This week, Tim and Jenni discuss 2001, the year that brought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lord of the Rings, Shrek, Oceans 11, American Pie 2, The Others, and more to the theaters. Friends dominated TV while the inaugural season of Scrubs aired. Destiny’s Child, Nelly, Staind, Lifehouse, and Ja Rule topped the music charts. Wikipedia launched, and 9/11 happened. Join us for a walk down memory lane as we give our recap of 2001.
If you have been watching The Kids Are In Bed, you understand that bedtime has been a battle for my wife, Jenni, and me. I am not one to compare myself to other people regarding parenting. I have little interest in how people choose to attack the day-to-day challenges that come with raising children. It’s not that I think I know better. Instead, countless independent variables vary due to numerous factors.
I am the independent variable that led to the bedtime trouble in our house.
There was a day Jenni informed me our son would start falling asleep by himself when he was four. I almost cried hearing this news. While I want the best for my children, I am selfish with my time with them now. I know that the clock is counting down, far too quickly, to the day Jenni and I cease to be the sun they orbit.
When Jenni suggested we read a couple of stories to my son and leave the room for the night, all I saw was the vast, infinitely expanding universe awaiting the tangential path my kids would be slung into when they exited our orbit.
Some moments catch me off guard and highlight how quickly my children are growing up. It’s not the milestone moments. It’s the little things that only a parent can notice in their child. New words popping up in their vocabulary or the ability to put on their own shoes are the things that steal my breath and put a lump in my throat.
Determined to right my wrongs with bedtime, I have been working on keeping a stiff upper lip with my daughter. My five-year-old daughter doesn’t run out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and out into the street when we tell her it’s time to go to sleep, as her brother did. Rather, she has the unique ability to lie in bed in the dark with her eyes closed for hours without falling asleep.
It is beyond maddening.
Because of her resolve to show off this talent, we informed her daycare that we didn’t want her napping during the day. As a result, my daughter began falling asleep in as little as twenty minutes some nights.
We were rounding the final turn and could see the finish line when a new teacher took over her class. Jenni sent her a message a little after midnight on a night our daughter didn’t fall asleep until after 11:00 PM. She asked the new teacher not to put our daughter to sleep at naptime. I had pegged this new instructor as the zealous type, so after Jenni sent the message off, I asked, “What are you going to do when she responds tonight?”
Jenni laughed at the question. Ten minutes later, we got a long reply that suggested she would not honor our request. After a few more days of late bedtimes and inside information from our daughter about what happens at nap time, it was clear our request had fallen on deaf ears.
On a typical day, I take both of our children to school, allowing Jenni to get out of the house and make her commute to work. This morning, my daughter requested that Jenni take her to school so she could talk to the teacher about what was happening at nap time.
I felt like a batter being called back to the dugout, replaced by a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line. In other words, it stung. As the sting began to retreat, shame-filled its space.
As her father, she should be asking for me to have a serious conversation with her teacher.
Since I am on a mission to get to the bottom of why I allow almost every scenario to lead to anxiety and self-loathing, I caught my thought, and I asked myself a simple question:
Why do you think that?
It’s the same question I would ask a friend confiding in me if I heard them say something that didn’t make much sense.
Driving home from dropping my son off at school, I smiled. I smiled because I wasn’t on the receiving end of my wife’s serious conversation. I was relieved not to be responsible for initiating the discussion. More than anything, I was proud—proud of my daughter for recognizing Jenni as the right person for the job and asking for what she thought was best for her.
The answer to my simple question began to form in front of me.
Since I quit my job and have been pretending to be whatever I have been for the past four months, I have been battling the societal pressures that have been challenging my masculinity. Throughout the spring, I have been called a house husband and given tips on organizing the house’s daily upkeep. I’ve seen the judgment in the eyes of people I have talked to about my chosen path. I also hear the imaginary opinions I have crafted from everyone I have ever known.
As a male, I am supposed to work and make money, to be handy, and to be stoic.
As I write this, my new venture has earned me $6.68. Jenni has called me handsy many times but never called me handy unless the statement was dripping with sarcasm. If you Google “stoic antonyms,” you will find the following: caring, concerned, emotional, feeling, interested, and responsive. I am all of the antonyms.
I have been programmed to believe I am supposed to be something I can never be.
Like my teenage self in an Abercrombie & Fitch dressing room, I have been trying to fit into something that will never fit, no matter how much I suck in.
According to an annual Gallup poll that asks Americans whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with their personal lives, we are near a record low. Of course, people who make the most money are also the happiest. I imagine some people report being happy because, on paper, they should be. Yet, if you got them to have an honest conversation, they would tell you about what they’d rather be doing for free, which would make them truly happy. That’s nothing new.
What is new is those people’s ability to pick up their phones and scroll through videos of people doing the things they’d rather be doing while getting paid to do it. These are the people who claim all of social media is terrible. It’s far too complex to admit you’ve become a cog in a wheel and can’t get it out.
I refuse to become an old curmudgeon who is beaten down by doing what I should do instead of what I want to do.
I intend to write and do everything I can to influence the future Gallup polls to trend in the right direction.
I can only do that because of my wife, Jenni Severson. A woman who sees barriers as nothing more than minor obstacles in her way. I have had a front-row seat for nearly twenty-five years as I’ve watched her battle society’s expectations of what she should grow up to be. She will stand up for what is right regardless of social pressure. She is so beloved by everyone she comes into contact with that if you hear someone disparaging her, it reflects poorly on them rather than her.
My daughter made the decision that she decisively made this morning because of her mother.
If I could design a friend, wife, and mother in a lab, the result would be Jenni every time. However, the lab version may have a slightly better memory.
I blame so many situations in life on my bad luck. I don’t have bad luck. I used up all my good luck when I met Jenni and would make that trade a thousand times over.
Thanks to Jenni. We are creating a space where our children are not told they can be what they want to be; they are shown. I am happy to get out of the way so my children can take my front-row seat to watch Jenni in action.
While I’d love to say my courage and resolve led to me changing my life path by quitting my job, I can’t. Jenni saw what I couldn’t years ago, yet she kept her patience and never lost faith that I would wise up and listen to her.
I’m listening now.
What’s more, Jenni surrounds herself with women just like her. There are people in this country who don’t want to see the Jennis of this world ascend. It’s threatening to see these exceptional people break through the patriarchal defenses that have been standing for centuries.
Those people are driven by their insecurities because, from where I sit, a world run by women like Jenni seems like paradise.
We’ll call this an early Mother’s Day piece, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I am not thankful for my partner on this journey through life.
The year 2000 was the beginning of a new millennium and our first full year together as a couple.
This week on The Kids Are In Bed, Tim and Jenni talk about their recent trip to a Minnesota Twins game in the midst of their winning streak and the Timberwolves’ hot start in the playoffs. There is nothing Minnesotans love more than a winning team. They move on to the year 2000 and discuss the music that topped the charts (Eminem, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Papa Roach, Blink-182, and more!) and the movies that crushed the box office (Gladiator, Coyote Ugly, Almost Famous, and more!). Tim can’t share Jenni’s enthusiasm about the new Max Harry Potter series that has been announced to Jenni’s chagrin. Tim does his best to comb through Jenni’s memory for… anything! Will he be successful, or will we be astonished by Jenni’s lack of recall? The only way to find out is by listening. Thanks for being here.
What do UFOs, dinosaurs, and brunch have in common? Nothing really, but that doesn’t stop Tim and Jenni from discussing all of those topics and more in this week’s episode. Tim and Jenni discuss their close encounter in their hot tub. They then try to figure out what dinosaurs actually looked like. Jenni believes she has discovered her answer to the question – what are your hobbies? Her answer? Brunch. Pour yourself a mimosa and join them for some fun.
Tim made a big mistake and shaved his beard. Jenni and Tim discuss the family’s reaction to this extreme change. They also discuss their weekend getting rid of junk, day drinking, and watching The Masters. They finish things off by diving into their memories (or lack thereof) of infomercials. We’re glad you’re here to laugh with us.
This is shaping up to be a flawless travel day, is my first thought as I step off of the shuttle bus into the drizzle and chilly early spring air at the rental car lot next to the Philadelphia Airport.
As a sports fan, I know better than this. You are not supposed to talk about the perfect game or no-hitter with the pitcher in the dugout, as it guarantees a hit next inning when he’s back up on the mound. When the sportscaster talks about the incredible streak of made shots at the free-throw line, the next shot is sure to clang off the iron.
To be fair, it wasn’t a typical travel day.
My son had been asking to see my sister and their kids in Maryland since we saw them when they came to Minnesota in September. When my wife, Jenni, and I looked at the calendar and discovered Spring Break rolled into Easter this year, it seemed like a fantastic opportunity to book a trip to the East Coast.
We decided it would be fun to surprise our children with the trip when we got to the airport. Lucky for us, our daughter had been asking to go on an airplane… anywhere, so the surprise would land with her just as well as it would with him.
*Advice for parents planning to surprise their children with a trip: don’t pack your suitcase the morning of your flight. Yes, you will easily convince yourself that you aren’t procrastinating. You’ll think you’re preserving the surprise by not leaving the clue of a half-packed suitcase lying around. Unfortunately, this will make you panic every time you hear a noise while packing and cause you to question your mental capacity when you look at the random assortment of clothing in your suitcase when you open it at your final destination.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for a more significant reaction from my children. It’s not as though they weren’t excited, but I was hoping for utter shock. What percentage of people have had the experience of being surprised with a trip to the airport on the day of their departure?
The surprise could be the worst destination in the world, say… Madison, WI, and still, I would be in a puddle of tears if I got surprised with a vacation at the airport.
We checked our suitcase without issue despite Jenni packing a bag for her and my daughter that weighed nearly half as much as their combined body weight.
Security took about ten minutes despite the fact we forgot to take tablets out of two of our carry-ons. We found food the kids and Jenni would eat before the flight, right before the hangry river of rage started to flow out of my wife; the Prosecco helped, too.
If your significant other gets “hangry,” do not ask them, “Are you hungry?” When you notice the hanger level starting to rise. I nearly derailed our trip by making this observation about my wife as we stood in line for pizza.
Our flight was on time, and we landed ahead of schedule. When we got to baggage claim, I immediately saw our overweight suitcase making its loops around the carousel and snagged it.
This is why I had the guts to allow myself to take a breath and pat myself on the back in the rental lot.
I walked over to look at the board to find my name and where my rental card would be parked. Instead of a parking space number next to my name, I saw “see desk.”
Most days, I would have been panicked by this message. On this day, it didn’t occur to me that I could ever have an issue traveling ever again.
I entered the small yet clean rental car office. I waited in a short line to talk to one of two representatives helping other customers.
I gave my name as I approached the kiosk and started to wince in preparation for bad news. After some quick clicking on the keyboard, the woman smiled and said, “You reserved an electric car; that’s why you needed to come in here today.”
I did, in fact, reserve a Tesla. It was a secondary surprise for my son and a treat for me. Before you start calling this a humble brag, I will let you know it cost ten dollars more than renting a Toyota Corolla or “something similar” when I reserved the car.
Once everything was settled, the rental car company representative told me they would immediately pull the car up for me.
My family was waiting on the curb when I joined them.
“Daddy, what if they gave us a Tesla?” My son asked as he saw our car weaving through the parking lot.
“Yeah, I don’t think we will get a Tesla, buddy.”
“Yeah, that would be, like, so expensive.”
I smiled and winked at Jenni as we silently acknowledged how perfect that was for the surprise to land even better.
Moments like those make you forget the whining, the fights, and the worry of having kids. Like a stack of napkins that have been blown to the ground by the wind, some of the moments are carried away before you have a chance to remember they existed; others hit the ground and stay put just long enough for you to bend over and grab them, almost as if they were holding on just for you.
If you’re a parent, chase those moments and stomp them to the ground before the wind whisks them away. Pick it up and shove it into your back pocket with the snot cover tissue and fruit snack wrappers because someday you’ll pull it out. It will be the most valuable napkin you have ever held.
When the Tesla pulled up, my son had the look of shock you’d expect to see on someone who just found out they were going on a flight halfway across the country for Spring Break at the airport.
As we pulled up to the booth at the exit of the rental car lot, the attendant scanned the barcode on the dash and said, “It’s not letting me check you out; there is a problem with the car.”
“What does that mean, ‘there is a problem with the car?'” Jenni whisper-shouted at me from the passenger seat.
Twenty-four and a half years of experience with this woman had taught me that the question was not rhetorical, so I repeated it to the attendant.
“I don’t know. Sometimes, there are errors with the car, but we don’t know what they are until a technician looks at it. Let me call my manager.”
“What the fuck does that even mean? Why would they drive a car up to us that wasn’t working?” Jenni continued from the passenger seat, making sure I was seeing the injustice of the situation we were in, and making sure I didn’t fold to the pressure in an effort to make the interaction as smooth as possible.
Usually, that would be a fair concern. However, I rented this car for my son, who had, just a week earlier, counted every Tesla we saw on the road throughout a thirty-minute drive. Leaving the rental car lot in something other than a Tesla was impossible.
The attendant wrapped up the call with his manager, “Yeah, you are going to have to bring the car back in and pick a new one. Good news, you’re getting a complimentary upgrade to any sedan in that row.”
“This is a Tesla… upgrade… Tesla!” is all I can hear from the whisper-yelling from the passenger seat.
“So, you’re saying there’s a problem with the car, not with my reservation?”
“Right. I know you really want to drive the Tesla, but you’re not going to be able to today.”
I hadn’t said anything about being excited to drive the Tesla, so this comment convinced me I would need to have a conversation with someone else. He directed the line of cars behind me to back up so I could return the vehicle.
“Do you want me to go talk to them?” Jenni asked. I would typically respond with an enthusiastic “yes,” but since going with the flow would have ruined my son’s day, I let her know I would handle it.
I returned to the rental car office and approached the woman who had assisted me the first time. I told her I wasn’t allowed to leave with the Tesla. She looked as confused as I was by this news and told me she would investigate. She went to the back room to discuss the situation with her manager.
I stood in the empty office waiting and rehearsing how I would get ‘tough’ if the answer was anything other than renting us the Tesla when my phone rang. I looked at the screen to see a call from an unknown number in Philadelphia and answered.
“Hi, Mr. Severson. This is Janet with Delta Baggage Services. Did you take the wrong luggage after your flight from Minneapolis today?”
I didn’t have to think about it as I closed my eyes and tilted my face skyward, “Most likely.”
“Have you left the airport, sir?”
“No, I’m at the rental car lot right now, but I can be back as soon as I have my rental car.”
She told me where to go to return the stranger’s suitcase I had in my possession and get my actual suitcase while I apologized profusely.
My anxiety, which is typically paired with my travel, was finally served. I had to jinx it by slowing up before I crossed the finish line and was now facing my punishment.
The woman returned from the back room, and I readied myself for battle. Fortunately for me, there would be no battle as she explained that she had missed a step in renting an electronic vehicle out to me.
As Jenni and our kids had never gotten out, I returned to the car to see “On Rent” written with white car chalk on the two back windows. The attendant from the booth had come around and written this to ensure we didn’t leave the lot in the Tesla. Having that written on both the windows took some fun out of driving it, but I had a suitcase to return.
We parked near the Philadelphia airport’s arrival doors in an area with few cars, hoping no one would walk through to tell Jenni she needed to move the vehicle.
I ran down the sidewalk and through baggage claim like a former Heisman Trophy winner to return the stolen luggage, convinced I was about to get an earful from an Eagles fan.
I found the Delta Baggage office and was relieved not to see anyone obviously waiting on their luggage. I found Janet, who assured me this kind of thing happens all the time.
“You have morons flying in from Minnesota all the time?”
Janet stared at me, not getting my joke. A hand reached from behind me and rolled what I thought was my suitcase away.
I turned and stood face to face with the man whose luggage I had taken. He looked to be in his late twenties. He stared at me with a vacant look. He wasn’t mad, but he didn’t have a look of understanding either.
“I am so unbelievably sorry.”
No change in expression.
I then did something I had never done before in my entire life: I pressed my palms together in front of my chest and started doing these twenty-degree bows as I repeated, “I’m so sorry,” multiple times.
Still nothing.
I was about to turn to Janet to gauge how this interaction was going from a third party’s vantage point. Before I could do that, a younger man leaned his head through the door and, with a thick accent, said, “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure? I’m so sorry, I was trying to figure out where to catch the shuttle for the rental cars and I grabb…”
“It’s. Okay,” the second man interrupted. The other man flashed me a quick grin before he turned, and they walked away.
Turning toward Janet to grab my bag, I said, “I’m just going to get out of this airport before anything else goes wrong.”
“It really happens all the time,” Janet called after me as I walked away.
“I really doubt that,” I said to myself as I began my way back to the rental car with the correct suitcase this time.
People often use hyperbole when discussing what they would do for their children. Parents make statements like, “I’d step in front of a bus for my child” or “I’d take a bullet for my kids,” and I always think: but would you?
It’s not that I am questioning their love. Instead, it’s usually because those statements are uttered after something mundane occurs. It’s easy to claim you’d do anything, but we don’t get to know what we would do until those moments present themselves.
Now, I can tell my kids, honestly, “I would have a stern conversation with a rental car agent for you.”
Because even though it didn’t happen, I was ready. I was prepared to say what needed to be said to ensure my son got to ride in a Tesla.
I had a short time to come up with what I would say, and it was good. If said with the correct tone of voice, I would have gotten the Tesla and most likely gotten a discount. It’s a short statement that is to the point and could get me out of even the stickiest of situations.
Since I didn’t use it, I figured here is as good a place as any to share it:
Tim and Jenni are back from Spring Break! They kick off this week’s episode by discussing the eclipse that captured the world’s attention. Tim shares how he didn’t really care, and Jenni explains how she didn’t know precisely where Arkansas was and the ACTs. They recap their trip out east to Maryland and their impressions of “The City of Brotherly Love,” Philadelphia. The show ends with a beautiful musical number.
This week, Tim and Jenni talk about the early spring blizzard in Minnesota. Then it’s time to get wild because it’s Spring Break 2024! Tim and Jenni talk about their plan to surprise their kids at the airport with a trip to Maryland to visit Tim’s sister. Then they talk about airports and airplanes: when to arrive to the airport for your flight, traveling with kids, Jenni getting through TSA, and Tim’s biggest airplane passenger pet peeve. They talk about their vacation plans, and Jenni reveals just how much she loves Old Bay. We appreciate you being here! Don’t forget to subscribe.
Join Tim and Jenni for some laughs on Episode 7 of The Kids Are In Bed. They recall some stories from their most recent date night: live music, trivia, and Tim being awkward. Then, they direct their attention to this week’s topic: Driving. The pair discuss driving pet peeves, Jenni’s abysmal driving record, and Tim’s alleged traffic violation. Thanks for being here. Don’t forget to subscribe to one (or both) of the links below!
When I started working with a coach in September, I intended to get coaching on finding a new career. I needed someone to help me put together a resume and find something that aligned with what I wanted in life.
My coach, Ally, quickly recognized that I wouldn’t be happy switching to another standard job or career. She encouraged me to read Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. She described it as spiritual and a bit “woo-woo,” so I was unsure if it would be the right fit.
Desperate for answers and direction, I bought the book without thinking. I knew I needed something out of the norm to jump-start my new life, whatever it might turn into.
My mouth hung open as I read the first pages of The Artist’s Way. Never in my life had I seen myself so clearly in someone else’s writing. It was as though someone had downloaded all of my hopes, dreams, and fears, reorganized them into a book about how to put them into practice, and sold them back to me.
I cannot go more than a paragraph in the book without thinking, “Yep, I do that,” or “Do other people think like that, too?” I quit my job within a few weeks of opening the book.
Doing something solely for myself and my mental well-being was a relief. The relief, however, was short-lived when I realized the work was just starting because, for anything to work for me creatively, I needed to do a lot of work on myself.
Shadow-Work, to be precise.
The Artist’s Way is adorned with outstanding inspirational quotes from people throughout history. One name is quoted most frequently—a name familiar to me from studying psychology in college: Carl Jung.
If you’ve taken a Myers-Briggs personality assessment, you are more familiar with Dr. Jung than you realize.
While studying psychology in college, my relationship with Jung’s work was influenced by my relationship with religion as a lapsed Catholic and how his work was taught to me. He was presented as a descendant of Sigmond Freud’s teachings who liked to analyze dreams.
I can’t stand hearing about the nonsense of people’s dreams. So, the idea that analyzing a dream about sorting paper clips in my underwear in an Arby’s with my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Schirmer, would reveal valuable information about my psyche did not lead me to explore more of his teachings.
Rather, it left me to view him as someone who had a few good ideas but was mostly a kook who thought the answers to life’s problems were in our dreams. As a twenty-year-old, that was all I needed to hear to shrug my shoulders, shake my head, and move on to something more concrete and scientific.
Jung’s contention is that we all have traits or interests that we have decided to ignore. Some of these are negative, and some might be positive things we were told to give up on at some point in life by parents and/or perceived authority figures.
“Without a well-developed shadow side, a person can easily become shallow and extremely preoccupied with the opinions of others.”
That sentence defines how I lived the first thirty-nine years of my life.
In my brain, shadow work meant I would need to get spiritual and blame my parents for all of the problems in my life, which were two things I had no interest in doing. So, I ignored the idea altogether.
Reading The Artist’s Way made it clear that avoiding shadow work would not be possible. It is around every corner. To get anywhere, I would need to uncover things that would certainly be uncomfortable and painful at times.
There is one crucial question everyone should ask themselves first and foremost before they dig into their childhood searching for answers about the person they have become as an adult:
Did my parents do the best they could to raise me?
If your immediate and honest answer to that question is yes, you need to understand the work is yours to do.
Chastizing your parents might feel good, but it will not get you further down the road. It will feel nice momentarily, but you will be left battling the same issues. Furthermore, you will have one or two fewer people to turn to for love, guidance, or even a hug.
If your answer to the question is “No,” you need to talk to someone far more qualified to help you out. You do not need advice from a guy who had to fight for his life to earn a 3.0 GPA and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.
For the “yes” people (like me), it’s time to grow up.
As an adult who is white-knuckling through this whole parenting thing right now, there are too many nights I go to sleep wishing I had done better for my kids. I resolve to be a better Dad the next day, but then I invent a new way to screw up.
You know what I don’t need? Having my children recite my ‘greatest hits’ of failures to me twenty or thirty years from now. I wrote the music and lyrics for those chart-toppers; no one knows them better.
You know who else doesn’t need that, your parents.
They are the low-hanging fruit. They are the people desperate for you to visit or pick up the phone and call for an update on your life. You probably aren’t going to go to the effort of tracking down all the bullies and awful teachers who played a significant role in creating your shadow, so don’t put all of it on your parents.
You don’t need to remind them that there were days they couldn’t take it anymore. The days when if they heard “mom” or “dad” one more time, they were sure they would have a psychotic break.
Take a look at your own body of work before blaming it all on your parents.
Does that mean you won’t trace some of your issues back to interactions with your parents?
Of course not.
When I’ve uncovered things, I’ve found that they are mostly silly. They wouldn’t register on my list of events on any given day of my adult life. However, they were devastating to the kid they happened to.
As an adult, it’s silly that I still know the name of the girl who made fun of me for spelling “baby” wrong during my second-grade spelling bee and still, if I’m honest, hold a grudge.
While it has played a prominent role in my avoiding the spotlight for any reason, personally or professionally, I’ve discovered that there is nothing that the girl or I can say about that incident that changes anything about the thirty-one years that have passed since the incident. Not to mention, she is an adult now, and while it was damaging to me, I’d guess she has no recollection of making fun of me.
I have been spending a lot of time rounding up these silly things that make up my shadow and shining lights on them, only to find they aren’t worth thinking about, let alone driving my life choices.
As I write this, I am thirty-nine with two children, ages seven and five.
My parents were my age and had three children (ages 11, 10, and 8) when I was born.
I am going to focus on my father through this example for no other reason than the fact that I grew up with Boomer parents who followed gender norms in the household. In those scenarios, our moms had the advantage of being constantly present. She had the luxury of being the parent who dolled out the love and affection at the steep cost of dealing with endless whining, fights, lying, and my two other siblings, Janie and Dave.
My Dad is the oldest of thirteen. He started delivering milk when he was young and stopped working (for the most part) just a couple of years ago.
He went to college, fought in Vietnam, attended medical school at the University of Minnesota, was a resident at Mayo Clinic, and dedicated his life to treating, healing, and saving thousands of children’s lives while maintaining a marriage and a family. That’s barely scratching the surface of his story, and I’m exhausted.
My Dad cared for every child and family he came across. Going out with him anywhere in Minnesota as a kid was a small taste of what it would be like to have a parent who is a celebrity. We couldn’t go anywhere without a former colleague or patient stopping him to say hello and, usually, thank you.
I have the things I have in this life thanks to the hard work my Dad put in professionally.
Did that mean there were areas where things lacked? Of course. There were events my Dad couldn’t attend when he was on call or had many patients. I don’t have what would be called an affectionate relationship with him; we don’t hug a lot or say, “I love you” often.
It would be easy to use that as the reason I am not where I want to be in my life. It would be lovely to remove myself from all responsibility and pin it on one of the two people who gave me this life.
That is akin to mining for shit in a mountain made of gold.
I didn’t need to do any searching to know my parents gave it their all for me. I can’t exist in a day of my adult life without being able to draw a direct line to them for all of the great things I have in my life.
I’ve found that shadow work is not the search for something or someone to blame for who I am. It’s the search for the person I truly am that I keep hidden away because of something I misinterpreted when I was younger.
For example, I loved when people would stop my Dad and remind him of how he saved their child’s life when they were younger. I craved that kind of attention. I wanted to have a positive effect on people’s lives. Because I wanted that kind of attention, I decided I needed to be my Dad to get it. I spent a lot of my childhood convinced I would be a doctor.
There are easier ways to get that attention, but I was an idiot kid who knew nothing about how the world worked. Is the kid who, with a broken wrist and using a cane due to a snowmobile accident, auditioned for his fifth-grade talent show by lip-syncing “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan a good judge of… anything?
Thoughts like that opened things up for me. I started coming up with more and more until I realized that I had held many beliefs about myself, my abilities, and my weaknesses since I was a kid.
Perpetuating false beliefs I developed in childhood for so long turned me into an idiot adult who doesn’t know anything about how the world works. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized it was ‘peace’ of mind rather than ‘piece’ of mind. So, no, calling myself an idiot isn’t harsh.
If I wasn’t a reliable source of knowing what I wanted to do as a kid, then there is no way I could accurately assess what I couldn’t do as an adult. Nevertheless, I trusted my own perception of what I was capable of, allowing these baseless, limiting thoughts to spread like an infection until I had a long list of things I couldn’t do and a short list of what I could do. The problem was I had no interest in doing any of the stuff on the shortlist.
The only thing that has been a constant want in my life is writing. I have been obsessed with writing for as long as I can remember.
I wish the path I obsess over was more practical, like being an accountant or doing something technology-based. It’s just not the answer for me. Even if I had the aptitude for those things, I’d be miserable doing them.
I have been miserable for a large portion of my life because I lived under the assumption that I needed to keep working through the misery to get the money, life, and time I wanted to pursue my dream. When I looked around, that was how life worked. Over time, this way of life took its toll, so I had no idea who I was anymore.
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do in order to have what you want.”
Margaret Young
So, here I sit, typing away, hoping that Margaret is right about this one. I am doing what I want to do, which brings me more happiness between 8 AM and 5 PM on a weekday than I thought possible.
However, I am still searching for “who I really am.”
The good news? Thirty-nine years of being a moron has given me a lot of good stories and a penchant for good humor. I’ll be sure to bring you more “wisdom” as I pull it out of the shadows.
