MEASURED IN

Where Love, Choices, and Regret Collide

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Coming Jan '27

MOMENTS

In Measured in Moments, author Lee A Jones brings us back to Jaylen Cruz, the young man many readers first met in Measured in Regrets. Back then, Jaylen was a teenager trying to make sense of grief, choices, and the wisdom of an older white Army veteran named Elias. Now he’s 28, married, and living in Southern California—and the lessons he once learned in theory are being tested in real life.

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Welcome Back Jaylen

Today, Jaylen is a husband, a working professional in the music world, and a man trying to honor a promise he made to his dying mother: stay out of the military, go to college, and build something better. On paper, he’s done everything right. He went to CSUSM, earned his degree, married his college sweetheart, Tasha, two days after graduation, and started building a career he can be proud of. But like so many people, he’s discovering that “providing” and “being present” are not the same thing.

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“Success wasn’t the problem. The problem was when success got everything and his marriage got whatever was left.”

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Lee A Jones follows Jaylen into the heart of a struggle that feels painfully familiar to many readers: the tension between work and home, ambition and intimacy, good intentions and real-time choices. Jaylen pours his time and energy into work, convinced he’s doing it “for them,” while his wife feels increasingly alone in the marriage. Missed date nights, unanswered texts, emotional shutdowns after long days—these are not dramatic movie moments, but the slow, quiet fractures that many modern couples recognize all too well.

What makes Jaylen’s journey compelling is the ghost of Elias’ teachings, which keeps showing up. The journal he once kept, the conversations they shared, the idea of measuring regrets in inches instead of miles—all of that comes back when his marriage is on the line. Lee A Jones doesn’t treat Jaylen as a hero who has it all figured out. Instead, he shows us how a man who once thought he understood regret is now being forced to live out those lessons in his own home, with his own wife, in the middle of his own messy choices.

“Love wasn’t proven in grand gestures; it was proven in all the tiny, boring moments where you chose to stay instead of drift.”

Jaylen’s story in Measured in Moments is not just about saving a marriage; it’s about facing the everyday decisions that shape who we become. The pressures he feels, the disconnection he accidentally creates, the fear of failing the people counting on him—these are the same issues countless readers wrestle with in their own relationships, through Jaylen, Lee A Jones invites us to ask a hard but honest question: when life tests what we say we believe about love, commitment, and regret, how do we respond?