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

Sep 23, 2022

Time for everything, time for anything

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

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

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

Sep 9, 2022

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

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

This advice is about rules.

Some rules are good, and should be followed.

Some rules are okay, and can be bent.

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

The hard part is figuring out which rules are which.

Jul 15, 2022

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

Let’s talk about God.

Wait, don’t go.

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

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

But.

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

Jun 16, 2022

A personal account of incredible kindness

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

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

Jun 9, 2022

Be Humble

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

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

How? Be humble.

Mar 24, 2022

Choose Discomfort

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

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

You have to consider what we’re leaving behind.

Mar 8, 2022

Sam Vines on boots and money

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

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

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

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

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

Feb 19, 2022

The Sex Talk

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

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

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

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

Jan 25, 2022

Don't Text Important Sh*t

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

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

Jan 21, 2022

Listen up, Mom has the mic.

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

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

To pay attention to sound
To hear something with thoughtful attention: give consideration
To be alert to catch an expected sound

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

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