I watched my father throw my clothes, my books, and the last photo of my mother into the fire like my life meant nothing. Then he looked at me and said, “This is what happens when you disobey me.” I said nothing. Six years later, I called him and whispered, “Check your mailbox.”

The work itself educated me in ways I hadn’t expected. Construction has a logic that I found genuinely satisfying — not just the physical problem-solving but the business logic underneath it, the understanding of why properties deteriorate the way they do. Most distressed properties weren’t mysteries. They were the sum of decisions that had been deferred past the point where deferring was still affordable. A roof that needed replacing five years ago and got patched instead. A foundation drainage issue that was never properly addressed after a basement flood. Each of these made a certain kind of sense in the year the decision was made and then became a larger, more expensive problem every year after.

I had grown up in a house where decisions were made exactly that way.