Time for everything, time for anything

I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.

Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.

Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.

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On rules: the good, the okay, and the ones that suck

I have no doubt that I will someday regret giving you the advice I’m about to give you, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. That’s because like all the shit I’ve included so far, it’s important, and I want to make sure you know it.

This advice is about rules.

Some rules are good, and should be followed.

Some rules are okay, and can be bent.

Some rules are bad, either for being unjust or for being stupid, and depending on the consequences and the nature of the rule, deserve your ire, to be broken, or at the very least, followed with extreme disdain.

The hard part is figuring out which rules are which.

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Heaven is for real. Or it isn't. And nobody knows which.

Let’s talk about God.

Wait, don’t go.

I know invitations to talk about God have shut down countless conversations and gotten hundreds of thousands of doors slammed in Jehovah only knows how many well-intentioned faces, so before you stop reading, let me tell you what I’m going to tell you.

Of all the advice I’ve given you, this one might be the least instructive. It touches on God, religions, and what I believe.

But.

More important is what I’m not going to tell you.

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A personal account of incredible kindness

Last week, you knocked a top front tooth out, again. You knocked out the top front left in 2020, mid-pandemic. This time is was top front right, but as awful as the experience was, it also gave us the opportunity to meet two incredibly kind people who went out of their way to help us when you (and I) really needed some help.

I’m going to tell you that story and why I hope theirs is the kind of behavior you grow up to emulate; because more than anything else you can be in this world, I hope you grow up to be kind.

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Be Humble

Be humble. Because no matter how much you think you know or how much you actually know, the list of things you don’t know will always be way the hell longer than the list of things you do know. As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s also a list of things you think you know that you’ve got wrong.

Trust me, those things you think you know are just waiting out there in the world to make you look like an asshole as soon as you open your mouth to declare something you’re sure of. And I’m not telling you this to say I know more than you, or that I’ve got it all figured out. In I have no idea what I’m talking about, I was pretty clear that I don’t know everything. What I’m telling you is that you don’t either, and you should act accordingly.

How? Be humble.

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Choose Discomfort

Your Mom and I are making ourselves uncomfortable on purpose, which sounds like a terrible idea. It’s not, though, and I’m going to tell you why it’s good for us and good for you.

Late last summer, a recruiter contacted your Mom about a job. After lots of emails, phone calls, interviews, and soul searching, she decided to take a job as the VP of Sales at Sierra Nevada Brewing. This also meant we’d relocate from Cincinnati to Asheville. Which all sounds great, because who wouldn’t want to work for the brewery that started the craft beer industry and live in the mountains of North Carolina where they got married? And we’d be closer to my family. What could be uncomfortable about that?

You have to consider what we’re leaving behind.

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Sam Vines on boots and money

Let’s talk about money, why the idea that “you get what you pay for” is almost always true, and why not having money can cost you money. To set the stage, I’m going to share the Samuel Vines theory of Economic unfairness. Who is Sam Vines? Sam is a character in Terry Pratchett’s 1993 book Men at Arms.

He says, “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

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The Sex Talk

This one’s going to be a doozy. And for your grandparents, they might want to look away; we’re going to talk about sex. So strap in, or strap on, whatever floats your little man in the boat.

At some point, we’ll have a you-and-me version of this talk, where you’ll have to listen to me struggle through this stuff while you suffer soul-crushing embarrassment. But, since this blog is about writing down things just in case I don’t get to explain them to you, I’m also going to embarrass you in writing.

We’ll skip the biology lesson, because this isn’t that kind of sex talk. You know, about fallopian tubes and seminal fluid. Although, you should learn what those are before 6th grade. Otherwise, you might end up like your Dad, who at the urging of Scooter Bailey, told Lee Raymer to “suck my Fallopian tubes,” in a cutdown fight on the school bus. Not surprisingly, your Dad lost that cutdown fight.

But, this is not a talk about fallopian tubes. This is a talk about consent, responsibility, emotions, accidents, and consequences. So, without further ado, here we go.

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Don't Text Important Sh*t

When it comes time to talk about important shit, pick the right way to do it. Text messages, email, and written letters have their places and their uses, but when it comes to conversations that really matter (about things like relationships, sex, money, legal contracts, etc.) get to face-to-face, or at the very least, get on the phone. Yes, it’s less convenient, but you’ll be less likely to miss important details, misunderstand, or miscommunicate. You’ll also be 100% less likely to be autocorrected into telling someone to “shave the date,” or ordering “Egg rolls with fuck sauce.”

Don’t think I’m anti-text/anti-email. Especially because it’s possible text messages won’t even be a thing when you’re old enough to read this. We will have certainly developed new ways of communicating short snippets of information by then, who knows, maybe we’ll be sending mini-holograms back and forth. But, unless that technology manages to perfectly replicate every nuance of in-person communication, it will still be imperfect. More importantly, it will be at least one step removed from in-person communication, which by design, reduces the emotional immediacy and impact of that communication. What’s that mean? The further removed you are from a person, the easier it is to say something you wouldn’t say to their face.

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Listen up, Mom has the mic.

When I think about the qualities I want you to emulate and share with the world, I think about kindness, empathy, respect, hope and love. As I reflect more on what is at the root of these qualities and behaviors, the art of listening comes to the center and forefront. I’m not sure I’m qualified to write to you about this as it’s something I struggle with every day. So, please don’t always follow my actions in this regard (although I try to get better with practice each day) but do try to cultivate and practice active listening.

Listen is a verb – it’s active, it requires energy and focus. The Merriam-Webster definition includes three parts:

  • To pay attention to sound

  • To hear something with thoughtful attention: give consideration

  • To be alert to catch an expected sound

I think the second part is the most critical. To me this speaks to not just active listening BUT also listening with a willingness to be influenced.

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'And' instead of 'either/or'

It’s easy to see other people categorically as good or bad, right or wrong, friends or enemies. That would be a mistake, but it’s a mistake plenty of people make every day. I’d rather you look a little deeper and see the duality inside everyone. That’s because most people aren’t either one thing or the other; we’re one thing and the other, almost always some of both. Your best friends will be kind and cruel. Your parents are good and bad. The people you can’t stand are generous and selfish. Sure, we can trend to one side or the other, but in the end, there’s a little bit of both sides in everyone.

This can be hard to understand; your brain wants to use associative thinking to categorize and classify everything, people included. It’s one of the shortcuts our brain uses to help us process our world, and while necessary to function, it does us and those we lump together a disservice. You’ll need intention and a second look to undo those snap judgements, but it’s worth the effort.

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Ideas are Easy

People sometimes half-jokingly tell me about an idea they have for a story, or a book, or a movie. “It’s about a time-traveling cat,” or “this thing happened to me and it’d make a great movie,” or “it’s dinosaurs in space, and all the dinosaurs are super horny. Jurassic Pork in Space!”

They have the “big idea” and all I need to do is help flesh it out. I invariably decline, but encourage them to continue on their own. Why? First, because taking care of a 3-year-old keeps me busy, and what time I have left I spend on my own projects. Second, because having the idea is the easy part. The hard part is all the work that comes between having an idea and seeing that idea come to life. And I don’t think this is unique to writing projects. In almost every idea, venture, or project, the hard part comes after the big idea.

This isn’t to discourage you from thinking big, or having big ideas. No, my point is that rather than feeling like you accomplished something by having an idea, you should be ready to jump in and do the hard work it takes to make that idea into something real. Then, and only then will you have something to brag about. Until then, you’re just another guy with a big idea he didn’t do shit about.

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What the world owes you, and what you owe the world

I’m going to write about entitlement and privilege. As in, how much I don’t want you to go through life feeling like the world owes you something (a.k.a. being entitled) and how much I want you to realize the advantages you’re born with (a.k.a. privilege.)

Let’s start with the short list of people who owe you something; it starts with me and ends with your Mom. We brought you into the world, so by my estimation, we owe you about eighteen years of food, shelter, clothing, love, and instruction on how to be a successful and productive adult. It certainly doesn’t mean that’s all you’ll get from us, but that’s the bare minimum of what someone owes you. Beyond that, nobody owes you a thing.

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Wave Your Freak Flag High

Don’t fit in, and don’t feel like you have to. Plenty of people will say otherwise, but I’m here to tell you they can all go to hell. No, here’s a case where you should listen to Jimmi Hendrix, who sang he would “wave his freak flag high.” Because deep down, there’s a freak inside of all of us.

That pressure to pretend you’re just like everyone else starts early. Middle school, maybe even before that. It’s probably most intense in high school, but it never really goes away. And we all feel it, even adults. Sadly, most of us spend our lives not only bowing to it, but making sure everyone else does too…

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Your word, your integrity, and making promises

Keep your word. I’m not just talking about the times you say, “Yes, Dad. I promise I’ll do the thing you just asked me to do.” I’m also talking about all the little times you tell someone you’ll do something, help them out, or be somewhere; the seemingly insignificant promises you make every day. Yes, it’s important to keep the big promises, like the ones you make to your spouse, to your country, or to your God. But it’s also important to keep the little promises like, “I’ll do the laundry,” or “I’ll come by later,” or “I’ll call you back.”

The little ones may seem less important, or no big deal if you forget, but the sum total of those promises will far outweigh the marquee promises you make in front of a crowd. This isn’t to say you should cheat on your spouse or become a traitor; big promises also matter. What I am saying is that your word is the sum total of all the promises you make, and that hundreds of white lies and unkept commitments can chip away at that word in ways that are every bit as destructive in the long-term as one big lie.

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A job you love

“Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” is a load of shit. It sounds great, and it seems to make sense, but as someone who’s had several jobs I wanted and very much loved, I can tell you that saying is not true, at least not in the literal sense.

That’s not to say some jobs aren’t better and more fulfilling than others. A job that makes the most of your aptitudes and skills, has a good work environment, and pays well will be much more enjoyable than one where you’re abused, overworked, and under appreciated. As an example, being an NFL quarterback is better than working in a coal mine, but if you think NFL quarterbacks don’t work, you should go workout with one, or just let a 340 lb. man tackle you sometime. No matter how much they love the game, it’s work, work, work…

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Embracing Uncertainty

Being certain is a comforting place to be. Convinced that something is or will be, you can rest assured that you’re right, and anyone who disagrees with you is not. This level of assuredness can shift opinions into facts, and facts into absolute truths. The problem is that sometimes, no matter how certain you, you’ll be wrong.

You could be wrong about something in the past, (Napoleon was short), something in the present, (Tom Cruise is tall), or something in the future, (see College Gameday for weekly examples.)

Oof. They all sting. Nobody likes being wrong.

But, it’s okay; it happens to all of us. We make mistakes, we base opinions on incorrect information, and we believe things that aren’t true. The best reaction when you find yourself in this situation is to learn from the error and discover something you didn’t know before. The worst reaction is to double down on the certainty, close your eyes to new information, stick your fingers in your ears, and swear up and down that it’s the other guy who’s wrong.

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Feel your Feelings

This week, a movie made you cry, and I thought my heart was going to break. It was awful. You cried, then I cried, and then your Mom came into the room from the office, and she cried. Stella was even concerned, but she only cries when it’s time for food. But, as I look back on the experience, I want to encourage you to continue to feel and express your feelings, both when they feel good, and when they hurt. Especially when they hurt. Bottling up your worst and most painful feelings is like swallowing a little bit of poison every day; it might not kill you right away, but it’s going to tear you up inside. And eventually, it might kill you. Which is why you shouldn’t do that.

But first, back to the offending tearjerker. On Friday nights, we make popcorn and watch a movie. We started the tradition during the pandemic as a way to make Fridays different than every other day we couldn’t leave the house, and we’ve continued it because it’s fun. This week, your Mom was running late so I let you pick out the movie. You picked the 2018 remake of Benji, mostly because the picture in Netflix for Benji the Movie has a cute dog. Yes, it was rated TV-PG, and it wasn’t as kid friendly as our usual animated fare. But since it wasn’t Old Yeller and I was pretty sure Benji wouldn’t die at the end, I decided it was fine.

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Find yourself somewhere new

Moving, like pimping, ain’t easy. Especially moving to new cities and states. While your Dad can’t teach you anything about pimping, I can teach you lots about moving. I’m not talking about how to rent a U-haul, though. I’m talking about making a new place your home, going from lost and a little lonely to feeling comfortable and having a few friends. I grew up in Winston-Salem, and after college I moved to Richmond, then Miami, then Charlotte, then Raleigh, back to Winston-Salem, on to Cincinnati, then Nashville, and most recently back to Cincinnati. Guess I was making up for not leaving my hometown for college. And since I’m betting you’ll end up moving somewhere new sometime, here’s what I learned along the way. I hope it makes your moves easier.

Start by not looking back. Moving somewhere new almost always means leaving the familiar and comfortable behind. Stepping into the unknown is  hard, and it can be scary. You’ll be tempted to look back, to wish for the places you know and the faces you recognize. Maybe you want to just visit the place you left on the weekends, and before you know it, six months have passed and you haven’t made one new friend in your new city. Incidentally, continuing to date someone long-distance that you left behind will definitely keep one foot in the place you left. My efforts to make new friends the first time I moved to Cincinnati was the beginning of the end for a long-distance relationship I left behind in North Carolina. I wanted to kayak with my friends and she wanted me to come see her, and you can’t be in two places at once. 

So, what should you do first? Set your expectations. In my experience, it takes two to three years to really feel like a new place is home. That’s when you’ll have learned your way around town, figured out some places you like to eat, and hopefully made some friends. Your experiences may vary, according to some of the variables I’m going to list below, but don’t expect to feel right at home after just a few months. Depending on your age, two or three years may feel like forever. Trust me, it’s not.

Different places are more or less welcoming to new arrivals. One of the biggest factors I’ve found is how many other people are moving to the city. In 2020, 82 people a day moved to Nashville for a population of 1.2 million. It was close to that when your Mom and I moved there, so it seemed like everyone was trying to make new friends. By contrast, Cincinnati has a population of 2.2 million and only 25 people a day moved there in 2020. How does that matter? In a city with less new residents, people have known their friends for longer, they grew up together, and their social circles are tighter. They’re not looking for new friends because they already have all the friends they need. I’m not telling you not to move to places that don’t have fast-growing populations, I’m just telling you that it will take a little extra work and time to break in.

Where you choose to live, much like whether or not you wear pants, will drastically affect how easy it is to meet people. You’ll likely end up factoring in your commute to work or school, what you can afford, and what’s available, so do your research and figure out where people of your age and marital status live. Just like the suburbs are tough for a college kid, the coolest neighborhood in town with all the bars and clubs will be tough for a young family. Choose wisely, and according to who you want to hang out with. 

Speaking of neighborhoods, go out of your way to meet your neighbors. Introduce yourself, invite them over for drinks, or chat them up in the hallways. Don’t be the nosy one who keeps track of everything, but listen to what they tell you and pay attention. It’s good to know your neighbors,  and the more people you know, the more people you’ll know.

If you’ve figured out how long it’ll take to get comfortable and where to live, what then? You’ve got to do some work, that’s what. And that means going out on a limb with some people you don’t really know. Maybe you’ll have the personality that makes this easy, but for your Mom and I, it doesn’t come naturally. We’re both introverts, so hanging out with strangers can be draining. But, if you hang out with a stranger long enough, they don’t seem so strange. Mostly. Besides, it’s worth the effort for the times you do turn a stranger into a friend.

Hanging out with strangers will lead to some strange experiences with some strange people, but as long as you don’t get killed and eaten, you’ll have a good story to tell. For example, one night in Nashville before you were born when your Mom was out of town, I ended up smoking cigars on our front porch with a couple of argumentative swingers I met at a bar up the street. I’m pretty sure they didn’t get what they were looking for, but at least they enjoyed some nice bourbon and cigars before being disappointed.

If you’re moving for school or a new job, you’ll have the opportunity to make some friends in those circles. Or at least, to start there. Don’t like ‘em? Don’t care. Your co-workers and classmates might all seem like nerds, but they could have some cool friends. And also, maybe you’re a nerd and you fit right in. Either way, it’s easier to make new friends when you have friends in common. Don’t discount the benefit of being vouched for, and don’t turn your nose up at someone you don’t know yet.

Use the things you like to do as another starting point. Play sports? Find co-ed adult recreational leagues. The co-ed part keeps the fighting down and makes them more social. Like books? Join a book club. It’s like reading, but with other people. Into yoga? Find a good studio. This is how your Mom and I both made some great friends. I met all the guys from Cincinnati that I paddle with after going to one paddling group swap meet. I met two people there, who introduced me to their friends, and so and so on. Your Mom’s closest friends in Nashville came from her yoga studio. Shared activities are a good commonality for friendships, and even if you don’t make any friends, you’ll be doing something you like.

Go explore your new city, and don’t be afraid to do it alone. In fact, when you don’t know anybody in a new place, don’t be afraid to do everything alone. Go out to eat by yourself and grab a seat at the bar. You’ll almost always have a bartender and a few other bar patrons to talk to. Venture out in public to festivals and parks; you never know who you’ll bump into. Also, it’s really hard for serendipity to work its magic when you’re on your sofa. The more things you do, the better off you’ll be.

If you want to get to know a place, you have to see it, to experience it. That’s how the unfamiliar becomes familiar. Before you know it, a couple years will pass and you’ll find yourself welcoming someone new to your city. Just remember how it felt when you were in their shoes.

Finally, if you end up like your Mom and me, you’ll get to repeat this cycle several times. This might seem extra scary, but with practice, it gets easier. Once you know what to do and how to do it, it becomes part of the rhythm of relocating. I’m not saying it’s something you’ll look forward to, but you learn how to do it efficiently. Now, get out there and explore.

I love you, 

Dad

There can't be only one

There is no such thing as “The One.” That is, the one person on this planet who you find physically attractive, is physically attracted to you, and will complete you so completely that they satisfy your every emotional, romantic, and sexual need, and can be your best friend, and is waiting for you and only you.

This is good news.

What? How can this be good news? What about all those romantic comedies and romance novels and princess fairytales? What about Jerry Maguire’s “you complete me” speech or the incredible forbidden passion of Romeo and Juliet? Well, all of those stories are fiction, and both Romeo and Juliet end up dead.

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