Dad Balls

I drove to Dallas this week with Tim Ferris. Actually, I drove to Dallas with his voice. (*looks at audiobook*) Nope. I drove to Dallas with Ray Porter, who read me a bunch of stuff Tim wrote but…you get it.

For anyone that has somehow avoided the feverish hype surrounding the legend of Tim Ferris, let me explain….no, there is too much, let me sum up:

He started a supplements business, made a bunch of money, then wrote a book called The 4 Hour Work Week. You have likely heard of this book if you watch any established youtuber or have a moderately driven or interesting friend. If you haven’t heard of this book, consider me your new friend, as I am both moderately driven and mildly interesting.

The premise behind the book is that you can effectively reduce your working hours, through improving efficiency, from 40 hours per week to 4. He talks about a ton of useful stuff that I don’t want to summarize here because that’s a lazy way to write content. This isn’t a book report, but it is absolutely a glowing endorsement for Tim Ferris’ content as an inspirational springboard and a self-reflective meditation on the ways in which we all waste the most valuable asset in our lives: time.

So yea, buy the book. (here)

As I drove the monotonous hours to Dallas in the soothing company of Ray Porter, I had a number of revelatory moments. I’ve spent the last 7 years attempting to raise a precocious,  witty, kind, empathetic and amazing young girl.

Becoming a father or mother is one of the easiest and most common things on the planet and yet is one of the most remarkably profound shifts in a person’s existence. It’s easy to make a kid, it’s super difficult to effectively enact the junk that follows.

Make sure they’re educated, and socialized and active and well rested, and fed and bathed and nurtured and cared for and loved and do so while enduring the part of life that typically sits squarely in the deepest depth of financial and personal instability. Friends are leaving or making their own kids, or practicing making kids with someone else that’s monopolizing their time. You’ve maybe begun a career, or “real” job (look, there are no real jobs, it’s all work, some stuff just garners more respect from stupid, shallow people), and while you begin to grasp the outer edges of financial independence from this new job, maybe you buy a house and that house manages to help you find places to put all of your new found “adult” money. Like the sewer line and the water heater and those ugly baseboards that your girlfriend hates and thinks should be whatever grey color Chip and Joanna always use on that TLC show. Midway through asking a Home Depot employee what the hell shiplap is you get a phone call, or a text or maybe a page over the intercom: Whatever you found yourself in the middle of will now be an incomplete sentence because that girlfriend did not, in fact, have a period.

This is the way that every single one of us got here. I’ve never met a parent who wasn’t completely terrified at the prospect of pregnancy. If they aren’t, maybe we’ve done a bad job of covering the responsibility that fatherhood/motherhood entails. I was 25 when my daughter was born and absolutely dumber than any twenty-five year old you may be imagining right now. I was making $8 an hour, had shaggy, unkempt hair, and deeply believed in the cavernous depths of my soul that my band was going to make it big despite the fact that I had a total of three “fans”, two of which were family. Like I said, I wasn’t bright. 

Have you ever heard of parallax? It’s when the background moves at a different speed than the foreground in movies or games or visual media. Michael Bay uses it alot in closeups leading to dramatic action (he is also criminally underrated but that’s another blog). Holding my daughter for the first time, roughly 9 months after the fearful discovery of her existence, was parallax. The world moving at different speeds. She was in complete and perfect focus, a stand still in my arms, and the world around me spun with enormous speed and high octane energy. I did not make enough money. I didn’t have the means to give this girl the life I wanted to give her. We will leave off the complexities of juggling a healthy relationship while all of this was going on, partly out of respect and also because I obviously have no idea how to maintain romantic relationships. I have a pretty bad track record and recognize that I’m definitely the common denominator. I’m an okay dad, I’m a pretty bad boyfriend. 

So while the world spins around me, I realize the true scope of my poverty, I begin to realize that I will not actually be a famous musician, I understand that I’m a child holding a child and I should find an adult.  This terror crystalized into something I’ve decided to call Dad Balls. It’s a startling courage and drive to achieve and pursue things you otherwise would have never considered before you were fully responsible for providing for a tiny human. I like the name because it is crass and juvenile and, I hope, offensive to someone. 

I said I was a father, not that I was mature. Maturity happens at 55 or whenever they let you get cheaper movies and closer parking spots. I’m a ways off still.

I began immediately refocusing at work, searching for other opportunities that would pay more, firstly, and allow less work, secondly. Is this lazy? If you’ve been raised in the US of A, it probably sounds that way but I want to let you in on a secret: Your child will grow so much quicker than any career you may be chasing. The scale is logarithmic in nature and I don’t care if you just started the next Google, your kid will get big faster than your search engine and you will miss things that genuinely never ever come back. The American fetishization of work, and overtime, and fatigue is a tragedy. Exhaustion being used as a defining personality trait is almost as terrible as the girls that put stuff about tacos in their bios on Tinder. We are better than this. You are more than your job , you are more than your exhaustion, you are more than an affection for Mexican-American cuisine.

Tyler Durden agrees with this sentiment.

Which brings us full circle to Tim Ferris and the 4 Hour Work Week. I’m lucky, skipping over a ton of details, I found a fancy job, got promoted within the first 3 months and roughly tripled my salary. I had a prestigious title, worked on technical junk all day long and had a fulfilling career building out nerdy computer stuff for schools. I had more time with my daughter and had bought my own house after breaking things off with her mom. I was the stereotypical, independent twenty-something with a cubicle and everything. I was a Zach Braff movie.

But I needed more. And THAT, is due to the Dad Balls. It’s something that I think every single person feels. Deep down, if you’re reading this and being honest with yourself, you aren’t reaching your fullest potential. You could do better. You could achieve SO. MUCH. MORE. 

So why aren’t you?

It’s not a lack of money, or time or whatever generic excuse we generally use. It’s a lack of honest, self evaluation. Maybe you’re super happy at your job. Congrats! That’s cool. I’m not saying you should quit. I’m saying that if you are not constantly and enthusiastically pursuing something, you are absolutely wasting your very short time on this planet. And if you’re a parent, you are setting a terrible example for that kid. Children learn by watching us and seeing what we value, how we speak, and who we interact with. Make those parts of your life exciting and inspiring. My band won’t be famous, but giving up that dream when Hazel was born killed something inside of me and it was so hard to get it back. It was unfair to my child, during those two years I set aside my music, because she had an incomplete father. I wasn’t sharing the depth of my passions with her. Money is easy to give. Sharing your dreams is something far more precious.

Know what else I was passionate about? Video. I love making films and telling stories. My day job allowed for a little of that but I wanted more. I wanted to make it everything. I was approached about an opening at an oil and gas company needing a media director and I hesitated. 

I had a great job, making more money than I’d ever made, and I was doing much more “important” work for the freaking government. I had fantastic friendships with two people I still consider among my very best and most important friends. They encouraged me, but wouldn’t tell me what to do. The pay cut was substantial. Life changingly substantial, in the wrong direction. The company seemed willing to help me grow my skill set though. They promised potential to build my own team. It was tough.

I actually made a pro-con list. Like, on yellow legal paper and everything. As I was wrestling with the columns and weighing each line item, the decision was made for me. A co-worker, one of those people you only really meet in cube farms, came by to kill time in my office and talked about nothing for a while. One of those people that audibly says “knock knock” as they stand near the opening of your felt covered prison cell and smiles in a super punchable way. I laughed hollowly at the bad jokes and platitudes about management and realized, mid laughter, that this is 100% not going to be where I will retire.

I crumbled my list, turned to my computer and drafted my two weeks. I called the oil and gas company and accepted the job.

I was a Multimedia Designer for a national oil and gas company. I had a desk in the corner office with a door that shut. I had two computers for business use and a credit card. And it was completely M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E. I wasn’t building cool content. I was making weirdly political Facebook posts about Trump tax policy under the micro-managerial eyes of the CEO and CIO. I was organizing thousands of files and renaming them to post in a list for the website. I traced pictures in illustrator for hours of hose fittings and tiny screws. I went from implementing technology solutions for entire school districts by myself, overcoming cool problems and configuring equipment worth more than my house, to making sure that a picture being used on a website had a black person in it so we could appear more diverse. 

Hollow doesn’t even begin to describe it. I was laid off when oil prices crashed and my exit interview was less than one minute.

“We’ve decided to let you go.” 

“Okay.” 

“You can gather your stuff this morning.”

“Alright man. Thanks for the opportunity.”

I thanked the dude that was letting me go. The dude that I took at $15,000 per year pay cut to work for and the dude, who would now be able to cut costs and hire some poor college grad to rename files and write political propaganda on behalf of the company.

Honestly, everyone won.

I refocused, spent a lot of time figuring out that the job market in my hometown isn’t super stoked on a 31 year old without a degree and over a decade of experience in IT work.

This should have been rock bottom. It should have been panic and fatigue and anger and tears. And yea, it definitely felt that way at points, but, it all passed. Like one of life’s many tiny kidney stones it was pissed out into the ether and I realized that I was given a gift that only looked like a punishment. What’s the opposite of a Trojan Horse? Bareback? That’s a bad joke about condoms.

Regardless, I was forced to double down. I was forced to look at my business as an opportunity to spend even more time with my amazing daughter. More time creating fulfilling films for amazing couples and businesses. I was able to grow my brand and begin honing my craft in a way I had never done before. I had time. I had fear, and most importantly, perhaps, I had Dad Balls. 

I hope you listen to the Tim Ferris book. It’ll be linked below and is worth whatever you pay for it. I hope you wake up tomorrow understanding that you have purpose and defining characteristics beyond whatever you do for money. I hope you share your passions with your kids, or your friends or your spouse or whoever you practice making kids with.

I hope you find your Dad Balls.

Stuff referenced above and thus linked below:

The 4 hour Work Week Book: GIMME THAT BOOK

My cool business: Petrichor Company

(If you buy through links on the site it will likely give me a small commission that helps keep the site running and almost buys me a latte sometimes. So thanks)