case, and because I hear that’s a thing that real mean own.

After an appropriate amount of hours to account for a job, and a side gig, and a date with my wife, I installed the correct bulbs, fired up the car, and… nothing happened.

Reader: this was an excellent time to triple check the fuse configuration. So that’s what I did. For thoroughness, I even put the fuse into the only other open slot on the panel, just to confirm that the problem was not my ability to read while stuffing myself horizontally into a space designed for about 1/6th of my body to fit.

There. I’ve confirmed that it’s not the fuse, and even tested (with a continuity checker light that I purchased on trip number 1 to auto store #1) and confirmed that I had current on both sides of the fuse. The fact that it was both not blown, AND had current assured me (and my AI assistant) that I was dealing with some deeper issue like a pinched wire somewhere, a loose ground, or some other dark magic that they don’t teach you in religion or poetry classes at UNC.

With the benefit of hindsight, this would have been another great spot to triple check the fuses again. Instead, I tore apart nearly the entire interior of the car (with a trim removal kit I had purchased a couple of weeks prior while perusing the aisles at Wal-Mart waiting on an oil change).

As a side note: Toyota makes all of the interior trim plastic exceedingly easy to remove, with one exception. Every piece of plastic breaks free with only those maddening plastic clips and a bit of aggression. The exception? That panel covering the sides of the cargo area, which sports THREE half-inch bolts (which do serve purposes other than securing the plastic, to be sure: they are holding the seatbelts as well as the hooks that secure cargo directly to the frame). But c’mon Toyota: you could certainly find a way to have the plastic pop off separately from the seatbelts.

After several pauses to again chase a child around to a sporting event (some of which I coached 8U style), I found no evidence of any break in continuity in the circuit, but the entire back end of the car was not getting power.

I have discovered that if you take a photo, and annotate it, and feed it to an AI tool, you can say things like “the wires with green arrows are hot” and your trusty AI assistant can again ask you to check the fuses.

This is a good spot to mention the one critical detail that I skipped earlier: I did not confirm that the fog lights were working. See the image above. There is no fog light. Also on the circuit I was checking (in the same way a raccoon might check for a hidden piece of cheese at the bottom of a garbage can) were the “parking lights” which any experienced mechanic would differentiate from the “daytime running lights.”

I however am not an experienced mechanic. I just saw lights when I turned the switch, and that was enough proof for me that everything on the circuit was working. Well, everything but the tail lights. And the license plate light.

But those are on the back of the car. So there’s a break somewhere on the back of the car, or at least in that direction.

(returns to racooning the back of the car, after a brief stopover to raccoon the steering column)

Here’s where things got interesting (if only for the people at auto store #s 1, 2, and 3). I removed the wire harness from the passenger side tail light assembly, and carried it to all of the stores in town, only to find out that you can’t buy just the wire harness. You have to drop 279 American dollars (plus tax) to get the entire taillight assembly. 279 bucks for a part that you’re not even sure will fix the car, and one that will surely not match the other (used) taillight assembly.

The kind people at auto store #3 took a look at my harness and said “That wire is fine, you really shouldn’t buy a new one. It’s not your problem. Have you checked the fuses?”

Have I checked the fuses? Yes, I’m not an idiot.

I returned home and got briefly (for about 4 hours) sidetracked by a mystery plug near the tail light with nothing plugged into it, and I won’t detail that part of the story where I literally tried to square peg a rectangular hole with anything else that could potentially fit into it.

Turns out that’s a hidden connector that would enable me (if I had the desire) to after-market modify my 2WD machine into an AWD machine. Thanks AI assistant, that’s cool. But not, um, relevant to the tail lights.

I never could figure out how to use the multimeter to test anything, so at this point I made my continuity checker light (which comes with a cool little clip that you can connect to a ground) reach all the way from the negative pole on the battery to the back end of the car. I felt sure given my 3 minutes of trying to make it work that I could ground that clip to anything grounded nearby, but it only worked by directly connecting to the battery itself. So I cut a 20-foot length of cable, and dutifully wound it around the vehicle to reach the battery. I felt my father-in-law mocking me in my heart—I had not invited him to mock me in my garage.

My homemade continuity checker confirmed what the bulbs had already confirmed: there’s no current going to the back end of the car.

It was around this point that I took a break to sit on the weight bench in the garage. After asking my AI assistant (who, to be fair, told me again to triple check the fuses, even though it thought the parking lights were working because…I told it the parking lights were working) how much this repair was going to cost once I gave up and drove a racoon-decorated car to the shop, I briefly considered starting a large fire in the yard and then driving my car onto it.

Out of options, and now a full week from my splicing adventure that I thought would fix it in 45 minutes, I returned again to the fuse panel.

Just as I had a week ago, I read the panel cover and muttered under my breath “the tail circuit is on the 10 amp fuse beside the 7.5 amp fuse for the instrument panel” and crammed myself under the steering wheel with a flashlight.

And there it was. My shiny new 10 amp fuse, nestled in beside the… 15 AMP fuse for the seat heaters.

I called myself some unkind names, moved the fuse into the correct hole, extricated myself from the floorboard, and peeked sheepishly around the vehicle.

The driver-side tail light (now dangling out like a bit of shiny gouda at the end of a wire harness) was ON.

I briefly contemplated the ramifications for punching the metal garage wall, and decided instead to go with “take a walk around the yard and text my wife asking her why she would marry an idiot.”

So here we are. I’ve reassembled the car (only losing one nut that I hope does not matter) and learned at least two valuable lessons:

1. Don’t drive your car into shrubbery.
2. Don’t leave your half-repaired car for your dog to try and manslaughter you.

Anybody selling a bumper for a base model 2011 RAV4?

The post Tail Lights Out: A Comedy of Errors Involving a Dog, Duct Tape, and One Very Stubborn Fuse appeared first on BenandJacq .

Month after month, one hard thing followed another. Yet somehow, we stayed steady. I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for that. Our marriage stayed stable. Our finances stayed stable. And our walk with God stayed stable. I’m not saying that because we’re especially strong or faithful, though our faith has grown stronger, but because I know that if these same trials had come in earlier years, we would have crumbled. This year changed us.

January: A Small but Meaningful Win

January itself felt relatively calm. The biggest highlight was moving into my new office shed – my “she shed.” We worked hard to get it set up, and it has truly been one of the unexpected gifts of 2025. Having my own space to work, think, breathe, and retreat may be one of the reasons I kept my sanity through everything else. That little space mattered more than I could have imagined.

February: Illness, Investment, and Upheaval

February hit hard. On February 10, my birthday, Theo, who was 14 at the time, came down with the flu and ran a fever for five days. On the fifth day, Benjamin, then 16, also spiked a fever – higher than Theo’s, reaching over 104. The fever eventually broke, but about a week later, Benjamin started acting differently. The fever “scrambled his brain,” or at least that is how I explained it in simple terms.

He developed insomnia and extreme anxiety that landed us a night in the ER and took several months to see glimpses of our “normal” Benjamin again. He ended up going homebound for most of the second semester of his 11th-grade year. The fact that he passed 11th grade at all feels like a miracle. Many days, his cognitive function just wasn’t there.

In the middle of all of that, we also bought our first investment property and launched another LLC, Grounded Properties. Something we had been working towards for several months. The house was a foreclosure and needed a lot of work, so from February to May, every spare moment I had was spent fixing it up. By June, we had a renter!

Around the same time, Ben injured what we initially thought was his Achilles tendon. He could hardly walk, which meant he wasn’t able to help much with the rental property. I took on all the rental property responsibilities. We chose to conserve his physical and mental energy so we could sustain two houses, work, and family life. 

May – June: When My Body Said “Enough”

On Mother’s Day, I woke up unable to move my neck. Having had low back surgery nine years earlier, I recognized the feeling of a pinched nerve/bulging disc and assumed I could rehab it at home. I tried everything for two weeks with no improvement.

Eventually, I went to the doctor. I didn’t have much of a choice, I started losing feeling and strength in my left arm to the point I couldn’t pick up a coffee mug. If you’ve never experienced nerve pain, thank God. It is unbearable.

The doctor put me on the usual cocktail of steroids, nerve pain meds, muscle relaxers, etc. As a T1 diabetic, steroids are brutal. They helped my neck pain immensely, but my blood sugars skyrocketed. I felt awful, exhausted, heavy, like I was walking through cement, and I was using double my normal insulin just to keep my numbers in check.

At the same time, I was working full-time with two clients and trying to help Benjamin finish 11th grade. Ben still couldn’t walk, despite months of doctors, therapy, medications, ice, heat, and every conservative treatment imaginable. Something had to give.

After exhausting options with Benjamin’s pediatrician, we finally found the right kind of doctor and medication for the season he was in. It wasn’t perfect, and the decisions were difficult, but we learned a lot. Today, he is off anxiety medication and slowly returning to himself, which feels nothing short of miraculous.

When I finally met with the neurosurgeon for my neck, I learned I’d have to wait seven weeks for neck surgery. During that time, I scaled way back at work, earning about a quarter of what I normally would. Sitting at my desk was excruciating. My priority became reducing my pain enough to be present for my family. We backed out of everything nonessential and just focused on the day-to-day with our kids. 

July – September: Surgery, Recovery, and More Waiting

Theo broke his wrist. 

I started OT for a broken thumb and a middle finger tendon tear in my dominant hand. Two different accidents. One in May and one in July.

Seven weeks after meeting the neurosurgeon, I was on the operating table for my neck. It went well. I regained strength in my arm almost immediately, and after a couple of weeks of recovery, I felt like myself again.

Ben’s journey wasn’t done. His foot became red, swollen, and warm to the touch, and the constant limping caused nerve pain in his other foot and leg. After months in a boot and countless failed treatments, he was referred to a foot surgeon. Surgery was unavoidable. They performed an osteotomy, removing part of the inflamed bone in his heel.

After seven months of pain, he finally had surgery, but that came with another six months of recovery. We’re still in that window, hoping that 2026 brings healing and the ability for him to walk normally again.

After his foot surgery, Ben saw a dermatologist for a suspicious mole on his face. He was diagnosed with melanoma. Thankfully, it was removed completely, and there are no signs of it elsewhere. Still, it was another blow in a year full of them.

October: Job Loss and Unexpected Grace

At the end of October, Ben was called into a meeting at work. Due to restructuring, everyone on the call, including Ben, was laid off. Even though we had seen it coming, it shook us. I immediately started deferring payments and reworking budgets. We now had two house payments and no steady income from his job or mine.

And yet, God’s grace was there. Within a month, Ben found another job, one he truly loves, and I gained 2 new clients. In hindsight, the layoff feels like a blessing. The stress from his previous job had been overwhelming, and this new role has been far healthier for him.

Gratitude and Looking Ahead

As much as I want to give 2025 the middle finger and shout “sayonara,” the truth is this year was just… life. A lot of life. More than most people handle in one year, but still just life.

The truth is, life is hard. God is in control of the good, the bad, the ugly, the blessings, and the suffering. I could choose bitterness, or I could choose trust. God uses all of it to refine us, draw us closer to Him, and make us more like Christ.

Instead of bitterness, I choose gratitude. Thank You, God, for getting us through. For protecting us. For giving us clarity of mind, a foundation of faith, supportive families, and even something as small but vital as a quiet office shed where I could breathe.

There were tears. There were moments of exhaustion and fear. But we’re still here.

As we step into 2026, we’re making changes toward better physical health, better mental health, and better rest. This year taught us that you can’t just push through forever. Mental and physical health are deeply intertwined, and both require care.

We’re entering 2026 with hope. Our oldest is graduating from high school. Our middle son is getting his license. Our youngest will finish third grade and step closer to those preteen years. We’re thankful for planned trips, time together, and another year around the sun.

Here’s to rest. Healing. Growth. And trusting God with whatever comes next.

The post 2025 Year in Review appeared first on BenandJacq .

A deep dive into my 10,000 tricep dips journey

Introduction

I’ve never been great at New Year’s resolutions, probably for the same reasons you aren’t. First, I’m bad at estimating future motivation. Second, I wasn’t tracking something measurable. Third, I’ve always failed at tracking progress toward the goal.

So on January 5th, 2025, I set up a system that I hoped would work better toward actually achieving a goal. It wasn’t a resolution—it was a goal. The resolution under the goal? Be the type of man I want my kids to grow to be.

The goal? 10,000 tricep dips in 2025.

Immediately after making (and publicly stating) the goal, a few questions came back from friends and acquaintances: “Why dips?” and “Aren’t you worried about injury?”

Why dips? Two reasons: I had all the equipment needed (a rack to do dips on, and arms), and I needed something easy to track. I was worried about pushups—every time I try to get into them, I end up with shoulder pain.

As for injury, dips are rough on the rotator cuff, and I was concerned, but I shrugged off (pun mildly intended) the risk as something to keep in mind. I focused on not dipping too deeply and listened when my body said I was done for the day.

First, I’ll discuss the system, then the results. Spoiler alert: I hit my goal.

The System

I needed something braindead-easy to track progress. It had to be a shortcut on my phone’s home screen, and logging sets needed to be so simple there was no excuse. Load app, type in number of dips, click submit. My brain has a way of justifying “it’s too hard” if I add even one more step. The app had to automatically log things for me.

Beyond logging, I needed regular status updates on progress toward the goal. I know myself—if I don’t see progress, I’ll stop. The app logged both my current total and the projected end-of-year total. I briefly considered graphs or other visuals, but the motivational kick of watching that projected year-end number climb was enough.

Using Google Apps Scripts, I created a web app (locked down so only my google account could see it) to make this system a reality. A spreadsheet alone would’ve been a dealbreaker—too many steps. The app was one-click simple: load, log dips, done. The backend logged everything in a spreadsheet—timestamp, number of dips, running total, and projected year-end. All calculations were handled by the script and stored as raw numbers. (this made parsing the results super fun: feed CSV to an LLM and ask it to tell a story!)

The Results

I hit 10,000 tricep dips on October 22, 2025, and (sorta) kept going, finishing the year with 10,400 dips by December 11. Across 534 sets and 164 workout days, I averaged 19.5 dips per set and 63.4 dips per workout day. The data, logged meticulously with my one-tap app, reveals patterns about when, how, and why I pushed through.

Overall Stats

• Total Dips: 10,400
• Total Sets: 534
• Total Workout Days: 164
• Average Dips per Set: 19.5
• Average Sets per Workout Day: 3.3
• Average Dips per Workout Day: 63.4
• Goal Achievement Date: October 22, 2025 (10,000 dips)
• Max Dips in a Day: 177 (February 10, 7 sets)
• Max Sets in a Day: 10 (March 6)

Time of Day

I like to start my day with brain work and end with exercise, and the data proves it. Most of my 534 sets happened in the late afternoon or evening, with 75 sets each at 7 PM and 8 PM. Only 17 sets were logged before noon, and none before 11 AM. My sweet spot was clearly after work and often (we’re being honest here) when I could slip away from the chaos of parenting and listen to a podcast while dipping.

Sets and Dips per Day

On workout days, I averaged 3.3 sets and 63.4 dips. Some days were light (e.g., 1 dip on January 13, ha!), while others were beasts—February 10 (fun fact, my wife’s birthday!) saw 177 dips across 7 sets. March 6 was my busiest, with 10 sets. The chart below shows daily dips over time, with spikes reflecting days I went all-in.

Best Months

February was my powerhouse month, with 1,452 dips over 18 days. March was close behind at 1,412 dips, and October surged with 1,285 dips, fueled by the final push to 10,000. Summer months like June (415 dips) and July (435 dips) were slower—blame vacations or heat. The chart below breaks it down.

Best Days of the Week

Mondays and Thursdays were my strongest, averaging 73.2 and 71.8 dips per workout day, respectively. Tuesdays were my weakest at 60.5 dips. The chart below shows the averages.

Best Week

The week of February 9–15 was my peak, with 252 dips across 4 workout days, driven by that 177-dip monster day on February 10. Other strong weeks included March 2–8 (297 dips) and October 13–19 (295 dips). The chart below tracks weekly totals.

Goal Progress

The app’s “Goal Progress +/- %” showed how my pace compared to the 10,000-dip target. I was way ahead early on, peaking at 25.89% above pace in March. By summer, the lead narrowed, but I still hit the goal with over two months to spare. Foot surgery and the long resulting break from late August to mid September means that the there’s a misleading dip in the chart there. The chart below tracks this progress.

Key Insights

• Consistency Won: Small, frequent sets (10–20 dips) added up, with 63.4 dips per workout day keeping me on track.
• Evening Groove: 7–8 PM was the sweet spot, fitting perfectly after daily chaos (or if I’m honest, escaping to the garage during the chaos!).
• Winter Warrior: February and March set the tone with nearly 3,000 dips combined.
• Summer Slump: June and July were low. Turns out it’s hot in an un-air conditioned garage in SC summers.
• System Worked: The one-tap app eliminated excuses, and seeing the projected year-end total kept me motivated.
• Hitting the goal triggered a slowdown: I wish I could say that December was just too busy to fit in excersize, but that’s a cop-out. Once I hit 10K it was just not as motivating to keep pushing.

Conclusion and 2026 goals

Knocking out 10,400 tricep dips in 2025 was proof that I can trick myself into overcoming bad habits, and weaponize my competitiveness. My sincere hope is that my kids see something that I’ve preached at them for years: a goal you can’t track is not a goal: it’s a dream. Give it both a deadline and a scoreboard, and you’ve got yourself a real goal.

As I look ahead to 2026, I’ve got 4 similar systems in place to track my progress on Farmer’s Carry, Dips, Pullups, and Dumbell Squats. I may have gotten a bit overzealous with 4 separate goals instead of one, but I’d rather aim for something unreasonably big and underachieve than to aim too low and achieve it.

• Farmer’s Carry: 1000 laps (with at least some weight) in 2026
• Dips: 10,000 dips in 2026
• Pullups: 7,000 pullups in 2026
• Dumbbell Squats: 25,000 dumbbell squats (with or without weight) in 2026

Here’s to checking back in next year!

The post 2025 Tricep Dips: A Test Run For Hitting Fitness Goals. appeared first on BenandJacq .