I didn’t plan to get philosophical in Key West.
I mean, it’s Key West. You’re supposed to worry about sunburns, overpriced mojitos, and which bar makes the best key lime pie shot. Not contemplate the meaning of life while Jimmy Buffett plays in the background and a chicken struts by like it owns the island.
But there I was last weekend, standing on Mallory Square with a warm beer in one hand and an existential revelation in the other.
Ok…Let me back up a bit.
Ten years ago, Ana and I took a trip to Key West with our friends Joe and Elba. We were younger then. I still had most of my hair, and Joe still thought kale was something you scraped off your windshield in winter.
We were classic Type-A hustlers. I’d check my phone under the dinner table while Ana kicked me under it—Brazilian style, no warnings, straight to the shin. Joe would take business calls from the beach while Elba threatened to feed his phone to the fish. We’d stay up talking about market trends and retirement plans while our wives plotted a prison break with lime wedges and salt rims.
That trip, we watched the sunset from Mallory Square: four friends with nothing but ambition and Tums in our pockets.
Then life slapped us around a little.
Joe got hit with stage 4 cancer. The kind of news that makes your “urgent” email inbox seem like spam. While he was fighting for his life, I was fighting hurricanes and Florida cockroaches.
Different battles. Same realization: maybe answering emails at 11pm isn’t what we’re meant to do with our one short life.
Fast forward to last weekend. Against all odds and with a lot more gray hair (ok, mostly bald) we returned to Key West. Same friends. Same sunset spot. But now with more sunscreen, deeper laughs, and fewer apps open on our phones.
Ana just celebrated a big Birthday. Not the “I’m still 29 on Facebook” but the real deal. The “I’ve survived my workaholic installer husband this long” kind. That’s like 120 in dog years, and she still looks better than me after a fresh haircut and a filter.
As we waited for the sunset, Joe nudged me and pointed to a guy furiously typing on his phone.
“That was us,” he said.
The guy missed the entire sunset. Too busy replying to someone who probably wasn’t even paying him on time. We laughed, but that laugh hit different. Like when you remember your old haircut and wonder why no one told you it looked like a broom with issues.
Then the sun started dipping low, splashing the sky in colors so beautiful they made my window treatment catalogs look like they were printed on a fax machine.
Joe turned to me and said, “You know what I thought about during chemo? Not the Johnson account. Not my 401k. Just moments like this. And how I wanted more of them.”
I nodded. I was thinking about three milestones quietly lining up like dominoes: Ana’s another decade, my 25 years in America, and two years since moving to Florida. None of them went according to plan. All of them turned out better than I could’ve planned.
“Everything else,” I said, “is just shades and custom window solutions.”
Joe nearly spit his beer. “What?”
“All the stuff we stress about—clients, deadlines, invoices. It’s just window dressing.” I gestured to the four of us, to the sunset, to the breeze and the magic, “this is the house.”
And he’s right. Growth is weird like that. Just like with our custom window solutions, life’s best moments deserve premium treatment and our full attention.
As the sun disappeared and the crowd cheered like they just watched a world cup final, we didn’t rush off to dinner or check our phones. We just stayed there a little longer, four friends who finally understood:
Life’s fast pace can wait.
Family can’t.
And those “urgent” emails? They’ll still be there tomorrow, just like Florida cockroaches after a Category 5.
This time, we didn’t order the happy hour margarita with the mystery tequila from 1983.
We went top-shelf, baby. Because if cancer and hurricanes taught us anything, it’s this:
Life’s too short for bad tequila.
Choosing Quality: Why Top-Shelf Living and Custom Window Solutions Matter
I was thinking about how our approach to custom window solutions mirrors what truly matters in life: quality, attention, and presence. The right custom window solutions transform a house just like the right perspective transforms a life – it’s about framing what matters most.
At Shades In Place, we bring this same philosophy to our custom window solutions – because your home deserves the top-shelf treatment too.
