Nothing shifted. | #106

Dispatches from vacation Summer 2026

I’m Charlie Becker, a second-generation bookseller building an AI tool for used bookstores out of my family’s store in Houston, Texas. This newsletter is a “weekly magazine” about stewardship: preservation through creation. 

I’m currently on vacation. Here’s a slightly looser post from the road.

I’m about fifty minutes away from my parents’ lakehouse, where I’ll be spending a week.

Since having kids, family vacations at cool locations have become a tossup. Like, am I about to relax and spend a bunch of time reading and chatting with loved ones? OR am I going to be completely exhausted running after chaotic kids and slowly cleaning up little messes from sunup to sundown? As the kids get a little older, it trends from the latter toward the former, which is nice.

My wife is playing her road trip playlist and the kids are asleep. The word “Americana” flashes into my mind. This part of Missouri is beautiful. There are rolling hills and long fields of wheat and corn (I think?) but with enough trees, powerlines, and little smatterings of double-wides dotting the landscape that it’s never quite repetitive.

Old Man by Neil Young starts playing. My Dad is in the truck in front of us, his truck bed stacked ludicrously high with furniture he got a few days before we left.

We’ve driven behind him for the last 700 or so miles to make sure “nothing is shifting too much.” Spotting a precariously packed truck is way more natural for me than “heading to the lakehouse.” We have only recently become “lakehouse people.” For most of my 38 years, we were “vacations are mostly to go see family” type people. We would drive 17 hours to link up with a bunch of cousins in a Best Western between my Grandparents’ and my oldest aunt’s house in suburban Louisville.

My parents opened and ran a used and rare bookstore from when I was in Kindergarten until now, and it put my sister and I both through 13 years of Catholic school. (Not that they’re stopping running the bookstore now; English grammar just makes it harder to say, “from 1993 until when my dad is mentally or physically incapacitated to run the bookstore” without sounding sarcastic or morose.) So we were well-educated, connected to peers with high horizons, and got a lot of exposure to the life of the mind.

From when I was born until my younger sister became an orthodontist, none of us had a new car. My non-uniform clothes mostly came from department stores where you could also buy tires. If we ate out, it was at Dennys (where my parents funny enough knew much of the staff by name), the local equivalent diner, or Taqueria Cancun, which had a nonsensical fajitas special where they’d jam pack a to-go box with more chicken and beef than a family could eat for less than an entree at most places. I’d usually get one marquee toy every other year or so and most other toys came from flea markets or Walmart or thrift stores.

We were very happy. The irony is that the only reason my sister or I ever had to consider that maybe we could have more money was because my parents were so strategic about the one thing they splurged on: our education. Since I’ve become an adult, I’ve become very grateful for the way my parents spent (and didn’t spend) money when I was growing up. But I was also grateful that my parents did something a little harder to name: they made all the little things we did in our family, even (or maybe especially) the stuff that was kind of funny and weird, seem important and meaningful, but not in a way where they beat us over the head with “tradition” or propriety.

One example that my wife and my close friends and I will still joke about is on the nights my Mom, who couldn’t really cook, felt especially disinclined to prep some dinner, she would take all the random odds and ends in the fridge and plate them up to look kind of fancy. Then she’d call us in and say, “tonight is a smorgasbord!” I was like 25 years old before I found out other people’s parents didn’t do this. Similarly to how my Dad would always mention “the great conversation,” and just randomly quote stuff all the time as if I was supposed to know, like everyone knew, but it ran the gamut from excerpts of John Locke theorizing government to Larry Bird giving post-game interviews to the quips Rizzo the Rat makes in Muppet Christmas Carol.

After college, I spent ten years coaching small business owners, and then last year I rejoined the family business. Over that time, I realized my parents are kind of small business experts, in that they were able to start an idiosyncratic business in an industry that was supposed to have been decimated twice in its lifetime, first by big box stores, then by online retail. Yet, the bookstore has always been a big success, and it’s never had to rely on any kind of gimmick or tactic outside of accumulating and reselling old books.

Everything in the back of the truck is still stable. It came from a garage sale across the street from my house. My neighbor is moving and downsizing. She was a very cool older lady who looked kind of like old pictures I’ve seen of Joan Didion. She was friendly in an extremely sarcastic way. (Like when she told me she was moving, I asked where to, and instead of answering, she looked into the middle distance and said, “why the hell does everybody ask that when you say you’re moving?”)

Anyway, she just wanted to get rid of her stuff, and so was having a yard sale the other day. My Dad came by for a short errand to pick something up from my house but he is like a moth to a flame when it comes to garage sales. He asked my neighbor about one thing and—he later relayed to me— “she seemed to make up a price on the spot of $20. So I asked about a few other things, she seemed to just switch back and forth between $10 or $20.” So, a quick trip for my Dad to check it out, turned into, “hey Barl”—Barl being the shortened form of Charlie Barlie—“need you to come over here for a minute.”

When my parents bought a lakehouse a couple of years ago, it was pretty sudden. My Dad had been talking about building a waterfront summer home on a lake in Wisconsin for at least ten years. Then one week, my Mom texted and said they were looking at places in Lake of the Ozarks, closer to my sister. Then, a few days later, they closed! I found out from a text with a selfie. At the time, I didn’t realize what it meant.

A few days ago, on Father’s Day, my Dad was over for brunch while my sister and Mom were at the lake. He had interrupted his summer sojourn for a week back in Texas for a few appointments. While my wife cleared the table, I went down a list of questions to ask your father on Father’s Day in the New York Times. The most memorable answer came from “what’s something you wished you’d stopped earlier?”

My Dad thought for a minute and said, “I wish I’d stopped comparing myself to my peers who made more money a lot earlier than I did.” Now, what he said seems so obvious—or at least reasonable—that saying my mind was blown makes me feel so naive, but it’s the truth. For all the deep, honest conversations I’ve had with my Dad since I had kids, it’s strange we’ve never broached the topic of money.

It was a particularly timely conversation. Before brunch, I had cleared my journal from the table. Going through the entries in it would be a great way to plot the emotional trajectory of my year, showing my thoughts slowly turning from “what am I doing with my life, exactly?” to “am I going to be making enough money in the next few months?”

The only blip deviating from this trend would be last year, when I received a blockbuster fellowship to apply my new interest in AI to an old business problem for my family’s bookstore. The short version is I made a big bet we could solve a hard, culturally important, but not particularly profitable problem. The excitement in my journal entries turns to confidence as entrepreneur-speak starts to show up, and then a little to frustration, as I realize the problems I thought would be hard are mostly easy, and the problems I thought would be easy are mostly hard.

But the entries would take a turn for the personal and confessional again recently. There’s an awkward 3-6 month gap I’m currently in between when we are certain the tool we built works well and when the groundwork we have done to commercialize it starts to pay off. Plus, the fellowship ends this month: the funding I have left is already earmarked for the next few months of the project.

My life is an intersection of a few different interesting, enviable threads like rare and old books, cutting-edge technology, and the creator economy. But damn man, I had to drop my 2012 Accord off at the shop and my guy said it’ll cost $1100, and that’s the nicer and newer of our two Hondas!

I’d probably tell someone I don’t often compare myself directly to other people, but that would surprise any listeners of my inner monologue, where I spend a ton of time arranging evidence. Reflecting on the conversation with my Dad, I realized how frequently I’m making pro-con calculations, how often I’m tallying up assets and liabilities, strengths and weaknesses. (Even now, I have to resist the temptation to list out and compare all the good things my life has going for it next to all the problems.)

My son woke up in his car seat and started crying a few minutes ago. After almost ten hours of driving, I made the mistake of looking at the GPS and saying, “wow, only three hours left.” Seemingly twelve hours have passed since then.

I’d prefer I wasn’t constantly sizing myself up, but it’s a hard impulse to root out. I especially don’t want to pass it on to my kids. I often do it in writing, although only implicitly, running to social media to share insight or success—or the inverse, commiserating about fear and failure. Because the truth is that this balance, this constant measurement, is me prejudging myself so I am better prepared for future judgments.

The middle way is a lot scarier and less comfortable, because it’s not actually a middle or halfway point. Whereas success merits admiration and failure merits compassion, being in the middle means any judgment you receive is about what you’re actually doing, what you’re actually afraid of, and what you’re actually risking. It’s one thing to say, “I’m starting a fitness journey,” and it’s another to say, “I lost 75 lbs and doubled my bench press.” What I find hardest is, “I ran-walked a slow 3 miles and did some light kettlebell work because that’s what I had time for today.” You’re neither a paragon of success nor a beacon of potential, you’re in between: messy and imperfectly doing the work.

We’re on the last few miles before the lakehouse, where the road is exceptionally bumpy. My daughter has woken up and is so excited about getting close and passing the time, she’s started rapidly singing the ABC’s over and over.

After the Father’s Day interview, I was imagining looking back at my life, thinking about how there are things I sort of regret not doing 20 years ago. Although, I don’t actually regret not doing them, because not doing them is how I have a lot of the things I have now. But not knowing what I’ll get in the future, I wonder if I can project things I might similarly ‘not-regret’ doing 20 years from now, or if that’s a silly thought experiment. Like should I try to be fitter and better with my money so I’ll be better fit for some abstract future task, or is this a fool’s errand?

We got to the lakehouse thirty minutes ago and my kids got out to play with their cousins. I got them settled in and excused myself to unpack and finish this thought.

My Mom and Dad seem very happy. The house is beautiful, a little under construction, and full of grandchildren. I have nothing to do but look after my kids and have a good time. I hope I can be present, and will aim to keep the calculations stemming from my worries about the next few months from seeping into my time here.

My mind is reaching for a Chinese phrase I used to use all the time, 看情况, or Kan Qingkuang, (pronounced kahn ching-kwahng). It sort of means, “we’ll see” or “it depends,” but it has a much more neutral emotional valence than those—like, “this might work itself out or not—the only way to find out is to wait.” It’s detached but not in a careless or indifferent way. More like in a present, accepting way. So yeah, kan qingkuang.

And the truck made it just fine. Nothing shifted.

This is my first-ever newsletter issue I composed completely on my phone. If you notice anything odd, let me know.

Last week’s book club was canceled because I (and my cohost Neha) were both sick. We postponed it one week if you want to join. Use this link to sign up on Luma and join when it starts in ~5 hours.

These are some things I’ve read recently I thought are worth sharing:

Back to Harbor by Camilo Moreno-Salamanca - Camilo is a talented writer who I always love to hear from, but this was especially poignant as he briefly explores his relationship to his writing, his corporate job, his future, and ultimately his self concept. I am (clearly) someone who has a lot of hangups about what my purpose is, and how my choices accumulate into my identity, and how much pressure that gives a lot of my decisions, so I really enjoyed reading someone else talk about making decisions they’d rather not have to in service of what they find most valuable. 

Why Does Al Love "Not X, But Y" So Much? by Justis Mills - This was a short and interesting essays that proposes one answer for so many of the different LLM-specific writing tropes. I find it thematically similar to this issue’s essay because it’s about how a pattern or container for information affects how the information is delivered. 

The untold story of Gwyneth Paltrow's body double by Amelia Tait - I honestly don’t know why I loved this so much, I don’t think I’ve even seen Shallow Hal the movie it’s about. But I was thoroughly engrossed in this whole interview. 

the 20 best novels by emma - I just love lists of books honestly, and from someone reading hundreds of books a year for the love of the game this was very refreshing: a list with a lot of “classics” that is still obviously personalized. (I finally found a copy of East of Eden at my bookstore and put it on the to-be-read shelf because of this list.)