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We have two sons and we are very proud of both of them. But in this blog I seem to write much more about Ben than about Matt. That’s natural, because Ben is a writer, so when he publishes something I often link to it.

This post is about Matt, a man on a very different path from his brother. Matt lives in San Diego and works for a large company that has its headquarters on the east coast. He recently won an award that usually goes to an employee at headquarters. We were very proud of him.

Matt is an athlete. He’s a sociable and disciplined young man, academically talented, and completely bi-lingual. He has a wonderful wife named Wendy, and a pug named Lily. He’s earnest and diligent. He graduated from UCLA with honors a few years ago, a double major in International Economics and Spanish. A lot of the kids he competed with were native speakers of Spanish so we were very proud when our gringo graduated at the top of his class. He did post grad language training in Mexico, and went on to teach school in Honduras where he met Wendy.

Corporate success is a quiet thing, woven from successful projects, respect of one’s co-workers and managers, and a broad range of talents and skills. It’s often marked by increased responsibilities, steps along a promotional path, so we were very happy to hear that Matt will be starting a new job next month for his company. He’s been promoted to a more responsible position in a line unit. He gets a raise, a new job title, some support for a graduate program he plans to enter, and best of all…

His commute has been cut in half! Instead of fighting traffic for an hour each way every day, he will bounce down the freeway to an office about half-way between his house and the dog beach. That’s him in the picture with Lily at the dog beach on Thanksgiving Day.

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