The Friction Worth Keeping
Part II of “Fifteen Minutes I Don’t Have” – When freedom stops being about escape and starts being about choosing what still challenges you.
I’m afraid of something I never expected to fear.
Not running out of money—I’ve done the math on that.
Not losing my job—I could walk away tomorrow if I needed to.
What keeps me up some nights is wondering what happens when life gets too smooth.
When I’ve finally removed all the difficult parts, what’s left?
This piece picks up where “Fifteen Minutes I Don’t Have” left off—exploring what happens after you’ve earned the freedom to choose your work, and whether removing all friction might actually be the problem, not the solution.
The Unpredictable Gift
Teaching is unpredictable by design. Kids interrupt your plans in the best possible way.
I can walk into class ready to teach the next guitar chord, but sometimes a few students are already jamming on the ones we learned last week because they found a song that fits them perfectly—and they’re all in. When that happens, you don’t kill the joy just to follow the plan. You ride the wave.
Other days, a student shows me something they’ve written with those same chords, and suddenly we’re all learning about songwriting instead of scales. Or maybe someone brings in a viral video—like a six-year-old absolutely shredding “Crazy Train.” We pause to break it down, piece by piece, so everyone can see the connection between the “impossible” and the “almost there.”
It’s not chaos—it’s something better.
It’s the beautiful, necessary friction of community—that unpredictable space between people that keeps us humble, adaptive, and alive. The kind that wakes you up instead of wearing you down.
A kid who swore they’d never sing finally takes a solo.
A band learns to listen instead of just play.
An eighth grader discovers compound interest and suddenly grasps how time itself creates value.
These moments only happen in the friction.
They can’t be planned. They can only be met.
Maybe that’s why people say kids keep you young—not because they’re energetic, but because they inject unpredictability into your system.
They don’t let you get stuck in your patterns.
They keep bumping you, gently, toward something new.
And maybe that’s what I’m afraid of losing if I ever walk away—not the job itself, but the daily reminders that life is unscripted, that growth happens in the friction.
The Design Problem
The classroom keeps me guessing.
But life outside of it raises a harder question—what happens when the structure itself disappears?
You’ve probably read the articles: “15 Things You Should Do Before You Retire” or “7 Things I Wasn’t Sure Of Until I Retired.”
One item always appears: Have a plan for meaningful work.
It sounds obvious. Almost trite.
But here’s the paradox: once you’ve reached financial independence, your instinct is to orchestrate.
To choose what your days look like.
To remove the parts that drain you.
To build a rhythm that feels intentional and calm.
That’s the promise of freedom—the ability to decide.
Every summer, my partner and I get a taste of what that might look like.
It’s taken us maybe a decade to really be comfortable with summer break as teachers.
We used to say it took three weeks just to figure out the rhythm—to find activities and rest that felt meaningful instead of just filling time.
It’s hard jumping from working in a school ten hours a day, most days of the week, to suddenly having fifty hours a week to fill without feeling like you’re just filling them.
It’s easy to say you don’t want to be at work. I hear people say that all the time.
But it’s a different thing to say—positively and affirmatively—what you will do instead.
To name it.
To believe it could sustain you for more than just a summer.
I could stay “busy”—house projects, reorganizing, endless productive motion.
But I didn’t want to just be busy anymore.
I wanted to figure out what the third quarter of my life could be about.
It’s only been the past two or three summers that I’ve been able to find a real rhythm—a cadence of activities and rest that made me believe I could do this for more than just a summer.
House projects, music, writing new songs, blog posts like this, teaching people about personal finance.
At this point, I believe I’ve collected a large enough repertoire of meaningful activities that could last the rest of my life.
But it hasn’t always been like this.
I remember my dad retiring and saying he’d never been so busy—volunteering at his hospital, working with his Lions Club to help get prescription glasses for people who needed them, helping at the chamber of commerce.
Now he’s at a place where some of those things aren’t possible anymore, just because of age and limitations.
I’ve seen the pattern: people saying, “I can’t wait to have this time,” and then they end up filling it with something else that occupies their days.
Sometimes it’s meaningful.
Sometimes it’s just motion.
That’s why I want to be smart about this—to really investigate how people spend their time in retirement, what makes life feel meaningful when the structure disappears.
Because when you design away all the uncertainty, you risk designing away the growth.
The best parts of life—kids, relationships, art, teaching, even money itself—all thrive on a little chaos.
They only evolve when they’re bumped up against something unpredictable.
Choosing Your Friction
Maybe the trick isn’t eliminating friction but inviting it on purpose.
Not the toxic kind that wears you down, but the kind that wakes you up.
There are plenty of parts of my teaching job I could live without—the emails about parking lot procedures, the meetings that could have been emails, the endless little tasks that pull you away from what matters.
Those I’d happily design out of my life.
But the friction of a student challenge?
The surprise of a lesson going sideways in the best possible way?
The unpredictability of many tiny humans walking into a room with their own ideas about what matters today?
That’s friction worth keeping.
The question isn’t whether to have friction—it’s which friction to choose.
That might look like saying yes to a new class project that scares you a little.
Or starting a creative venture where you don’t know the outcome.
Or volunteering somewhere that asks more of you than you expected.
Maybe even continuing to teach, not because you need to, but because the challenge keeps your edges sharp.
People ask, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time.
The funny thing is, nobody actually wants to eat an elephant.
But if you had to, you’d do it slowly, deliberately—one uncomfortable bite after another.
Growth works the same way.
Nobody really wants the discomfort—we just want what’s on the other side of it.
The Song That Stays Fresh
Some days my job feels old, repetitive—the same chords, the same class times, the same motions.
But I’ve realized the song doesn’t stay alive unless I keep playing with it—adjusting the rhythm, shifting the key, adding new verses.
The structure might be familiar, but the performance has to evolve.
That’s what friction does: it keeps the song fresh.
It’s the thing that prevents you from going through the motions.
It’s what forces you to stay present, to adapt, to remain curious about what happens next.
Because when life gets too smooth, the song goes flat.
The Real Freedom
Financial independence hasn’t given me the freedom to eliminate all friction.
It’s given me something better: the ability to choose which friction I keep.
To choose the work, the people, and the projects that bring purpose.
To choose the kind of unpredictability that grows me rather than drains me.
To choose the challenges that sharpen me rather than wear me down.
The freedom of financial independence isn’t about being untethered, and it’s not about loving or hating your job.
That’s just the opening riff—the hook being played for the first time.
The real music begins when you start using freedom not to escape friction, but to seek the kind that refines you—where one person sharpens another, where the work keeps you young, where purpose meets challenge.
That place—the messy middle of purpose, joy, communal need, and challenge—is where growth happens.
It’s where the work stays alive.
Because when life gets too smooth, the song goes flat.
Maybe that’s the real question: once you can choose any rhythm you want, which ones will you still choose to play?
This is part of Cadence of Cash, where I explore how time, work, and wealth intertwine—blending finance, music, and mindfulness to help you design a life that feels like your own rhythm.