The Year of Synergy

Journal Entry No. 4

By Hunter

By now, the construction business was picking up. Or at least I was starting to feel like I knew what I was doing. Each deck I built, every subfloor I replaced, every client I earned the trust of—it was all starting to make a little more sense.

But more importantly, for the first time in my life, there was synergy.

Construction and the motel weren’t just coexisting—they were feeding each other. Every extra dollar I made framing a house or patching siding got funneled back into Tower Circle. Every spare afternoon was spent sanding, painting, caulking—whatever it took to keep the dream alive.

Olivia and I were anxious for our first real season: all 11 rooms up and running. After year one’s plumbing nightmare and year two’s patchwork hustle, we needed to catch up. The financial pressure was real. So we pushed. Hard.

Sure enough, as happens here like clockwork, the Outer Banks rental homes started turning over for summer. Just as construction work slowed to a trickle, the motel started to hum. And I mean hum.

I didn’t expect to enjoy it this much.

The daily interactions with guests—some curious, some skeptical, many just delighted—became this whole other rhythm. Every check-in felt like a new story unfolding. Some guests overlooked the mess. Others leaned into it.

They saw the extension cords, the half-finished trim, the power tools on the porch. But they also saw us—working, dreaming, sweating it out. That construction zone became our currency. I found myself saying the same line over and over:

“Hey, sorry about the noise... but if you come back next year, we promise—it’ll be better. We will be better.”

And they believed us.

That second full season was the most core of all. We weren’t polished. But we were committed. And people felt that.

Then came the hurricanes.

They flooded the yard, soaked the drive, turned our parking lot into soup. But the rooms held. The roof held. All the work we did? It held. We stood there at the end of the storm season, muddy boots on the porch, and realized—maybe this place was meant to last. Maybe we were too.

Season three was on the horizon. And this time, we had more than just patched pipes and working AC. We had a vision. A plan to bring flair back to the place. Tower Circle wasn’t just going to be a project anymore. It was about to become a destination again.

No more just surviving. It was time to start shining.