The end of thirteen years

This week I sat in a school gym full of fifth graders and watched my youngest walk up to a microphone.

Hazel had written a speech for her class celebration. We didn't know what was in it. She hadn't practiced it in front of us, hadn't asked for help, hadn't even told us what it was about. She just got up there and delivered it. Confident. Articulate. Better pacing than people three times her age. Afterward, a few parents came up to Andrea and me and asked how much we'd helped her with it.

We told them the truth. Nothing. We had no idea what she was going to say.

I'm getting a little emotional just typing this.

That speech closed a chapter I've loved more than almost anything in my life.

For thirteen years, Andrea and I have had a kid in elementary school. And I didn't just drop them off. I was on the PTA. I directed the annual talent show at both schools we were part of. I took the photos and made the videos. I showed up for donuts with dads in the morning. I got to walk both of our girls to school in the mornings, and pick them up some afternoons too. I didn't even realize how much I'd wanted that until I was living it. It became one of the most ordinary, sacred parts of my day.

I did, almost exactly, all the things I used to dream about back when I was a kid imagining what kind of dad I'd be someday.

And now that chapter is over.

A couple of days after the speech, on the last day of school, Hazel had her girlfriends over for a pool party. Charlotte drove herself to a concert. Evan was out with his buddies. And I ended up on the couch next to Andrea, and we did the thing we keep doing lately, which is just look at each other a little stunned at how full this all is.

Here's what hit me sitting there. My work gave me room. Room to coach and chaperone and direct those talent shows, to do the donuts, to walk my girls to school on a random Tuesday. Room to actually be present for the stuff I'd longed for before I even had kids. I built a business that let me be there, and I almost didn't notice it happening until the chapter was already closing.

No regrets. That's a rare sentence. I'm not letting it slide by.

Which brings me to a deadline of a very different kind.

I wrote it down as a goal for 2025. Finish the book. It's the middle of 2026 now, and the book is close. Closer than it has ever been. But it's not out. And for months my plan has been to shove it into the world in September, because September is what I said, and I'm the kind of guy who does the thing he said he'd do even when it's quietly the wrong thing.

Then I actually looked at my fall.

Family vacations. A possible trip to Italy. Come August I start coaching my daughter's varsity field hockey team, which runs hard through early October. Right after that, I'm hosting an in-person event at my studio for video business owners. There is no version of that fall where I launch a book well. There's only a version where I launch it badly, resent the timing, and miss the things happening all around me while I'm buried in it.

So here's me saying it out loud, to the people I told I'd build this thing in public: the book isn't coming in September. I'm moving it to January, maybe early February.

This is not an excuse. Nobody is standing at a finish line tapping their watch. Nobody is refreshing their inbox waiting on my book. A few months won't break anything. What it will do is give me a fall I actually get to be in, and a launch I can pour my whole heart into instead of whatever energy I have left over.

I've spent the last month telling you to pay attention and let what you notice change you. This is me doing it. The season I'm in gets a vote, and this season is asking me to slow down, not push through.

One more thing, because it's too good to keep to myself.

A few days ago I posted on Facebook trying to explain, clearly this time, what I actually do and who I help. (Turns out some people thought I was a photographer. Some still thought we mostly shot weddings.) I even challenged my mastermind to do the same. A little reintroduction.

Later that same day, an organization I've followed for a long time messaged me asking for the best way to reach me, because they had a couple of people inside their company I needed to meet.

I just sat there going, oh my gosh. It's happening.

That's the whole thing I keep preaching, proving itself again. You put yourself out there. Not once. Again and again. And eventually the right people don't just stumble onto you. They come looking.

Here's to closing chapters well, and being in no rush to start the next one.

Grateful for you,
Ryan

P.S. I get to test some of the book's stories and frameworks out loud soon, which is honestly the fun part. I'm speaking at Social Media Week Lima on June 17-18. If you're anywhere near Ohio, come find me. The lineup they pull together for what a ticket costs is kind of absurd: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/social-media-week-lima-2026-smwl26-registration-1371219998929?aff=RyanKoral. I'm also hosting a workshop at my studio this month for business owners closer to home.

P.P.S. If you've got a deadline you set for yourself that's quietly stressing you out, it might be worth asking whether that date is serving you or just bossing you around. Reply and tell me what chapter you're closing right now. I read every one.