Cynicism is for cowards

In the face of loss and misfortune, it’s easy to be jaded, to become cynical. In a word; don’t. Cynicism is the armor of the weak-hearted, too afraid to believe or stand or reach for anything. I hope you have the strength to hope, to dream, and to trust. Yes, your hopes won’t always come true, you will fall short of some goals, and people will abuse your trust. But, you might get to live your dreams. Some people you choose to trust will prove themselves worthy of that leap, and every now and then, you’ll get more than you ever hoped for. And on those days where life can’t get any better, when the sun shines warm on your face and you get to kiss your beautiful wife, drink a cold beer, and watch your son play in the sand, I hope you don’t feel the cynical jab of “I was right and they were wrong.” Instead, I want you to feel the pure unadulterated joy that those sanguine moments in life can bring. 

I have two quotes about cynicism to share with you, and the first is from Norm Macdonald, who died this week at 61. He said, “At times, the joy that life attacks me with is unbearable and leads to gasping hysterical laughter. I find myself completely out of control and wonder how could life could surprise me again and again and again, so completely. How could a man be a cynic? It is a sin.”

The cynicism Macdonald references is the pessimism that some people  wrap around themselves as protection. They fear the worst, so they expect the worst, and are not surprised when the worst happens. “See? I told you so,” they say. Which is like hearing someone’s running around punching people in the nuts and deciding to uppercut your own sack so the nut puncher can’t get you. It’s choosing unhappiness, and it’s dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It also hurts.

I met someone like this the summer I interned in Hollywood. Bright-eyed and full of big dreams, I’d gone out to L.A. for the summer to work on a movie set. I didn’t care that I was an unpaid intern on a straight to video Olsen twins movie. It was a real movie set and I was beyond thrilled to be there. This fella worked in the production accounting department and had worked in Hollywood for years. I was helping him in the office one day when he took the opportunity to go on a tirade about all the snakes and weasels in the industry. He warned me not to trust anyone, that everyone would screw me over, and that I’d be better off doing almost anything else.

It shook me; I’d never worked on an actual film set before, didn’t have anyone in the industry to talk to about it, and didn’t know what to think. Looking back, I see a jaded cynic scaring the shit out of a hopeful kid. Yes, some people who work in the entertainment industry suck. But some people who work in every industry suck. Twenty five years later, I’ve seen my friends succeed in that very same industry that cynic warned me about. I’ve seen them direct and produce, create and write shows, and travel the world, and cheering on their wins has been awesome. I’m proud for them and hopeful that they continue to kick ass and create awesome shit.

See, the flip side of cynicism is optimism, it’s belief, and it’s hope.  It’s being willing to just go make a movie. It’s taking risks and trying to get other people to buy into your idea. It’s looking for the best in every situation and in every person. And when you dream big and think you can, sometimes you do.

Conan O’Brien was a comic and writer who worked and worked and worked, and climbed his way up the comedy ladder to become the host of the Tonight Show in 2009. And then Jay Leno and NBC screwed him out of that job and Jay took it back. O’Brien had a job he’d worked for years to get, and someone took it away. He had every right to be cynical, to be angry, to be pessimistic. But instead, here’s what he said on his last episode of The Tonight Show:

“To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But, if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. As proof, let’s make an amazing thing happen right now.”

Do you hear the hope and the optimism in that quote? That’s what I want you to feel, because that feeling can move you forward, it can help you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Here’s how you avoid becoming a cynic. Find something you love and do well and work really hard at it. It’s easy to be cynical, to doubt yourself and your ambitions, so you have to work hard to overcome that tendency. Believe in yourself and your dreams, and don’t be afraid to fail. And if you fail, get up and try again.

While you’re working really hard and being optimistic, be kind. To yourself, to your friends, to everyone. Because kindness, the quality of being friendly and generous, trying to help other people and considering their feelings? I won’t promise it will destroy all the cynicism in the world, but it will stop it from taking root in your heart.

In Never Delay Gratitude, I wrote about the incredible power of that emotion, and I’ll echo that message here. Feeling cynical? Try gratitude. Feel it for the breath in your lungs, for the sun in the sky, and for the love your mother and I feel for you.

If that doesn’t work, here are ten things I’m grateful for, my own personal recipe for rinsing cynicism out of your mind.

1. Club Sandwiches: Possibly one of the greatest foods ever created. Crispy bacon, chilled sliced ham and turkey, yellow cheddar, crisp lettuce, ripe tomato, mayo on warm toasted bread, all cut into four perfect triangles and held together with toothpicks. Hell yeah.

2. Your Mom: One of the kindest, sweetest, smartest humans I’ve ever met, she’s beautiful and wonderful and somedays I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have her in my life.

3. A cold beer after a hot day kayaking: When it’s 90 degrees and you’ve been paddling hard all day, and you get off the water so thirsty you’d drink the warm river water sloshing around in your boat, there’s nothing like popping an ice-cold American Pale Ale you get to drink out of a can and not your shoe because you didn’t swim today.

4. Sunrises: They’re fucking beautiful, and usually you get to enjoy them without the crowds that show up for sunsets.

5. Having a child: It’s magic. It just is.

6. Sideboob: Speaking of magic, there’s nothing like the rush of catching a glimpse of the side of a woman’s breast through a tank top or evening gown. 

7. Walk-off wins: Your team is losing, it’s the last inning, or the last down, or the shot clock is running out. And with one shot, one swing, or one long run, you somehow pull victory out of your collective asses. It’s the best.

8. Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland: Particularly part 2. In my opinion, one of the most glorious pieces of music ever created.

9. Hugs: Appropriate for reunions, grief, joy, hello, goodbye, and most importantly, love.

10. Dogs: Most days we don’t deserve them; they’re just too good.

I love you,

Dad

Worry is the greatest thief of joy

If there’s one thing I know I’m qualified to give you advice about, it’s worry. I have anxiety and depression, and there were weeks and months where I was the Simone Biles of worry. The greatest. Except that I didn’t have the self-awareness to step back and take a break from it. I ended up almost drowning in self-doubt, not understanding my own mind, and finally, finally checking myself into a hospital because I was so lost. That led me to go back on medicine for the mental illness and to start regular therapy to get my head right. I still do both, and it’s put me in a much better, happier place. And I worry less.

I hope you never experience that depth of worry and anxiety. But even if you don’t have mental illness, worry can steal the joy from your days, the sleep from your nights, and the fun from all the things you love to do. How then, can you get out from under it? How can you not worry when there’s a never-ending list of things to worry about? 

First, you have to find the courage to admit your worries. Then, you have to understand the nature of the thing and find physical ways to cope. And finally, you have to find mental strategies to move past it. 

Why do I say it takes courage to admit your worries? Because worrying can feel like preparation; it can feel like work you’re supposed to do. “While many of us are intuitively aware that worry makes us anxious and upset, research shows that we still tend to lean on worry when facing problems in our lives. One reason for this is that we may worry as a way to feel emotionally prepared for negative outcomes.” says Sandra Llera, PhD, associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts at Towson University. 

Stop and sit with that for a second. People worry about something bad because they want to be prepared for when that bad thing happens. The problem is, not only will your worry not make it any easier to endure the worst case scenario if it actually does happen, it will make all the time you spend worrying about it beforehand suck.

When I still worked at an advertising agency, I kept up with all the trade magazines. Ad Age, Adweek, etc. One day I read an article about all the awesome up-and-coming creative directors at the hot shops around the country. The article claimed that if you hadn’t made Creative Director by 30, you never would, and that you also needed some ridiculous, unicorn-like skill set to get there. These young guns could write code, write copy, design layouts, and shit mocha frappucinos. If this was true, I was good and fucked. Because not only was I already in my late 30’s and still just a  senior copywriter, I couldn’t do anything other than write copy and half-ass my way through some HTML. And so I worried, and worried, and worried some more. I even tried to teach myself to code.

And you know what? I never made Creative Director, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Not only do I not have to write any more headlines about salad, I get to be the director of wiping your butt and making sure you don’t grow up to be an asshole, which is the best job I’ve ever had. All that time I spent worrying about my future in advertising couldn’t have been more wasted if it had been chugging Everclear. 

What about something worse, like not being able to pay your bills, or cancer, or murder hornets? Again, worrying about any of these won’t do anyone any good. Doing something about them will. So, do what you can about the things you can do something about. Realize which things you can’t do anything about. And find something besides worrying to do with your time.

What exactly should you do with your time? I cannot overstate the value of physical activity. 

It can be as easy as taking a walk or as complicated as whitewater kayaking. Simply, physical activity like walking or hiking releases chemicals in your brain and those chemicals make you feel better and worry less. Which is a great start, but an intense activity like whitewater kayaking gives you a little more. When you’re in a boat in whitewater, you simply cannot think about anything else. In the middle of the chaos, the rocks and the moving water, there’s a peace unlike any I’ve felt anywhere else. Maybe it’s because the activity is so consuming you have to focus one hundred percent on what you’re doing. It might be because I can’t worry about murder hornets when I’m worrying about not drowning. Or it might be because kayaking is just so damn fun that it overpowers everything.  

Your happy place doesn’t have to be in a kayak, though. Find something that does that for you, be it yoga, running, basketball, or LARPing. Do that activity with people you trust and like being around and you can leave your worries at the proverbial put-in. (The put-in is where you get into your kayak and get onto the river.)

Meditation is another good tool to deal with worry. Forcing yourself to detach and simply observe the feelings from a distance can give you perspective and help unwind the insidious tendrils of worry wrapped around your amygdala. There are countless apps and books on how to meditate, so I’ll leave that research up to you. But it works, and it helps.

Once you’ve faced up to it, taken some steps to pull yourself out of it, what do you think about to not worry? How do you tell your brain to focus on something else? My therapist recommended Sarah Wilson’s book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety. And there’s a lot in that book to like. In one section, Wilson talks about her path out of neuroticism and says, “You choose. You might not even know why, but you do. You commit. Then you do the work. Oh, yeah. Then you falter. And fuck up. And go back to the beginning.” 

And when it comes to worry, this is dead-center, right between the eyes, fantastic advice. You have to choose another path. You have to realize the futility of worrying and give up the self-destructive security blanket. 

Choose not to waste your time worrying. When you falter, and fuck up, and go back to the beginning, choose again to not waste your time worrying. In A Dish Best Served Never, I quoted Frederick Buechner who said, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”

Being afraid is just another kind of worry, and Beuchner knew that  being afraid would not make the terrible things any easier to endure. They will come and go whether your worry or not. That worry will, however, keep you from enjoying all the beautiful things the world has in store.

Somedays, despite myself, I worry for you. I worry about the effects of climate change on the world you’ll inherit. I worry about the kind of man you’ll grow up to be. I worry about all the hard things you’ll face as you grow.

But then I remind myself not to worry; it does no good. Instead, we do what we can about climate change, we teach you to be kind and generous to others, and we let you face little adversities in the hopes you develop the strength to face the big ones later.

Don’t let worry steal your joy; the world has too many beautiful things in store for you to miss.

I love you,

Dad

A dish best served never

Revenge sounds sexy as hell. When I think about all the times I’ve been wronged, hurt, or cheated, my first instinct is to even the score. To the driver who cut me off, I want to accelerate into their bumper and push them off the road. To the boss who didn’t defend my work to a client, I want to let someone ruin their best idea. To the friends from college who waited until I fell asleep on their sofa and dangled their nuts by my sleeping face, I want to break into their house twenty years later and return the favor. And in each of these situations, my instinct is completely wrong. Every one of these are unhealthy sentiments, and I’m going to tell you why you should leave revenge to the movies.

Confucius said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Good point, Confucius. But also, no shit Confucius was wise. Water is wet and the sky is blue. And while a man digging two graves before he embarks on a journey of revenge would be a great opening for a movie about a flawed character hell-bent on revenge, let’s not cast you in that role.

A lesser known quote about revenge comes from author Martha Wells in her book, Artificial Condition. In this story, a rich and powerful multi-national corporation has stolen the work of and endangered the lives of a small family. This family seeks out the help of a security consultant, who tells them, "Sometimes people do things to you that you can't do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.” 

This is the quote about revenge I prefer. Why? Because it’s not as abstract as digging two graves. And more importantly, sometimes the people or groups who wrong you are bigger and stronger and have more resources at their disposal than you ever will. And in these situations, not only is seeking revenge unwise, getting your revenge can hurt you as much as the person or group you’re hurting. How, for example, can you take revenge on a government that uses eminent domain to seize your land? How do you take revenge on someone who sexually assaulted you or someone you care about? What does revenge look like on a spouse or lover who cheats on you and breaks your heart?

That’s not impossible, you say. You can think of several ways to take revenge on a government, a sexual predator, or an ex. You’ll show them. And maybe you will. There are plenty of lesser wrongs done by people you can actually get back at. Maybe you get your revenge, but at what cost? Your money? Your freedom? Your life? Using my bumper to push another driver off the road could certainly cost me all three. And since I’d bet you like being alive, having money, and being free, here’s a better plan.

When bad things happen to you, find a place between forgiveness and acceptance, and go on with your life.

See, revenge isn’t going to change what already happened. It’s not going to undo the injury you suffered or make it hurt any less. And denying what happened will only leave the wound to fester and rot. Instead, find a way to make peace with it, to accept the past and move on. Learn from it, by all means, and do everything you can to keep it from happening again. But carrying that grudge in your heart will only hurt you. Which is why I also pointed to a spot adjacent to forgiveness, the harder part of moving on.

In my early 20’s, a friend borrowed some money from me, promising to pay it back in a week or two. Months passed and he still hadn’t repaid me, and I needed the cash. He told me he’d send it via Western Union, and that I should go pick it up. I went, but they didn’t have it. (This was back when we mailed checks to pay bills and couldn’t just zap money around the world via our phones.) This happened several times until I gave up on ever being repaid. I also gave up on that friend. And for a long time, I held a grudge. 

Years later, another friend and I were working on a short film and the money borrower wanted to help. He apologized and promised this time would be different. We made amends and I asked him to help pick up some supplies early the next day. He never showed. We scrambled and made due without his help, and I picked up my grudge and carried it on for years. 

“Fuck that guy,” I’d say. “I never want to see him again.” And then one day, fifteen years later, I realized that he didn’t have any idea I was still pissed. He was somewhere living his life, not giving a shit what I thought. Which is how I found the place between acceptance and forgiveness. The only person I was hurting by staying angry was me. So, I stopped being angry. I realized that I had already survived it and I could just go on. Which is what I did.

Failing to repay borrowed money is a small injury compared to some of the others I’ve mentioned, but the advice holds true. Don’t believe me? What about someone who was wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years? After almost three decades in prison, Nelson Mandela didn’t seek revenge on the people who’d imprisoned him, instead he worked toward reconciliation.

Find a way to accept the past, and put down you anger at the person(s) who wronged you. Learn from it and do your best not to let it happen again, but don’t let that anger drive you to do something that will hurt you more than the original injury ever did.

To quote theologian Frederick Buechner, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.” When terrible things do happen, there is nothing more powerful and amazing than being able to survive, to find peace, and to go on. And this is the strength I wish for you, my son.

I love you,

Dad

Other People's Problems

Everybody’s got problems. You, me, and everyone you know. Even mega-famous billionaire and rap mogul Jay-Z has 99. And I’m here to tell you to leave other people’s problems alone. As tempting as it is to swoop in and save someone you love from a situation you’re sure you have the solution to, don’t do it. Take it from a recovering “other people’s problem solver,” you, your friends, and everyone you know will be better off if you leave other people’s problems to the people whose problems they are.

How can I be so heartless? What if other people need your help? Up to a point, I’m not talking about these situations. If your buddy’s car breaks down and he asks you for a ride, by all means, help him out. If he chooses not to get his car fixed and expects you to drive him all over creation, I’d reconsider doing so. But generally, I’d say it’s okay to help people with their problems when they ask for your help.

The other people’s problems you should avoid fixing are the ones they didn’t ask for your help with. 

Why? First, fixing other people’s problems for them generally only provides a temporary solution. Let’s go back to your buddy’s car. You could arrange to have it towed to a service station, get it repaired, and then pick it up and drop it off at his house. Best friend ever, right? Wrong. Not only did you rob him of the chance to navigate the situation and solve the problem himself, but you set the expectation that the next time his car breaks down because he’s not doing the regular maintenance, you’ll get it fixed for him. 

This leads right into the next point; always examine your own motives for solving other people’s problems. Two of the big reasons I find myself fixing problems for others are because it puts me in control, and it feels good to be necessary, to be needed. 

How does it put me in control? It alleviates the discomfort I feel watching another person suffer. Currently, you’re learning to pull your own pants and underwear up after you use the toilet. You can mostly do it yourself, but you don’t quite have the fine motor control to get the back waistband up. 

Every time you get off the toilet, you expect me to pull up your pants, and you whine and grumble about it when I don’t. Sometimes you cry and scream, and this is very awkward in public restrooms. Sometimes you bump your head on the cabinet when you bend down to pull them up, and then you get sad. Since I really don’t like seeing you sad, I could just pull up your pants for you. In half a second, I could eliminate all the discomfort and take control. But if I do that, I’m depriving you of the opportunity to learn how to pull up your own pants. I’d be taking away your chance to practice and to develop the fine motor control you’ll need and use for the rest of your life. So, instead I choose to bribe you. I let you flush the toilet only when you make an honest effort to pull up your pants. And since you really enjoy flushing the toilet, this seems to be working. Sometimes. Hopefully by the time you read this, you’ve mastered this skill.

The need to be needed isn’t really applicable to your underwear example, so here’s another. Albeit one that’s so personally embarrassing that I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it. But, since I hope my mistakes can be your heads up, I’ll carry on. 

I dated a girl once who treated me much like her therapist. We talked for hours about her problems, how much of a dick her ex was, and all the ways the world had done her wrong. And since I was really into this girl, I liked that. It made me feel important, like she needed me. But, when she dumped me, rather than deal with my own feeling of loss and sadness, I fixated on her. Without me to listen to her problems, how would she be okay? I’d convinced myself that she needed me, that without my shoulder to cry on, she’d be lost, heartbroken. So I called one of her friends, told her we’d broken up and asked her to check in on the girl who’d just dumped me. And after typing that, I can’t tell you how much I want to go back in time, slap myself in the face, and tell myself to man up and have some self-respect.

That, however, is not the point. The point is that I liked being needed. Fixing her problems helped me feel necessary. And even after she dumped me, I kept trying to fix her problems, mostly because I was dumb. Don’t be dumb. 

Side note, this is a shit role to play in a relationship. If you are  always pleasing, doting on and doing things for the other person, and that isn’t reciprocated, you are in a bad relationship. Find someone who values you for who you are, not what you can do for them.

Back to not fixing other people’s problems.

I still struggle with this. It pains me to see people I care about suffer, to see them in a situation where the solution seems so obvious. But I’m working on it. My happiness and well-being are my responsibility. Other people’s happiness and well-being is their responsibility. And when I try to solve their problems for them, I’m taking responsibility for something that’s not mine.

Whether it’s a broken down car, a bad job, or a cheating boyfriend, sometimes the best thing you can do for a friend, significant other, or spouse is listen when they complain about their problems, help if you’re asked, but don’t ever just jump in and start fixing shit. While you might have the best intentions, it makes you sound condescending, it robs them of the chance to solve their own problems, and in the worst case scenario, it makes them overly dependent on you in the future. 

Leave other people’s problems for other people.

Now I’m going to go back and read this three or four times to see if I can convince myself to take my own advice. 

I love you,

Dad

Don’t take all the blame, don’t take all the credit.

You’re going to lose some, and you’re going to win some. You may feel like it’s all your fault when you lose and you deserve all the glory when you win, but the whole truth is, that’s only half true. There’s usually plenty of blame and credit to go around in both scenarios. Learning that will make you a better sport, help you succeed more often, and help you deal with failure when it happens.

It’s easy to believe you fail or succeed on your own merits, all the time. In reality, the difference between the two might be something that has nothing to do with you and could be completely out of your control. No matter how hard you try, you’re going to lose when you deserve to win. Aaaaand you’ll sometimes win when you deserve to lose.

How can that be? In almost any situation where you can succeed or fail, at work, in school, in sports, you are mostly in control. Mostly. You control you. You control your effort, your preparation, and your mindset. You control how you react to setbacks, your strategy, and the choices you make. These are big parts of success and failure. 

But. 

You know what you don’t control? Your teammates, your project partners, your competition, the weather, how the ball bounces, how the cookie crumbles, and a whole big ass pile of stuff we’ll call luck. (Good and bad.)

As much as your actions matter, all the things you can’t control also matter. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. And that’s the pitfall of focusing too much on outcomes; sometimes you get what you don’t deserve. When you succeed even though you shouldn’t, you might think you can repeat what you did and succeed again. And when you fail even though you did enough to succeed, you might think you’re not good enough to ever win.

Let’s say you’re on a par three and hit your tee shot into the woods, it bounces off a tree and goes in the hole. That’s a barky hole-in-one, which you should definitely celebrate with a round of drinks. Better lucky than good, right? The smart golfer realizes that their ace was less a result of their golf swing, and more a result of dumb luck. The smarter golfer works to fix whatever in their swing had them hit it into the woods in the first place.

When I was in high school, some classes were hard, and some classes were easy. This led me to believe I was smarter than I am, because I didn’t have to study hard in all my classes to get decent grades. When I got to college, I put in the same level of effort that had earned me A’s and B’s in high school. That earned me C’s, D’s, and after I got a 1.75 my second semester, a reminder from your grandparents that they were only paying for 4 years of college. I was not as smart as I thought I was.

So, how do you avoid that same trap? First, you need to look deeper than just wins and losses, successes and failures. How did you perform? Were you prepared, or did you depend on someone else to save your ass? If you were prepared and did your best, how did the rest of your team show up? How was the competition, and where can you improve? This brings me to the growth mindset.

Carol Dweck is a psychologist at Stanford University. In “How Praise Became a Consolation Prize,” Christine Gross-Loh interviewed her about her theories and how they’ve recently been misunderstood and misapplied. “As a young researcher, Dweck was fascinated by how some children faced challenges and failures with aplomb while others shrunk back. Dweck...eventually identified two core mindsets, or beliefs, about one’s own traits that shape how people approach challenges: “fixed mindset,” the belief that one’s abilities were carved in stone and predetermined at birth, and “growth mindset,” the belief that one’s skills and qualities could be cultivated through effort and perseverance.” 

Personally, I love the idea of maintaining a growth mindset throughout life, and always being open to learning new things or expanding my skills. Problem is, the spread of Dweck’s idea through schools and business circles has led many to praise effort over outcomes, so much so that they’ve created what Dweck dubbed a “false growth mindset,” a misunderstanding of the idea’s core message. 

“Growth mindset’s popularity was leading some educators to believe that it was simpler than it was, that it was only about putting forth effort or that a teacher could foster growth mindset merely by telling kids to try hard. A teacher might applaud a child for making an effort on a science test even if he’d failed it, for instance, believing that doing so would promote growth mindset in that student regardless of the outcome. But such empty praise can exacerbate some of the very problems that growth mindset is intended to counter.”

Her point is that parents who use failure as a learning opportunity can help foster the growth mindset, while parents who react to failures as something negative to be avoided are actually fostering a fixed mindset.

And my point is that you can learn from failure and success. But, the only way to do so is to evaluate your successes with some objectivity. Listen to your coaches, teachers, and bosses when they tell you that they think you can do better. Seek out opportunities to improve, even if you’re only competing against yourself. Give the best you can, all the time. 

Even after all that, you have to realize that sometimes, even when you do your best, it won’t be good enough. As a Creative Director used to say to me, “They can’t all be home runs.” That takes strength and self-assurance to believe; the easier path is to quit. Instead, when you hit a pop-up to right field, leg it out to first and hope the outfielder drops the ball. And if he doesn’t, dust yourself off and try again.

Yes, yes, you say, while nodding your head. If only it were so easy. What I’m telling you sounds hard, and is actually way harder than it sounds. The good news here is that you’ll have your Mom and me to help you along and remind you as you grow.

But someday, you’ll have to remind yourself. So, here’s a quote from Tim Duncan’s mom that he shared at his hall of fame induction speech. “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.”

I love you,

Dad

Never Delay Gratitude

The late Skip Prosser once said, “Never delay gratitude.” Prosser was the Wake Forest men’s basketball coach who died in 2007 from a heart attack. He was 56. Prosser said a lot of quotable things, including (when speaking of 6’11” Kyle Visser’s difficulty finishing under the basket after a game,) “I’ve never been 6’11”, but if I was, I think I would dunk it.” And while his thoughts on gratitude aren’t the funniest or even quippiest thing he ever said, they’ve always stayed with me.

I got to meet Skip a couple times. The first was at a dinner for your  Papa when he filled in for the scheduled speaker, Dave Odom. Prosser had just been hired to replace Odom, and spoke about a man he’d just met (your Papa) in such warm and glowing tones, you’d have thought they’d known each other for years. The second time we met was at a bar in Winston-Salem where he’d taken his assistants out for a drink after practice. I was 24 or so, was out looking for shenanigans, and approached him and asked if I could buy him a shot. He declined, but with such kindness that I was left feeling like he genuinely appreciated my offer.

The first thing that hits me when I read this quote is the strength of the statement. “Never” lands so much harder than “don’t.” Why use such a strong word? For me, that’s the magic of the thought. Never delay because you don’t know when you’ll have another chance to express that gratitude. You might forget about it and leave it unsaid, you might not see the person you meant to thank for a long time, or worst of all, one of you might drop dead from a heart attack in the middle of the day. You never know, and tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us.

I was at work when I heard about Skip’s death, and I remember being absolutely floored. He was so young and it was so sudden. And the immediacy of that “never” in “never delay gratitude” speaks to that. Life is temporary. There’s no warning bell the last time you see someone, and people will enter and exit your orbit without warning. Don’t assume you can thank someone the next time you see them; there might not be a next time.

But why? Why make such a big deal of gratitude and expressing it when appropriate? What even is gratitude? A dictionary would tell you it’s  “the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.” That’s a good start. Robert C. Roberts, a moral psychologist, wrote that “gratitude is not goods delivered in response to payment. It is a response to a gift … Gratitude, as a response to a gift, is also a form of generosity, of graciously crediting the other for something that was not strictly owed.” 

It is an acknowledgment of something received. 

You don’t owe anyone gratitude, which is why the expression of gratitude is so powerful. And until you’re out on your own, your mother and I will encourage you to express it when appropriate by insisting you say “thank you” when you should. It’s good practice, but more importantly, helps you create the mental pathway from receiving something, (owed or not), and feeling gratitude for that.

See, before I sat down to write this, I always interpreted Prosser’s  instruction as an encouragement to express your gratitude without delay. But as I’ve read about and contemplated the nature of gratitude, I see it in another light. And while his instructive implied the expression of gratitude, it could reasonably be interpreted as an instruction to experience gratitude when and wherever appropriate. And that is a gift that keeps on giving; there are a host of neurological benefits that accompany the expression and experience of gratitude, including overall well-being, happiness, and improved physical and mental health. 

Specifically, Melinda Beck wrote in “Thank you, No, Thank you” that “…adults who feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not, according to studies conducted over the past decade. They’re also less likely to be depressed, envious, greedy or alcoholics. They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly and have greater resistance to viral infections.

Now, researchers are finding that gratitude brings similar benefits in children and adolescents. Kids who feel and act grateful tend to be less materialistic, get better grades, set higher goals, complain of fewer headaches and stomach aches and feel more satisfied with their friends, families and schools than those who don't, studies show.”

I’ve come to believe that there’s something more to Coach Prosser’s instruction than I’d previously realized. Once again, I’ve set out to instruct you in the best way to live your life and ended up learning something myself. 

I do have a caveat. Be careful that your expression of gratitude is sincere and more importantly, appropriate. Gratitude can be a lever, used to create a feeling of indebtedness or obligation. “Reciprocation tendency is the automatic tendency for humans to try to reciprocate in kind what others have done for us.” That’s not to say I think you’ll be going around abusively expressing your gratitude, breaking into people’s houses and leaving them presents like an evil Santa Claus. Rather, it can be easy to overwhelm someone with an abundance of gratitude.

And that’s the insight I’m going to sprinkle onto this mixture of memories and psychology. When you express your gratitude, do it appropriately. And when I say “appropriately,” I’m not talking about not including dick pics with a thank you text or swearing in your thank you notes. I’m talking about matching your gratitude to what you actually received. 

If someone buys you a beer, paying their rent for the month is inappropriate. Getting them a beer when you get the next round is totally fine. And if you do go over the top in your expression of gratitude, don’t be surprised if the recipient doesn’t know how to react. 

Gratitude has more power than I realized, both as an experienced emotion and an expressed sentiment. And knowing that makes Coach Prosser’s thought even more powerful. Whether you’re thanking someone for a gift received or appreciating some aspect of your life, “Never delay gratitude.”

I love you and am grateful you are my son,

Dad

Keep your friends close

This is about friends. Making them, keeping them, and losing them. I’ve done all three, and so will you. But before you get too far down the river of life, I want to teach you how to hang onto the friends you should keep; it won’t happen on its own.

Somewhere in your twenties, you’ll have the most friends you’re ever going to have. Maybe just out of college and working a new job, or maybe your number of friends will peak in school, when you’re surrounded by people your age with tons of time to socialize. Either way, as you age, have kids, focus on your career, and life generally gets in the way of social activities, that number will drop. You might be sad about it;  that’s okay, but there’s not much you can do to stop it.

The flow of life will take you and your friends in different directions; it pulls connections apart, it creates new ones, and the best you can do is make the most of the time you have with the people you love.

That’s not to say losing your best friends is inevitable. To some extent, you get to choose which friendships to hang onto. (It’s hard without reciprocal effort.) But, just like your mother needs back rubs and cookie dough to survive, your friendships need attention. 

What that attention looks like is up to you. Different friends like different things, sometimes it’s a night out for drinks, sometimes it’s a round of golf, sometimes it’s just sharing some stupid meme about koala farts. You’ll figure out what works for who. But, while you can pick up right where you left off with some friends after months or even years, even those relationships will wither without attention.

Your Mom and I didn’t get married until I was in my late 30’s, and by that point, many of my close friends had been married (and had kids) for years. Some had even been married, divorced, and married again. I learned that as my friends and I changed life stages, it became harder to stay connected. This can be hard to understand while it’s happening, and can even feel like your friends are pulling away from you, which is why I’m explaining it to you. 

When you’re single, you mostly hang out with your single friends. You stay out late, you go to bars to meet people, you enjoy life with minimal responsibility. Eventually, you do meet people, start relationships, and want hang out with other people in relationships. It’s not that you don’t care about your single friends anymore, but you and your partner want to do schmoopy things like go on dates, snuggle, and wrestle naked. These aren’t things you’ll want your single friends around for. 

If you’re still single, you’ll get annoyed with your friends who are dating and don’t want to stay out until the bars close trying to meet people to date. I eventually figured out that this isn’t personal, it’s just life taking people in different directions.  

Dating couples and married people mix well, but it becomes a challenge to find couples that you and your partner want to spend time with. It seems that most of the time, one of you is taking one for the team. Inevitably, your buddy will marry someone your spouse can’t stand, or vice versa. Every so often, your friend’s spouse will get along with your spouse like peas and carrots. And when you find a couple like this that both you and your partner like spending time with (and they reciprocate), treat that relationship like the fucking magical unicorn it is. Finding those friends is way harder than it sounds. 

An aside about making new friends after 30: It’s hard. It’s really hard. Mostly because up until that point, you made friends by osmosis. After 30, it requires intention, planning, and logistics. It is, however, worth the trouble. Be open and willing to make new friends.

Children is the next phase. If you do have kids, you’ll find yourself wanting to socialize with other people that have kid(s) who can play with your kid(s). Since you’re only 3 and we spent all of 2020 socializing with our dog and our sofa (COVID), my experience here is pretty thin. I do know that we want you to have friends and enjoy socializing, so as we make plans, we try to find people who have children you can play with. As if it weren’t hard enough to find couples your Mom and I both like, now we’re looking for couples we both like who have kids you get along with. This, like making friends after 30, take effort.

That is not to say we don’t care about our single friends or friends who don’t have kids. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s more that they (and we) find ourselves pulled in opposite directions by the flow of life, and staying in touch and seeing each other means one or both of us has to paddle upstream for a bit. That effort is worth every drop of sweat and every bit of intention it requires.

That’s because when your mother and I have needed the love and support of our friends, it’s not just the ones in similar life stages that have been there for us. That’s not the way friendship works. The same has held true for our friends; we’re not just there for the married friends with one child close to your age. True friends will support you when it’s not convenient, and you’d do well to do the same.

But friendships take effort to maintain, and when left unattended, they wither and fade. My advice to you is this: Hold on to the friends you care about. Match the efforts of friends willing to work to stay connected. Forgive those friends whose lives drift away from yours and enjoy their company if life brings you together again. 

Last, never take your friends for granted. Call them to get a drink, go see a ballgame, or at the very least, send them the best koala farts meme you can find.

I love you,

Dad

An Ode to F-Bombs

Since I titled this project “Important shit I can’t teach my son yet,” it’s time we talked about shit. Not the smelly kind, but the word itself and all it’s 4-letter friends. While I’ve touched on this topic by virtue of a sprinkling of f-bombs, we haven’t explicitly discussed profanity. If you guessed I’m for it, you are correct. But as with most things, in fucking moderation. 

When used correctly, profanity is the hot sauce on your barbecue, adding the zing to any sentence. Hell yeah, right? But just like hot sauce, too much overpowers everything else and makes your ass burn the next day. Fuck that. To help you figure out how much hot sauce you like on your English language, here’s how I think about profanity, when you should use it, and when you shouldn’t.

Some people don’t swear, ever. Drop something on their foot and you might get a “dadgumit!” or even just a sad, pained look. Some people swear occasionally, but feel guilty about it. Drop something on their foot and you get a “shit!” followed by an apology. These two groups of people might tell you that profanity is “low-class,” makes you sound uneducated, or is even morally wrong. Hell, they might just not like it. Whatever their reasons, that’s okay for them. I’m not mad at them, but I think they’re missing out. It’s hard to beat the cathartic satisfaction and undeniable punch of a well-placed “fuck.”

There’s a third group that swears like a pirate with hemorrhoids on a bumpy ocean, all “fuck this” and “fuckety fuck that,” and “Arrrgh ye going to pass the fucking potatoes?” This level of profanity can be a bit much. Not because I find it offensive, but because when overused, profanity loses its punch. More on that in a bit.

Since I’m pretty sure you’re not a pirate, if you’re going to swear, you need to realize that just like every other word, profane words have meaning and power. As you choose when and how to use these words, you should know their meaning and more importantly, respect their power. “I had a bad day” doesn’t land like “I had a shitty day.” And “I had a shitty day” has nothing on “Fuck my day, it was a pile of dogshit.” As you ratchet up the profanity, you’re also making your day sound worse and worse, right?

Now, imagine you’ve got a pastor friend who never swears. Or at the least, hardly ever. The two of you meet at a bar after work one day and you ask, “how was your day?” Your pastor friend says, “shit,” and takes a long pull off their beer. See how that landed? 

In contrast, imagine getting a beer with your friend the pirate, who swears all the time. His day could have been a “Clusterfuck of monumental fuckery bathed in barracuda shit and slathered in octopus tits and whale cocks,” and that might just be another Tuesday on the high seas.

Overusing profanity reduces its impact.

Swearing effectively and for maximum impact is a choice. And as someone who once chose words and rearranged them to sell things for a living, I’m telling you that choosing the right words is the difference between being ignored and being understood.

You don’t always get to choose, though. There will be places and times where profanity is so inappropriate, you just can’t use it. The next ten years of your life will mostly be one of these places. Children who use profanity generally get in trouble, and rightly so. You’re not ready. Consider profanity like chainsaws, coffee, and motor vehicles; there’s more power and risk than a three-year-old can manage. Someday you’ll be dropping f-bombs with the best of them, just not yet. 

As for other places where you shouldn’t swear, part of choosing when to use profanity is knowing your audience. What offends one person won’t make another person blink, so you need to learn to read the room; Pirates expect you to swear. The ladies at an afternoon tea party might shoot Earl Grey out their noses if you so much as think about it. 

Understanding other people’s expectations and preferences is part of being a good communicator. And I’m not saying you can’t make the tea party blush or disappoint the pirates. I am saying that you should be cognizant of how your audience will receive and interpret the words you use, and adjust accordingly for effect.

Side note. Watch George Carlin’s “7 dirty words,” circa 1972. Look it up and watch it. He included the bit in several comedy specials, so you should be able to find it on the internet without too much trouble, even in fifteen years or so. It’s worth seeking out for his insights on these types of words.

Back to my take. Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “words are deeds.” The words you choose are just another example of the way you carry yourself through the world. Just as the deeds you do reflect on who you are, so do the words you use. Let the words you choose match the story you want to tell about yourself and the ideas you want to communicate. If that story necessitates profanity, then choose those words. If it doesn’t, then maybe choose others.

But remember, words can hurt worse than a kick in the nuts and leave behind a scar that aches for years. Powerful words especially so, and four-letter words are weighty, powerful, and pack a punch. So before you tell someone to “go fuck yourself,” take a deep breath and think about how that’s going to land. Think about how that’s going to echo in their ears. Think about how the target of your profanity is going to feel.

And once again, this is where your Dad comes up short. I swear, I lose my temper, and sometimes, I lose my temper and swear. I sometimes use profanity because it’s quick to the tongue and I don’t want to take the time to think of a different word. And I’ve been known to tease a cheap laugh out of the most profane words I can think of. 

These are not the things I want you to emulate, and so yet again, after writing one of these missives, I’m left feeling like I need to do better. So, I can promise you this: you’ll probably pick up a few four-letter words from your old man, but they won’t be shouted out a window at another driver, and I’ll never shout them at you. At least not until you’re a grown-ass man, at which point you should be able to shout right back. 

I love you,

Dad

What it Feels Like to be a Father

I hope you get the chance to be a father; I’m only three years in but so far, I’m for it. Two thumbs up, would recommend. That said, fatherhood is not for everybody. So, if you’re thinking about it someday and wondering if it’s for you, here’s what it’s like, based on my limited experience. My limited experience; I’m sure other Dads see it differently.

First, big duh, but fathering a baby is not the same as being a father.  If it was, I wouldn’t qualify. See, we didn’t take the traditional road to starting a family because we couldn’t. We tried, but my testicles are like my earlobes, they don’t make sperm. So, we used IVF and a sperm donor. (None of this will be news to you, but you’re not the only one who reads these.) So for me, fatherhood is less about making babies and more about changing diapers.

Second, my experience of fatherhood may be different from yours, and that’s okay. We are fortunate enough that I could stay at home with you while your Mom worked full-time. Some Dads work full-time, some split duties, and some have another family in the next town over. The first two in that list are okay. And whatever you decide about your family, I hope you can learn from my experience.

The first thing I noticed was a feeling of responsibility I didn’t expect, long before I expected it. Your Mom was a few months pregnant, and I was paddling the Cheoah river with some friends. The water level was high, the rapids were munchy, and I swam early in the day. (That’s when you flip over in your kayak, can’t roll up, so you pop your skirt and swim out of your boat. Not recommended, but better than the alternative.) 

As the day went on, the river funneled down and the rapids got bigger, we came to a spot where we could get out. For the first time in a long time, I decided that I should do just that. See, I was used to being in those situations where bad things could happen, but I had mostly worried about my own safety. (As much as I’d miss her, I have zero doubt in your Mom’s ability to take care of herself.) But now, there was someone else to think about. And the thought of not meeting you, not being there for you, and not seeing you grow up was heavier than anything I’d ever felt. Being a father changes your priorities, sometimes in ways you don’t expect. Be prepared for that.

Not all the feelings that come with fatherhood are heavy. Watching you experience the world, figure out how things work, and bang things together makes me so happy that sometimes I think my chest might burst. The familiar is suddenly new again, and introducing you to things I love is more fun than I ever had doing them alone. Whether it’s riding bikes, eating ice cream, or splashing in the ocean, seeing you discover the world makes me so happy I could just shit. It also makes me look forward to all the things we will do together someday, both with your Mom as a family, and just the two of us. That anticipation is better than than Christmas Eve as a five-year-old.

Being a Dad also means being a role model for you, of course, right?  It’s not all “here’s how you tie a tie” and “a real man can change his own oil.” It’s also digging into my own shortcomings and bullshit, because I do fall short and I’m not above some occasional bullshit. Some of these entries here have been significantly harder to write than I thought they would be, mostly because I end up asking myself why I’m teaching you the things I’m teaching and sometimes, I don’t like the answer. That means re-thinking stuff that I take for granted. It means unpacking why I think something is the right thing to do, and considering whether it’s still right. And sometimes, it means changing my own beliefs about things, which isn’t as easy as just flipping a switch. 

That’s the cerebral part of being a good role model, the internal. The other part is the actual modeling of behavior, the external stuff. And I’ve been surprised how much I’ve felt the need to change; both by subtraction and addition. It’s realizing that when you’re in the car, I shouldn’t give other drivers the finger and shout things out the window, even if they do drive like fucking douchebags. It’s also realizing that maybe I shouldn’t have been doing that all along. It’s digging down to find patience that I’ve never had, and then digging deeper to be more patient with you than I’ve ever been. And sometimes it means going outside to yell at the trees when I’ve got no patience left. 

Because I’ve realized that nothing gets by you; that Umberto Eco was dead on when he said, “What we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” 

I want those scraps of wisdom to help you be the best man you can be, and that inspires me to try to be a better man than I am. Because the most surprising part of fatherhood has been realizing that I’m not the most important person in my life anymore. As much as I still have hopes and dreams for myself and my life, my hopes and dreams for you and your life take precedence. That isn’t to say I expect you to succeed where I failed, or that I have any intention of pushing you to re-live my childhood. 

What I want is for you to find your own passions, and to have the chance to explore them. I want you to learn all my skills and strengths and none of my shortcomings. I want you to have the resilience and grit to face life’s challenges head on, knowing your Mom and I will be right there beside you. I want to be the best father I can, so you grow up to be the best man you can. If someday you decide to have kids of your own, I hope to be the role model to you that my Dad was for me, and that most importantly, you know just how much I love you.

I do buddy. I really love you,

Dad

What will people think?

Who cares what other people think?

All of us, pretty much. And when it comes to social norms and maintaining a civilized society, that’s mostly a good thing. When it comes to questions like, “should I put on pants today?” or “should I poop here?” I encourage you to definitely care what other people think.

I also hope you learn when not to care about what people think. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Mark Manson points out the importance of when and why we give our fucks. 

When we’re young, we have tons of energy. Everything is new and exciting. And everything seems to matter so much. Therefore, we give tons of fucks. We give a fuck about everything and everyone—about what people are saying about us, about whether that cute boy/girl called us back or not, about whether our socks match or not or what color our birthday balloon is.

As we get older, we gain experience and begin to notice that most of these things have little lasting impact on our lives. Those people’s opinions we cared about so much before have long been removed from our lives. We’ve found the love we need and so those embarrassing romantic rejections cease to mean much anymore. We realize how little people pay attention to the superficial details about us and we focus on doing things more for ourselves rather than for others.

The book is worth reading, not only for the masterful way Manson uses  the many forms of “fuck,” but also for the insight on when and where to give your fucks, and more importantly, when to give no fucks at all. But this isn’t a book report or a summary, so while Manson offers some great guidance, I’m not going to duplicate it here.

Instead, I’m going to focus on when you should and shouldn’t care what other people think, how I learned this, and which people’s opinions I’d advise you to care about. 

First, you should definitely care what some people think about some things. But also, (and more importantly), you should definitely not care about what most people think about anything. 

This is hard; the first group (whose opinions you should care about) is very small. The second group (whose opinions you should not care about) is very large. If you’re not careful, the opinions you should ignore will drown out the ones you should value. 

How do you know the difference?

Let’s work backwards from caring what someone thinks. When you do that, when you value someone’s opinion, you give that person (or group of people) the ability to influence your thoughts, your actions, and your future. That might sound melodramatic, but these little influences and opinions can echo on for years. Don’t take that lightly, because the long-term effect can be very bad or very good for you, depending on the opinion.

For example, if a teacher said you didn’t have the aptitudes and intelligence to be a doctor, that could influence your college choice, your career, and the rest of your life. Flip that and imagine a teacher telling you that if you just work a little harder, you could get into any school in the country. A teacher once told your grandmother (DD) that your Mom would struggle to be a C-student because she didn’t perform in testing (she was 5) for accelerated classes. Thankfully, DD and your Grandfather ignored this teacher. See, your Mom thought this teacher was mean and decided not to answer her questions. She also went on to finish Mizzou summa cum laude. C-student, my ass.

If a football coach told you that you had NFL potential and tools, you might spend your weekends practicing while giving up on other sports and activities. And if that same coach said you were too small to play competitive football, you might never try out. When I decided to walk on to the Wake Forest football team, several of my coaches suggested I reconsider. A week after practice started, I realized they were right. I had no business on that field, and so I ended my football career. Sometimes your doubters have a point.

If a friend says a girl you like is out of your league, you might be afraid to talk to her. If that same friend says you should go for it, you might ask her out. In the second scenario, you might fall in love, where the first might leave you doubting yourself for years.

That’s how significant caring what other people think can be, and why it’s important to pick and choose which people you listen to. So, before you care about someone’s opinion, consider the person having the opinion. Before you ever consider what they’re saying, think about who is saying it. 

Do they know what they’re talking about? Do they even know their ass from a hole in the ground? Are they experienced and knowledgable, or are they basing their opinion on that one time they heard something from a guy they met at the gas station? It’s not always immediately obvious.

Also important, how did you find out what they think? If you asked them, that says you already value their opinion, and you might consider it. On the flip side, don’t be overly influenced because someone is outspoken. Being outspoken and opinionated does not make you right; some of the most outspoken and most opinionated people are the most full of shit. Be skeptical, value real expertise and knowledge. 

Sidebar: Beware the “knowers.” (Credit to Bruce Eyre for sharing this term with your Mom) There’s a whole group of people out there who seem to know everything about EVERYTHING. You’ll know them when you meet them;  they never shut up about all the things they know. What they lack in knowledge, they make up for in certainty. This is a terrible combination and usually leads to copious bullshittery. 

After you’ve split the knowers from the people who actually know things, consider your connection and relationship to the person in question. Do you know them, or are they just someone you bumped into on the sidewalk? Do you trust them, and should you? Do they have your best interests at heart? Would they tell you the truth, even if it was hard for you to hear? More importantly, would they tell you the truth, even if it was inconvenient for them to say? 

Seek out opinions and advice from people you trust and respect, and value their education and experience. You won’t always agree with what them, but they probably know what they’re talking about, so at least consider what they think.

Your Mom and I will work to stay in this category, and so will your grandparents, aunts and uncles. When you find friends like this, hang onto them; they are rare and valuable. Beyond those people, you have to use some critical thinking to decide which opinions to consider and which ones to discard. Example? Sometimes, someone you don’t know might have an insight you’ve never considered. They could also be full of shit.

You get to decide who to listen to, when, and why, so choose carefully who you let into your head. While one person’s opinion can motivate and encourage your long-term success, some jackass could end up running laps in your dome for years.

Learn the difference and don’t pick up a weight you shouldn’t carry.

I love you,

Dad

Talent Means Nothing

I hope you learn to be kind and honest. Of all the qualities I want for you, those come first. After that, I hope more than anything else, you are persistent. More than intelligence, talent, or strength, I hope you learn the value of persistence, especially in the face of self-doubt, failure, and rejection. Why? Because not only does persistence matter more than talent (I’ll let Calvin Coolidge tell you why), you decide how persistent you are. More on that later, and here’s Calvin:

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On!’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

President Calvin Coolidge

“Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.” Why? Talent is inherent. Given to you at birth. Defined as “natural aptitude or skill,” it’s like getting a leg up on everyone else less talented than you. You don’t have to do anything to get it, and according to President Coolidge, a lot of people didn’t do anything once they have it. (He’s right, by the way.) This sounds sad, like starting a race at the halfway point but not bothering to finish. “What a waste,” you might say.

Don’t cry over wasted talent. As much as I hope you make the most of the ones you were born with, I think talent is overrated. Why? Look at all the unsuccessful men with talent, the unrewarded geniuses, the educated derelicts. If they all had talent, what were they missing? They started the race at the halfway mark, what did they lack, and why didn’t they win?

They lacked persistence. Or, as Angela Duckworth calls it in her aptly named book, Grit.

Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals.

Grit isn’t talent. Grit isn’t luck. Grit isn’t how intensely, for the moment, you want something. Instead, grit is about having...a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even when you fall down. Even when you screw up. Even when progress toward that goal is halting or slow.

Talent and luck matter to success. But talent and luck are no guarantee of grit. And in the very long run, I think grit may matter as least as much, if not more.

Angela Duckworth, Grit

Let that sink in. How hard you’re willing to work for something matters as much, if not more than your natural-born ability. Which is great. Because you can’t control luck. You can’t control how much talent you do or don’t have. You can abso-fucking-lutely control how gritty you are and how hard you work for something. 

And I dropped an f-bomb in the middle of that word because I want to hammer that point home. So much that I’m going to reiterate it. You control how gritty you are, and how hard you work for something. And talent has nothing to do with that.

I can think of two guys I played football with in high school who had freakish physical talents. They both earned college scholarships but lost them because they didn’t do the work to stay academically eligible, or because they couldn’t stay out of trouble.  

I mentored a man in jail in Nashville who played basketball and had all the physical gifts one could want in a ballplayer; he was 6’9”, strong, and from the other men I talked to, could play. Very physically talented. But he was wasting these physical talents while he sat in jail.

I had a friend with incredible mental talents who was creative, intelligent, and naturally persuasive. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t willing to do the work to succeed.

They all had talent, but all lacked grit. In her TED Talk about Grit, Duckworth talks about the difference. “Talent doesn’t make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated, or inversely related to measures of talent.”

And whether you call it grit like Duckworth, persistence like Coolidge, or hustle like your Papa, I hope you value it and wear it like a badge of honor. Because grit will to take you further than talent and luck ever will. It won’t guarantee success, but there are no guarantees in life. 

Your Papa (my Dad) was the CEO of Baptist Hospital for 19 years. I asked him one time what his secret was, how he’d done so well. He said, “I knew I wouldn’t always be smarter than the other guy, but I knew I could out-work anyone. And so that’s what I did.” That’s leaning on grit over natural ability; he was smarter than a lot of “the other guys,” but is too modest to tell you that. Rather than depend on his natural talents, he chose hard work, persistence, and found a job he cared deeply about. And that was how he found success.

If you’re with me so far, (and I hope you are), here’s the best side  benefit to grit being more important than talent. You get to choose what inspires your grit. You get to choose. It’s on you to find something you care about and let it inspire you. 

And look, at certain level of achievement, everyone has talent. Being really, really good is just the bare minimum. Every kid on the stage at the national spelling bee is smart and every NBA player is physically gifted. They decided how much persistence and grit they were going to have, and they went out and did it. And that was how they succeeded.

I’ve found the same to be true. I started writing and submitting short science fiction in April of 2013. It took me 154 submissions before I made my first sale to The Colored Lens, in July of 2015, and it took 203 submissions before I made my first professional-rate sale to AE in May of 2018. That’s almost 5 years of submitting before I reached my goal.

Smart means nothing. Talent means nothing. Grit and persistence mean everything, and how much of those you have is not only up to you, it will determine how fast and far you go. 

Press on!

I love you,

Dad

Cancelling your Favorite Sh*t

Inevitably, someone who created something you love will disappoint you. It might be an author who wrote your favorite book, but then publicly expresses cultural or political views that you find abhorrent. Maybe your favorite player on your favorite team will punch a stranger in a bar, or his girlfriend in the face. Maybe your favorite musician will allegedly imprison and have sex with several minors. Or maybe, your favorite celebrity will say something racist, or take their dick out, or be really shitty to a bunch of people. And suddenly, you might feel the need to re-evaluate your feelings about this person, your fandom, the thing they created, and its role in your life. 

I’ve been in these spots before, and I’m going to work through what I’d tell you to do here. 

But.

I don’t have easy answers for these scenarios. Wish I did, but definitely don’t. I’ve wrestled with these ideas before in When your Heroes have Halitosis as it relates to people, but not their creations and how they fit into our lives. I do know this much: I won’t tell you to cancel everyone who falls down, but I’m also not going to tell you to make “Remix to Ignition” your ring tone. There’s a middle ground here that requires introspection, demands accountability, and feels much more fair than the extremes. It’s just not cut and dry, or easy.

These discussions are easier when you’re talking theoretical instead of specifics; the specifics are tied into your nostalgia, emotions, and your memories. I give zero shits about a theoretical song I loved, but I remember staying up to watch the “Thriller” music video on MTV. (Yes, they used to play music videos) I can picture the first time I heard Robert Earle Keen’s “The Road Goes on Forever” in the parking lot of the Richmond Raceway after a NASCAR race in my 20’s. And your Mom and I danced to Etta James singing “Sunday Kind of Love” at our wedding. Each of those creations has a special place in my memory.

I shouldn’t have to tell you what Michael Jackson (allegedly) did. Robert Earl Keen? A friend of mine once played with Keen and told me he was a dick to the people that worked around him. That’s it. But it complicated my warm nostalgia about a few of his songs. I suggested you Try Not to be a Dick, and I’m not generally a fan of people who are. Am I then allowed to overlook this alleged dickishness by Keen just because I like his songs? 

That’s a small offense, so what about R. Kelly songs? Can I still dance to those? He was accused of imprisoning, raping, and sex trafficking children. That’s way the hell worse than being a dick to the opening band. And Etta James? She struggled with heroin addiction for years. Should that color my memories of my first dance with your Mom?

We’ll come back to these questions, but the same thing happens with books, movies, art, sports, anything created by a human. I loved Orson Scott Card’s novels as a teen, but I think gay people should be allowed to marry. Card has been outspokenly against equality for LGBTQ people. The Cosby Show and Cosby’s stand-up were a part of my childhood, but Bill Cosby is in jail for drugging and raping multiple women, and may have raped as many as 60. None of my sports heroes have turned out to be awful, but some of the all-time greats have murdered, sexually assaulted, or cheated their way through life. That’s OJ for murder, Ben Rothelisberger and Lawrence Taylor for sexual assault, and Lance Armstrong and Curt Schilling for cheating. 

How then should we feel about and remember these people and what they created? Does not playing their songs, reading their books, watching their movies amount to cancelling them? Is that fair and right, given their actions? And what about our memories, our feelings about them, and where their creations fit in our lives? I can skip a song and not watch a movie, but should I stop cheering for my favorite team if their new star has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault? If revelations about a creator’s actions come out years after the fact, should I be expected to forget the cherished memories attached to a specific song, book, or piece of art?

As if these questions aren’t hard enough, I’ll add another layer. Robert Earl Keen made sure to keep his band employed and paid through the Covid-19 pandemic when other artists couldn’t or didn’t do the same thing. Bill Cosby donated tens of millions of dollars to and helped thousands of black children attend college. And Lance Armstrong raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research through his foundation. How do those contributions to society weigh against their transgressions? Because there can be good sprinkled in with the bad, like diamonds in a pile of shit.

Here’s how I think about it. These people aren’t my friends. However, their creations are a part of my life, much in the way that my friends are a part of my life. It is an inclusion by choice, and that choice is mine. As you age, you’ll learn that it takes effort to stay friends. Friendships that you don’t maintain will wither, fade, and eventually become memories. Fandom and love for music, art, movies, and books is similar.

Would you still invite your friend over for dinner if he stole your neighbor’s TV? Would you go to the beach with a friend who murdered his wife? Would you play poker with a friend who cheated at cards? What about lesser crimes, would you hang out with a friend who was super racist, or stole crab legs from a grocery store, or was always a dick to the waiter? But what if those same friends had been there for you when you really needed it, or had been close to you for a long time? Those are all your decisions, as are the decisions to keep, discard, or simply put away the creations of all these people.

Problem is, when it comes to artistic and cultural creations, you’ll have to make these decisions with incomplete information. You won’t really know most of these people, and unless it ends up in court and you have lots of free time, you probably won’t know all the details of what they allegedly did. 

It’s complicated, just like every person you meet every day. Some of these creations are so entwined with other memories and emotions that it’s impossible to just delete them from your life. They end up bittersweet, somehow tainted in retrospective. And in some cases, they may have inspired you to do or create things you’d never willingly let go of. Louis C.K. used to be my favorite stand-up, and definitely contributed to me wanting to get up on stage. His choice to expose himself to and masturbate in front of women doesn’t make me love comedy any less, but it did make me love his comedy a little less. And yes, he apologized. But I’m still lukewarm on him, and his art. 

You too will have to make these decisions on a case by case basis, depending on what each creation means to you and just how much the person who created them disappointed you. 

Just like I’ve said before, I think you as a fan deserve some accountability. It’s fair to expect it from an artist you’ve supported, but you must also be be fair when they attempt to make amends. Just like you’d accept an apology (within reason) from a long-time friend, you should accept an apology (within reason) from an artist who’s given you years of their creations. However, sometimes an apology isn’t good enough (or even offered), and you’re left deciding what to do. Which is where I am with Louis C.K.

That’s not easy. It may mean giving up something you love. Me, I can’t compartmentalize the creation from the creator, and just like I love to support people I see making the world better, I’m less enthusiastic about supporting people who are making it worse. It gets blurry in the middle, and I have to think about supporting people who are doing both. Which incidentally, is most people. But those are my decisions, and you’ll have to make your own. 

Just remember that humans make mistakes, and to be kind. And for the record, I skip R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, still adore Etta James, listen to Robert Earl Keen but with less frequency, and gave up reading anything by Card. 

I love you,

Dad

What to do at a Fork in the Road

You’re going to make lots of decisions in your life. Hard ones, easy ones, impossible ones, and ones that aren’t really decisions at all. Sometimes, you’ll make a good decision. Sometimes, you’ll make a bad decision. This entry is not about how to make better decisions or how to avoid bad decisions. No, this one’s about the importance of actually making decisions. Or, in the words of Yogi Berra:

“When you get to a fork in the road, take it.”

I applied to three graduate film school programs while I was a senior in college and got into none of them. So, I got a job at Capital One in Richmond, VA, bought some khakis, and went to work. Hated it. Not for me. And after a year of working there, I re-applied to eight or nine schools and got into The University of Miami. Meanwhile, I fell in love. And suddenly, I didn’t want to leave Richmond. What did I do? I made a series of very bad decisions that culminated in one very good decision. 

The first bad decision was thinking I had a decision to make. The girl I’d fallen in love with had just broken up with me, but I was convinced that I could rearrange my life and plans and somehow make her take me back and make it work. I was very, very wrong, and in hindsight, that was a shit decision. Really, in any sight, that was a shit decision.

Now, at this point I’d tell you there’s a great lesson that my boss, Chris, tried to share with me, “Don’t make big life decisions for a girl you’re not married to.” Problem is, your Mom and I decided to move to Nashville together before we were engaged, and most certainly before we were married. And while it seems those two are in conflict, here’s the difference. Your Mom and I made those plans together, and while we hadn’t tied the knot yet, we were both in our 30’s and experienced enough to know what we were doing. So, let me rephrase his advice. “Don’t make big life decisions for a person you’re not married to unless the conditions are right and they’re on board with your decision.” The girl that I tried to change my grad school plans for was definitely not on board. I was just too stubborn to listen.

Back to my school decisions. I withdrew my application to the University of Miami, but still hated my job. What now? I applied to and got into a Masters program at VCU (located in Richmond) for creative writing. The girl in question had not changed her mind, but I would still be in town so I felt like my plan to win her back was moving along.

This is when I started having anxiety attacks. At work, I couldn’t sit still and actually work. At home, I couldn’t relax. It’s hard to explain how miserable I was, but it felt like drowning in a pit of bad decisions where I could only see bad outcomes. Every choice was the wrong one, but I couldn’t see clear to actually make one and stick with it. I spent hours on the phone with people I trusted, asking them if I was doing the right thing. Looking back, this was my chronic depression and anxiety rearing its head for the first time. But I was also about to make a big mistake, and I think on some level, I knew it.

Before my change of heart and withdrawal from Miami, I bought a non-refundable plane ticket to go visit Miami and find a place to live. Since I couldn’t get my money back, I decided to go visit friends down there instead. That might have been one of the hardest flights I’ve ever taken; as soon as we backed away from the jetway, the weight of all my choices buried me. I was certain I’d made a terrible mistake, and I felt just how much I wanted to go to film school. 

Before I tell you how it ends, let’s go back to Yogi Berra. “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.” One night while I agonized over the phone to my Dad about this decision, that was exactly what he said to me.  

See, the misery lies in the deciding. Once you make your decision and set out on your way, you’re free to focus your energy forward instead of  worrying about which path to take. I had made a decision, unmade that decision, made a different decision, and was about to unmake that decision so I could go back to my initial decision. Why did I feel like I was drowning? Because I was. I kept diving back into the rushing current of indecision instead of choosing a bank of the river, getting out, and getting on with the shit I needed to do.

I made some calls when I landed and managed to get myself re-admitted to film school. Your Nana and Papa were incredibly supportive and helped me move, find a place to live, and get where I needed to be. And that girl I thought I was in love with? We dated long-distance for a while but eventually broke it off. These were the choices I should have made the first time, and thankfully they were the choices I eventually made. In some ways, these choices made themselves.

Now, just imagine how much suffering I could have saved myself had I made my choice, looked forward to the life I had before me, and stuck with it. That’s my advice. Hold tight to the courage of your convictions. Your first choice is often the right one. Gather the information you can, consider your options, and make a decision. And then, see those decisions through.

I love you,

Dad

On Wedding Cake and Late Night Snacks

I’ve been to lots of weddings, and I was even in one with your Mom.  Which means I’m qualified to give advice about weddings. At least, as qualified as I am to give advice about anything. So, I’m going to share some thoughts about why they matter, why you should go to other people’s weddings, and what to think about when you eventually have your own. Think of this as your guide for how to have fun at a wedding, how not to ruin someone else’s, and how to actually enjoy yours.

At my friend Dan’s wedding he told me, “there’s only two times in your life when everyone you love comes to see you, but you only get to enjoy one of them.” And that’s why it’s worth making the effort to go to  weddings. Yes, they can be expensive to attend and are sometimes inconvenient. Still, it’s important to show up for the people you love. And usually, weddings are fun.

Go, have a blast, and celebrate with your friends. That should be easy advice to follow. Most weddings are great. Unfortunately, some weddings aren’t. When you realize you’re at of those weddings, just bite your tongue and have another beer. If it’s a dry wedding, bite harder and have some tea. Or stick a flask in your suit pocket before you go. Someone else’s wedding day isn’t about what you want or what you think. It’s about the couple walking down the aisle, and you’re there to celebrate them and enjoy what they picked out. 

Keep that in mind, and don’t hate too hard on someone else’s choices. Don’t like the music? Dance anyway. Don’t like the food? Hit a drive through on the way home. Don’t like the bride? It’s definitely too late to say anything. Go, smile, and have as much fun as you can. Because whatever wedding choices the bride and groom made, they chose stuff they liked, and I promise you it cost way more than you think it did.

Until you get married or pay for a wedding, you’ll never appreciate how much they can cost. Catering and the bar tab are usually priced per attendee, so don’t back out at the last minute or show up with a date when you didn’t get a +1. Both are dick moves. In my 20’s, I backed out of a fraternity brother’s wedding at the last minute, and I’ve always regretted it. I wanted to go, but as the wedding got closer, I realized I couldn’t afford the flight and hotel room, so I had to change my RSVP a couple weeks out. Not only do I regret not being there for his wedding, but I regret costing his family the extra cash on an already expensive day. (Sorry, Tony.) Don’t do that.

As for wedding gifts, get one. Get one off the registry. If, for some reason, you can’t go? Buy a nicer gift (also off the registry.) Trust me, they have enough silver trays already. If you know the couple well enough to be sure they’ll love your off-the-registry gift, then have at it. Otherwise, get them the towels they asked for.

This might seem obvious, but until it’s your turn to get married, a wedding is not about you. When you’re there, don’t make it about you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have fun, but I am saying you should go out of the way to not cause any headaches for the bride and groom. For example, making out with a bridesmaid is fine. Making out with the bride is not. 

Moving from general to specific, some advice for your wedding day: It’s your day, but it’s not only your day. It’s also your partner’s day, and your parent’s day, and your partner’s parent’s day. Lots of people will have opinions about your special day. You don’t have to listen to all of them, but it will be better if you listen to some of them. It’s okay to compromise, and in fifteen years, who you married will matter way more than what color flowers you had. 

Odds are, you won’t be able to invite everyone you’d like to. For example, your Mom and I had a small wedding of about 40 people. I’d make that decision ten out of ten times again. It wasn’t easy, as I couldn’t invite all the friends I wanted to. Some were friends who’d even had me in their weddings. I talked to these friends and explained them that since ours would be small, I wouldn’t be inviting them to mine. Every one of them told me I was making a decision I would not regret. They were right. I got to spend time with every person at our wedding, and not just to say, “hello, thanks for the silver tray, see you later.” I got to spend time with my family, with your Mom’s family, and with your Mom. It was a little crazy, but we were able to do all the things we wanted to do on our weekend, and it was one of the best weekends of my life. 

That was our wedding, though. You might want different things. Make the choices you want to make for your wedding. Want a dozen attendants on each side? Go for it. Don’t want cake? Too bad. Your Mom loves wedding cake and there will be cake at your wedding. Assert your independence somewhere else. But if you want to get married outside, or in a church, or at a bowling alley, that’s between you and your fiancé. Despite what I said previously about weddings being expensive, spending more money does not always make for a better wedding. At my aforementioned friend Dan’s wedding, his friends and family did all the food and BBQ, and it was fantastic. 

Here’s how you have the best wedding: Find someone you love and really want to marry. Ask them to marry you. If they say yes, take care of some logistical details. Like, do some pre-marital counseling. Get a pre-nup if you or she have assets. And then, figure out what you both want for your wedding. Big, small, fancy, or simple, your choices are your choices. Obviously, cool shit isn’t free, so be realistic about what you can afford. Iron out the details, realize that no one will read all the instructions and plans you make, and then go have fun.

One last thing. Be considerate of your guests. They’ve given up their time and spent their money to come celebrate you. Gift bags and fun surprises are cool, but making sure their needs are met is cooler. Having guests with kids in diapers? Make sure there’s a place they can go to change diapers. Got lots of older relatives coming? Make sure they don’t have to stand out in the hot sun. Planning three hours between the wedding and reception? Suggest some place your guests can go hang out. Because yes, it’s your day, but you’re not the only one who matters.

I love you,

Dad

P.S. Have late night snacks. Trust me.

What Bullshit Smells Like

You can trust some people. Others, not so much. Unfortunately, the difference isn’t always obvious. It feels like it should be, but most people don’t hold their nose when they bullshit you and they certainly don’t put on halos when they tell the truth.

If that’s the case, how can you sniff out the bullshit? Well, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. Start from there. But even with that start, you’ll need to be wary; there are plenty of people in the world who are happy to piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining; you need to learn the difference. For example, if your foot is warm, it’s probably not rain.

Detecting bullshit starts with you, because it’s easier to bullshit a person who wants to believe what you’re telling them. But who would want to be bullshitted? Unfortunately, when the bullshit lines up with what we want to or already believe, most of us. 

More often than not, we seek out facts and information that agree with the beliefs we already hold. It’s called confirmation bias. It also means we tend to ignore facts and information that disagree with what we already think. Before you point a finger at a bullshitter, hook your thumb at yourself and examine your own biases. You might also be at fault, especially if you’re looking to confirm something you already believe.

Side note - confirmation bias is especially dangerous in social media circles and on the internet. Use your brain, be skeptical of fantastic claims, and check your sources. After you check your sources, check their sources. Fifteen seconds with a search engine lets you litmus test all kinds of claims. 

Back to gullibility: While you’re checking your own beliefs, be aware of what you do and don’t know about the topic in question. It’s much easier to buy into a line of bullshit reasoning when you can’t tell the lies from the truth. We all go through phases of not knowing anything when we try new stuff, I just want you to be aware of your own inexperience, especially relative to others you’re dealing with.

Here’s a personal example: A friend and I once opened a film and television production company in Charlotte. We’d both been to film school, he’d been working in the industry for a few years, and we had the basics of the technical knowledge we needed to do what we set out to do.

What we didn’t have was any experience managing a small business. Undeterred, we incorporated, spent way too much time on business cards, set up a web site, and started making cold calls.

That was when we hit a wall. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and there was a lot we didn’t know. I went to networking events, gave out those business cards we spent too much time designing, and found zero clients. Our business was going nowhere. We had no office, no showreel, no connections, and no equipment. 

Along comes Joe, who owns a production company in Raleigh. He wants us to do business development for his company, and he promised me and my friend a lot of things. They’d set up an office for us in Charlotte, we’d have editing and production there, and we’d have their staff and expertise on call when we did get clients.

This was all bullshit, but since I didn’t know any better, I bought it. My friend and I gave up our business and I commuted to Raleigh for several months where I worked as a producer to understand Joe’s business and staff. Then (as we’d agreed) I told him I was ready to go back to Charlotte and set up our new shop.

Turns out, Joe didn’t want me to move back to Charlotte. He offered me a full-time role in Raleigh with a decent salary, which was nice, but not what we’d agreed. Setting up an office in Charlotte with editing and production facilities was out. If I was going back to Charlotte, I’d be doing cold calls out of my den on a cell phone. That was what I did, and I never did close any sales. Joe eventually tried to get me to quit, then fired me and tried to stop me from collecting unemployment.

What’s my point? It should have sounded too good to be true, because it was. I wasn’t in a position to understand that, because I lacked the experience and connections to verify Joe’s intentions and trustworthiness. I was young, hungry, and ready to buy a load of fresh shit from anyone with a bull. That’s lesson one. If you don’t know much, but do know the offer sounds too good to be true, be suspicious.

Lesson two? Get it in writing, or at the very least, get a witness, someone who can confirm what you heard. Joe never wrote down anything he promised, so I didn’t have anything to hold him to when he changed his mind. I’m not sure it would have made much difference, but it would have been better than nothing.

Lesson three is that when you do realize you’ve been fed a load of bullshit, don’t keep swallowing. I could have moved to Raleigh and worked for Joe, but who knows how much other bullshit he would have fed me. Leaving his company led me into advertising, which turned out to be a great career fit for me.

On the broader topic of bullshit, I’m going to cite Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, who taught a course at the University of Washington titled Calling Bullshit. “When calling bullshit, be charitable: Never assume someone is being malicious when they might simply be stupid, and don’t assume stupidity when someone might simply be mistaken.” 

One last thing, before you set out with your newfound skepticism and bullshit detectors. Consider the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, also known as Brandolini’s law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” 

The point there is that you don’t need to go disprove all the bullshitters. Rather, you need to have a sense of the two, and give new facts, information, and promises the sniff test. If it smells funny, think twice. Or, as Sturgill Simpson said, “If there's any doubt, then there is no doubt. The gut don't never lie.”

Be careful, and don’t let anybody piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining. 

I love you,

Dad

You Should Wait Tables

You should wait tables. Or maybe, tend bar. You could also work retail, fast food, or have any job where you deal with the general public. I say this not because I see a career for you in any of these jobs, but because I want you to have these experiences.

Why? Because I’ve waited tables, worked in fast food, in a gas station, in a movie theater, in a sandwich shop, and briefly tended bar. And in each of these jobs, I’ve marveled at just how terrible the average person acts towards the people working these jobs.

I want you to be better than that. 

I want you to make the effort to treat other humans like humans.

And that’s harder than it sounds.

Tipping is an obvious and easy place to start. Some of the best tippers are former waiters and bartenders. Not because they’re wealthy and can afford to flash their Benjamins, but because they appreciate how hard the job is and how shitty most people are to waiters and bartenders. When you’ve busted your ass to keep a big table happy and been “rewarded” with a 10% tip, you’re more likely to round up when it’s your turn to get the check. 

On the subject of tipping, make 15% your tipping floor for adequate service. That’s the bare minimum, so make a habit of going up from there. 20% is a better target, and 25% shouldn’t be out of the question. Especially when you can afford it, and if you can’t afford a decent tip, then you really can’t afford to eat out. If you’re tipping below 15%, you should be able to articulate specifically what the waiter did to deserve your ire. And don’t take your frustrations with the kitchen out on your server. Your waiter didn’t overcook your steak or undercook your chicken; that was the kitchen. If you don’t like your food, believe me when I say that your waiter wants to know, and they want the chance to make it right.

That said, there’s more to this lesson than tipping. If you take nothing else from this entry, remember this: I hope you strive to recognize the humanity and value of every person you meet, every day. And that’s not something you do with money. It’s a good start, but even a nice crisp twenty-dollar-bill can feel dehumanizing when delivered dismissively.

When you work in one of the jobs I listed above, you’ll discover what it feels like to be invisible. People will speak to you like you don’t exist, or like you only exist to serve them. People will snap at you, make unreasonable demands, or be generally shitty. It’s not that people are all cruel, it’s just that most people are so wrapped up in themselves and their own worlds that they don’t bother to engage. It’s not abnormal, I wrote about how hard it is to see outside yourself in Try Not to Be a Dick. And as usual, some people suck, and they’ll take their problems out on people who bring them food and pour them drinks. But most people don’t suck. Most people don’t make the effort to really see people in these roles. 

They might see a waiter, a cleaning lady, a driver. But they’re not seeing the actual person doing those jobs. And that’s unfortunate because these people have names, lives, and families.

Don’t take this to mean you have to learn everyone’s life story. Engaging someone can be as simple as making eye contact and smiling. You’ll be surprised how much something that simple means. Sometimes it means looking around the restaurant and realizing that your sever just got three tables at once and is doing the best they can. At three, you’re already very observant, so I’m sure you can manage. That is, assuming you take my advice and try. 

Learn names when you can, and ask people if you can use them. Say “please,” and “thank you.” And when someone thanks you, say “you’re welcome.” 

Give the people that work around you the benefit of the doubt. Give them grace when they fail and reward their extra effort when they go above and beyond. Most of all, follow these words:

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Ian Maclaren

You’ll never see 99% of these battles, and you’ll probably never even know they’re happening. But, your kindness can help every single one of the people fighting these battles, even if only for a moment.

So, be kind. 

Be kind to everyone.

I love you, 

Dad

Picking Up Your Toys is Practice for Life

Every night before bed we ask you to help us put away your toys. Usually, you help while singing a song that goes “clean up, clean up, every day.” It’s definitely cuter than it is efficient; we could probably do it ourselves in half the time. But that’s not the point. The point is to make picking up your toys a habit. And my hope is that this habit leads to taking care of your toys and eventually taking care of all your stuff. Because whether it’s your favorite purple car, an actual purple car, or even your own health, like Ben Franklin said, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” 

Let’s start small, with the toys. As you grow, you’re going to notice I insist we clean and put away our toys after we get them dirty. This goes for little toys like baseball gloves and soccer balls and big toys like kayaks, bikes, and all the associated gear. The immediate reason is simple; water breaks stuff. Mold, mildew, rust are all the result of getting your toys wet and dirty and leaving them that way. Cleaning them up after use not only stops that mold, mildew, and rust from happening, but it gives you the chance to do whatever preventative maintenance you should be doing. 

Whether it’s oiling a bike chain, lubing a drysuit zipper, or drying out your hydration pack, taking care of things makes them last longer. When they last longer, you don’t have to spend money to replace them. And when you’re not constantly replacing your toys, you can use that money for other things. For example, more toys.

Checking your gear after you use it also saves you trouble the next time you get it out. Would you rather discover a crack in your kayak paddle in your garage, or in the middle of a rapid? What about a leak in your bike tire? Much better to find it at home than halfway through a 20 mile trail ride, right? Same thing goes for actual cars. While nobody likes paying for repairs, I’d much rather have a mechanic tell me I need new brakes than realize it when I’m coming up on a stop sign at 45 miles an hour.

Hopefully, you followed the leap from toys and gear to actual cars. But if you didn’t, change your oil when you’re supposed to. Do your scheduled maintenance if you buy quality, your cars will last as long as you need them to. And if you understand what I’ve said so far, you can follow along as I apply that lesson to you.

Not your toys, but your body, your mind, your spirit. And if you buy into my advice that taking care of your toys is important, what does that make taking care of your body? Especially since you can buy new toys, but only get one body.

And look, I’m not going all 1st Corinthians and telling you that “your body is a temple.” I’m also not going Anthony Bourdain, who said “your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”

My advice is to find the happy spot in the middle and live there. Transparently, I haven’t always been kind to my body. I’ve probably leaned more towards the Bourdain philosophy, and am at 7 orthopedic surgeries and counting. That said, at 44, I’ve learned some things and given up some activities I can’t do anymore. And here’s me once again hoping you’ll learn from my mistakes without repeating them.

Learn to take care of yourself and move your body in a way that feels good for you. Try sports, exercise, and stay active. Like prevention and cure, it’s much easier to keep yourself in shape than it is to get yourself back in shape. And it’s also much easier to keep yourself in shape if you enjoy the movement that keeps you that way, so try different activities until you find one you love and can do. 

As your body changes and ages, you might have to find new activities that are better suited for you. Yes, some assholes run marathons well into old age. Most of us don’t. After three hip surgeries, I traded soccer and Crossfit for swimming laps and mountain biking, but I’m not trading kayaking for water aerobics anytime soon.

Wear sunscreen. If you want the same sunscreen advice set to music, check out Baz Lurhmann’s version.

As for what you put in your body, it probably matters as much as what you do with your body. Your Mom and I will introduce you to all kinds of foods and cuisines, but at some point you’ll have to shop for and feed yourself. As someone who’s struggled with weight and dieting for most of my life, I could give you at least a dozen “correct” ways to eat. I won’t though, because most of them aren’t sustainable, and if I’d found one that worked, I’d still be doing it. Instead, I’ll give you Michael Pollan’s version of a sensible diet. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And by food, he means real food -- vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and, yes, fish and meat -- and to avoid "edible food-like substances." Start there. Learn and make your own decisions, but know that those decisions will affect your health.

Eat plenty of fiber; it helps you poop.

When your body doesn’t feel good, go to the doctor. Figure out what’s wrong with you, and take care of the problem. Again, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Whether it’s your teeth, your joints, your skin, or your heart, when you catch a problem early, it’s easier to fix. You might not like flossing, but I bet you’ll really hate getting a root canal. 

Last, and maybe most important, your mental health. 

I’m a big fan of being proactive on this, because I’ll fallen into the trap of ignoring it, and it did not go well. Thankfully, I had my family and your Mom to lean on.

See, I have anxiety and depression, and I work hard to manage them and keep my mental health in a good place. I see a psychiatrist on a regular basis and a therapist on a more regular basis. It’s not an easy process, but I’m committed to doing the work required to manage these conditions.

Why? Because I want to be here, with you, and I want to be present when I’m here. Because as hard as it is to dig through my feelings and emotional baggage, drowning in anxiety and worry is even worse. And because I want to set a good example for how to deal with your feelings, understand your emotions, and keep them in balance.

I’m going to repeat it because it bears repeating: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially when it comes to mental health, and even for people without mental illness. 

See, at some point, life will piss in your proverbial cornflakes. As much as I want to protect you from all the things in the world that will hurt you, I can’t, and I shouldn’t. Because life is full of adversity, and facing it is part of growing up.

But when it does come, make time and space to deal with it. If you’re grieving, talk about it with a friend, or see a grief counselor. If you can’t stop worrying, talk to a therapist or even a psychiatrist. And as long as your Mom and I are here, you can always come talk to us about anything.

So. Remember this: wear sunscreen, change your oil, take care of your toys, and eat plenty of fiber. Take better care of your body than you do your toys, and don’t let your feelings fester. Tackle life’s problems head-on, and before they get so big you can’t tackle them yourself. 

And most of all, remember that your Mom and I love you.

Dad

How to Agreeably Disagree

Sometimes, people you care about are going to think and say things you really, really disagree with. Whether it’s your friends, me or your Mom, or other extended family members, as you form your own opinions, you’ll find other people have formed completely different opinions. For the sake of this one, we’re going to assume you don’t create an echo chamber of people who only agree with you and reinforce the things you already believe. Mostly because even in that scenario, you’ll still be related to someone who’s going to contradict that echo chamber. We’ve all got at least one relative who would disagree with gravity for the sake of spicing up Thanksgiving dinner.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about disagreements on whether or not pineapple belongs on pizzas or if you can have anal sex and still be a virgin. I’m talking about disagreements about deeply-held beliefs like religion, politics, society, and the universe. And while some people have deeply-held beliefs about pizza and butt stuff, those are for someone else’s blog.

Like many of the topics I’ve covered, this won’t be easy, and actually will be significantly harder than I’ll make it out to be. I realize this, mostly because it’s not easy for me. I see eye to eye on some of this stuff with some of the people in my life, but I also have family and friends who don’t vote, pray, or believe the same way I do. I still love them, even when we disagree, and I hope they still love me. And I do my best to live what I’m teaching here, but like everything else I’m teaching you, sometimes I suck at it. But I’m trying. I hope you see the value in making the same effort.

First, be kind. For expediency’s sake, let’s make up a theoretical uncle and call him Bob. And this isn’t a thinly veiled reference to any actual uncles or someone named Bob. He’s just a proxy for anyone, be they friend, or family, or co-worker that you disagree with.

If you disagree with Bob, and you really care about your relationship, remember that. Yes, Uncle Bob might have just said something you find completely disgusting, offensive, or ridiculous. It is possible to care about and love someone you disagree with. It’s also possible that Bob’s belief and opinion becomes so difficult to overlook that you decide you don’t want to be friends with him or spend time with him anymore. Either way, temper your frustration by remembering the positive parts of that relationship and the common ground you share.

If you do decide that Bob’s insistence on a man’s right to kick a puppy or his denial of North Dakota’s statehood is so insane you want to end your relationship, be aware that’s why you’re doing it. If Bob asks, tell him what’s up. He might not have realized you cared so much about puppies and North Dakota. But whether or not you go out of your way to share that information should be a reflection of how close you really are to Uncle Bob.

Next up, understand the situation. If Bob shouts something you disagree with onto whatever the equivalent of social media is in 16 years, do you really need to disagree with him there? Was his expression of that opinion intended as an entre into a conversation, or was he simply looking for affirmation? You can’t argue with everyone all the time, and sometimes you just have to let shit go. I understand the burning need to be right, especially when you’re passionate about an issue, but before you jump in and disagree with someone’s opinion, ask yourself if it’s the right time and place to do so. If it’s not the right time and place and you really want to discuss it, find a time and place where you can have that conversation.

If you get to that conversation, do your best to make sure you’re both working from the same assumptions and information. What you believe to be fact might be bullshit to someone else, and vice versa. And if you can’t align and agree on the basics, it makes discussing conclusions a bit like drag racing with your eyes closed. It may be loud and exciting, but you’ll never end up at the same finish line and what’s the point of the whole exercise anyway?

And while you may be able to discuss and share assumptions and information, everyone has their own unique set of experiences, knowledge, and biases. Each of those affect the way we think, believe, and interpret information. Don’t forget that, and don’t underestimate its importance.

Our lives shape the way we see each other, the world, and even ourselves. And like I said in Try not to be a Dick, there’s value in considering the other person’s perspective. Remember that when you disagree.

Assuming you’re in a conversation and you’re working from the same basic facts, ask Bob to consider this question: “What could I say that would change your mind?” And then, ask yourself the same question. What could Uncle Bob say that would change your mind? And if either of you is unwilling or unable to change their minds, ask yourself why you’re having the conversation.

One of my friends on the other side of the proverbial aisle once said about politics, “I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine, so what’s the point in arguing about it?” I’ve been mulling that question over for months, and I’ve come up with a different answer than I gave him at the time.

That answer is an appeal to an open mind. I hope you keep an open mind, and are willing to take new information and apply it to your current assumptions and beliefs. I hope you encourage that same open-minded behavior and system of beliefs in others, because certainty is the enemy of discovery. Be willing to ask “why,” and “what if,” and most importantly, “what if I’m wrong?”

Experience is the best teacher, and as you experience the world, it will teach you more than you imagine.

But.

Experience can’t teach you anything if you’ve closed your mind to new information. Stay open-minded and be willing to test your beliefs and assumptions. Learn, grow, and give others the grace to do the same. It’s a great big amazing universe we live in, there are more than seven billion unique perspectives on that universe walking around this planet today. Be willing to learn from each of them.

I love you,

Dad

Embrace the Pucker

It’s easy to be scared in a whitewater kayak. You’re sitting in your boat in a nice calm eddy above a drop full of turbulent water, rocks, and more than a dozen ways to hurt yourself or maybe, if things go really bad, even get yourself killed. Your friends are at the bottom, waiting for you to go, but you’re afraid. Your stomach is in a knot, your hands are shaking, your mouth is bone dry, and you can feel your butthole puckering up underneath you.

In this scenario, you can either paddle your boat a couple feet to the shore, get out, and carry your boat around the rapid, or peel out into the current and paddle downstream. My advice (both for myself, for anyone who asks for it, and for anyone reading this who didn’t ask for it) in these situations is simple: “embrace the pucker.”

I realized that sounds easier than it is. It’s certainly a simplification for me. When I first started kayaking, my pucker would start hours before I even got to the river, while I was loading up my boat in the mornings. It would continue the entire time in the car, and only ease up when I paddled into the takeout and was done for the day. 

Why would I choose to do something I was so clearly afraid of? I asked myself the same question one day, while I was sitting in one of those eddies, waiting to paddle down a big, scary rapid. 

“Why are you doing this if you’re so afraid?”

The answer came from my puckered butthole, which was an admittedly strange place to give me an answer, but it said, “Because you like this feeling.”

And as dumb as it sounds, my butthole was right. I did like the feeling, and still do. Mastering that fear is a special kind of thrill. And that thrill was why I’d gotten in a boat in the first place. So, the only thing to do was embrace it.

And to be clear, I’m not telling you to ignore danger and throw yourself into situations without understanding the risks. There are plenty of risks I would not consider taking. And I have a distinct memory of the first time I thought about your pregnant mother and decided to get off a river because I was having a rough day. So, be smart about when and where you make these kinds of decisions. 

That said, this lesson is much bigger than the decisions you’ll make in a kayak. You’ll face decisions throughout your life where fear will seem to hold you back. Whether it’s asking for a raise, asking out a girl, applying to college, or speaking in public, fear is a natural response to danger and the unknown. But, if you have a strategy to move past that fear, you’ll be less likely to panic and freeze up. 

Back to the eddy. You want to go down the rapid, but you’re afraid. You remember I told you to “embrace the pucker,” but aren’t sure how. Here’s how it goes.

1 - Acknowledge the pucker.

It’s okay if you’re afraid, it happens to everyone. Before you can embrace it, you have to recognize the pucker exists. As a bonus, bringing that fear out into the light takes away some of its power. Got a friend you trust? Tell them. On the river, you’ll hear things like “I’ve got your back,” or, “Follow my line and you’ll be fine.” That is, assuming you’re not paddling with assholes. And if you start hearing things like, “Don’t be a pussy,” or, “Just suck it up and go,” I’d find some new people to paddle with. 

2 - Examine the pucker.

After you’ve acknowledged it, take a long, hard look at it. Do you have a good reason to be afraid? If you do, should you change your course of action? If I swam a rapid yesterday, and am not feeling confident in my boat today, I might get out and walk around it. (“Swimming” is kayaker for flipped over, couldn’t roll up, and had to get out of the boat and swim down. It hurts your pride and whatever body parts you bang into rocks.) On the other hand, if the thing you’re afraid of is unlikely to happen, can you take specific actions to make sure it doesn’t? At the very least, if it does happen, will you be okay? If so, and you can feel good about your preparation, proceed to step 3.

3 - Embrace the pucker.

Now you’re ready. You’ve acknowledged and examined it, and the last step is to wrap your arms around that fear and give it a hug. See it for what it is, but don’t let it hold you back. Go into the challenge with clear eyes about the consequences of failure, but focused on succeeding. I want to be clear about this, embracing your fear does not mean obsessing about or focusing on it. Rather, I want you to embrace the feeling of fear and use it to motivate yourself to succeed.

Look where you want to go, and don’t look where you don’t want to go. If your line is to the left, look to the left. If there’s a giant hole on the right side of a rapid that you want to avoid, look to the left and not at the giant hole. If you stare at the giant thing you want to avoid, you will usually paddle right into it. Trust me, I’ve done it.

And as goes life in the boat, so goes life out of the boat. Whether or not you put yourself in situations where you know you’ll be afraid, you will face fear. How you react to that fear will determine your success. I’m going to leave you with Frank Herbert’s Litany Against Fear, which comes from Dune.  

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

I know you will be afraid, and I hope you learn to acknowledge it, examine it, and embrace it. Great things await on the other side of the pucker.

I love you,

Dad

Should You Be Cool?

I’m not sure I could teach you how to be popular, even if I wanted to. I never felt like I was when I was growing up, so it might be a bit like asking our dog Stella to teach you to drive a stick shift. Truthfully, I’d rather teach you how to make friends and be a good friend to others. I think that will serve you better.

Besides that, talking about popularity and social status gives me a case of imposter syndrome, as if all the people I consider friends are suddenly going to reveal they’ve been trolling me for years and actually think I’m a total tool.

So, I’d rather teach you the resilience and self-confidence you need to be less concerned about popularity and social status and more focused on finding connections that make you happy.

Why do I say I wasn’t popular? In elementary and middle school, I was a fat kid who liked to read and didn’t have a ton of friends, so I got picked on. I’m not looking for pity, my experience wasn’t unique or particularly awful; kids can be real assholes. And since this is intended for you to read when you’re 18, by the time you read it, you’ll have had your own experiences to judge that statement. But my life experiences have taught me something valuable; you can make friends, be a good friend, and have a great social life without being overly focused on how popular you are.

An aside about shitty kids: while I was thinking about this entry, I looked up a guy on Facebook who once pissed in my canteen at Boy Scout camp. I was surprised to see he’d grown up to be a chef and opened a food truck that focused on natural and local foods. I told your Mom how surprised I was that we shared an interest, that as adults we’d have something to talk about besides what water from a canteen that had been pissed in tastes like. I’m not sure what I expected, maybe that he’d gone into professional watersports, but she said something I had to share: “Hopefully we can all grow and change.” And who knows if he did, but she’s right. It’s important to allow for that possibility.

Back on topic. I do hope you never pursue the type of exclusionary popularity and social status that’s built on being shitty to less popular people. Making someone else feel like an outsider is a crap way to prove you belong in whatever club or group you’re trying to be a part of.

You’re better off being resilient, believing in yourself and your own worth, and not getting bent out of shape about what other people think about you. That kind of self-confidence frees you to be yourself, instead of some version of yourself you think other people will like. And the resilience? It’s for when you’re not feeling so good about yourself.

I realize I’m underselling how difficult it is to be self-confident and resilient. I wish it were as easy as teaching you to ride a bike or throw a ball. Stand here, do this, and suddenly, you’re doing it. Clearly, it’s not. But just because it’s hard to do doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Glennon Doyle said it well, “we can do hard things.”

I have a friend from college who has more “best friends” than most people have acquaintances. And as much as we tease him for making best friends with seven people before breakfast every day, Randy is probably one of the kindest people I know. I hope you’ve had the chance to spend time with him, his son, and his wife as you’ve grown up, but the relevant story about him comes from our days at Wake Forest. When I was in school, an incredibly high percentage of students belonged to a fraternity or sorority. Much of your social status had to do with the organization you’d joined.

While some people avoided socializing outside their fraternity or sorority, Randy didn’t limit himself to our group. As I’m writing this, I can’t believe how juvenile and insane it sounds to call him courageous for eating meals with people who weren’t in our secret handshake club. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Despite older fraternity brothers telling him he shouldn’t, Randy sat in the cafeteria and ate with people those fraternity members didn’t think were cool.

It feels like a little thing now, looking back twenty years later. But as someone who worried about my own social status when I was in college, I’m not sure I could have done what he did. I know I didn’t.

See, it takes self-confidence and resilience to act that way, to be above that kind of pettiness. When you learn to care a little less about what others think, you’re free to make connections that work for you, to be friends with the kinds of people you want to be friends with. That’s the kind of inclusionary popularity I’d be thrilled to see you pursue.

Make friends with whoever you want to. Create your own groups by gathering people that share your interests and connecting them to each other. Bring others along with you, and find friends that will sit with you in the cafeteria no matter what anyone else says.

When you have those kinds of friends to depend on and spend time with, you’ll find yourself caring less about who’s cool and who’s not and more about the friends you know you can depend on. Which is a pretty great way to go through life.

I love you and hope you have even more best friends than Randy,

Dad