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.

Your choices make all the difference.

In a video about finishing big projects, Jason Pargin discusses how he managed to complete and publish five novels on deadline while working a full-time job that was not writing said novels. For anyone who’d tackle a similarly sized (big ass) project, he first asks what they’d be willing to drop from their life. He says “no one thinks of the project they’re taking on as a trade-off, but it always is.”

I myself am guilty of this shortsightedness, as evidenced by my failing to complete this project in the time I’d originally allowed. See, there’s never enough time to do everything, and choosing to do something almost always means you can’t do something else.

Every minute I spend working on this Important Shit I Can’t Teach My Son Yet is a minute I don’t have to write stand-up jokes or short stories, go hiking with you, or get abs. Thankfully, your Mom will still love me without abs. Your hikes these days are as short as your short legs. But, the other projects go on hold. I set this project as my priority and accept I won’t be doing stand-up while I try to finish it. Same goes for writing new short stories or a novel.

I’m (admittedly) not great at making these choices; my default is to have more hobbies and interests than I have time for and half-ass my way through all of them. That’s because it took me a long time to learn that I don’t have enough time to do everything. So, before you join a new club, take up a new sport, or decide to write a novel, ask yourself what you’re willing to give up.

Side note: making these choices is much easier if you learn to flip any FOMO (fear of missing out) into JOMO (joy of missing out.) Focus your intention and energy into the book you’re actually writing, not the DILFS of Asheville meetup you skipped. Be present and content doing what you chose to do.

This lesson applies to more than hobbies and projects. There’s never enough time to visit with and connect to all the friends and family you care about. There’s never enough time to teach your son everything you want to teach him. There’s never enough time to do all the cool things you want to do with your family.

But.

There’s still enough time for almost anything, if you choose to make it a priority. There’s still enough time to visit with and connect to all the friends and family you care most about. There’s still enough time to teach your son the most important things you want to teach him. There’s still enough time to do the most important things you want to do with your family.

The choices you make will make the difference.

I can’t visit all my close friends. But, by making an effort and being intentional in my planning, I can schedule vacations with those willing to reciprocate that effort.

I might not be able to teach you everything I want to teach you, but I made the time to write down some of the most important things here.

Your Mom and I won’t have time to do everything we can imagine and take every trip we want to as a family, but we can choose and plan to make sure we get to do the things we think are really important.

At eighteen, it’s easy to look out at the months, years, and decades you think you have coming and feel as if you have all the time in the world. Especially when you’re young, invincible, and years away from your first gray hair. You might see an infinite series of possible paths and choices laid out and waiting for you to explore. On the flip side, you might see all the things you hope to accomplish and all the hours you’ll need to accomplish them and feel the crushing weight of all those expectations.

I hope you find the center of those two extremes. Because while your possibilities are infinite, your time here on Earth is not.

You’ll never have enough time with the people you love, but there’s still enough time to tell the ones you still have that you love them.

There’s never enough time to accomplish everything you want to accomplish, but there’s still enough time to finish something you’ve been putting off too long.

See how this works? It’s about making choices. You can’t do everything, but you can still do almost anything.

And that’s how I want to leave you.

These pages don’t have everything you need to know, and they certainly don’t have everything I ever want to teach you. I made choices with the time I had to write this project, choosing what to leave in and what to leave out.

I hope you forgive my errors and omissions. As I said before, I’m figuring this out as I go along. I hope you find this helpful, and that it inspires you. Writing this down has certainly inspired me; I find myself trying to be the man I’m trying to teach you to be. It’s forced me to face my own shortcomings, to examine and articulate my own beliefs, and to try to be a better father, husband, and friend. More importantly, I hope you know how much you are loved, both by me, your Mom, and so many others.

So. What now? Enjoy the possibility before you. Make the most of it. Try to take some of my advice, but know it won’t always be right.

I love you,

Dad

Sep 23, 2022

Time for everything, time for 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.

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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