Fun Bags to Feed Bags: Advice for Expectant Fathers that will Save Your Marriage and Your Life
There is panic that comes with pregnancy. Panic about your life changing. Panic about whether you are ready. Panic wondering if you can do this, not fuck things up the way your parents did. (They didn’t. You’re fine.) Panic about the health of your child.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of July 28, 2024
What makes it so hard to believe our kids are as old as they are is not because we don’t understand how calendars work. It’s because we get reminders from Time Hop and Facebook Memories, so it literally is just yesterday we saw them as infants. Social media fucks us in every hole in every way.
The Emotional Placation of Kindergarten Graduation
Kindergarten graduations are not events I am comfortable celebrating. I don’t feel they should be considered events at all. There’s just not much worth celebrating because graduating from kindergarten is not an accomplishment. Show up, learn things through fun activities like coloring and games and songs, don’t pee or hit or bite the other kids too much and you’re golden.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 8, 2023
Jesus… the week of Elvis Presley’s birthday and his daughter, Lisa Marie, dies. The Universe doesn’t care about us, but sometimes, it feels that it does. And it feels like it’s a wry practical joker.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of October 30, 2022
Childhood goes by fast. When you’re a parent, it goes by even faster.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of July 17, 2022
Parenthood is, by far, the trippiest, mind bending, and just straight up weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced.
![Holding My Son as We’re Violently Burned to Death [REPOST]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/1580565403490-JCYKP1F40GF6OIQNO5V5/heart-on-fire.jpg)
Holding My Son as We’re Violently Burned to Death [REPOST]
But, son, I was not lying when I said I’d do anything to protect you.
Anything to keep you safe.
Sometimes that meant watching you put yourself in harm’s way.
Life is pointless without risk.
Sometimes it meant watching you get your heart broken
or hearing your bones break from the bleacher seats on the sidelines.
Harm and hurt, you see, are unfortunately, required of us.
The Universe demands it.
They are two of the many ways we learn and become stronger, better people.
Or so I always tried to be better
and I hope that I instilled that desire in you.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of September 12, 2021
I like to think that when our society crumbles and future humans or alien scavengers dig our civilization out of the dirt, they’ll look at the Met Gala and laugh at our absurd level of indulgence the way we look and laugh at ancient Rome.
Why We Gave Our Son Away
Parenthood requires sacrifice. Lots of it. A more optimistic person might say it’s not sacrifice but compromise, and to that I say they don’t know what they’re talking about. Over the last several years, my wife and I have been parents to a wonderful little human named Harrison. He’s intelligent, strong, funny, helpful, and kind. Most of the time anyway. He’s also a three-year-old toddler so he is also erratic, neurotic, sullen, mercurial, and violent. Why, just yesterday, he slapped me across the face after telling him I loved him. In a very tiny nutshell, that right there is parenthood. You give love, you get smacked in the face.
Who Gets to Tell Your Kid’s Story?
I hated when my mother would talk about me to her friends when I was a kid. Hated it. Even the most bland of stories, like, say, that I was playing little league again that spring would infuriate me. And I know she shared way more about me than my pre-teen baseball career to her friends and family. Hated it. As if she knew anything about me whatsoever. As if my challenges and wins and all-inclusive experiences—as if my life—were her story to tell.
Holding My Son as We’re Violently Burned to Death
But, son, I was not lying when I said I’d do anything to protect you.
Anything to keep you safe.
Sometimes that meant watching you put yourself in harm’s way.
Life is pointless without risk.
Sometimes it meant watching you get your heart broken
or hearing your bones break from the bleacher seats on the sidelines.
Harm and hurt, you see, are unfortunately, required of us.
The Universe demands it.
They are two of the many ways we learn and become stronger, better people.
Or so I always tried to be better
and I hope that I instilled that desire in you.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of November 17, 2019
Political/social stridency is about as attractive a trait in a person as Jimmy Fallon fandom.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of June 3, 2018
The best way to get a feel for a city you’re visiting is to walk it. Pick a destination without a timetable and walk. Duck in to things you find worth ducking into. Read commemorative plaques. Do something touristy but do as the locals do, too. Just do it while walking. Unless it’s cold or rainy. Then run.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of December 24, 2017
• Soren Kierkgaard said, “People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.” Bro, I feel you, really. I understand.
Anxiety is the thing that’s ripped our country apart. It has divided us, caused us to fear and hate those who think and live differently than us, and even caused us to hate those who only slightly disagree with us. It has led to panic and overreaction. And I worry that American Anxiety is only going to exacerbate the social and political divide in this country to the point that there is no coming back.