Am I A Bad Friend?

Do you ever feel bad for not texting or calling that one friend for 6+ months?

And the last thing you said to them was, “I’ll text you next week!”

And then, once you do think you’re going to text them, you get anxious thinking they’re too busy for whatever you gonna say.

So then you don’t text them.

And you wait.

And then it’s been a year since you last talked to them.

And then you’re even more anxious than the last time!

Just me?

That’s how I feel about this newsletter. So, rip the bandaid off.

Anyways.

Here’s what I’m wrestling with this week… and the last 3 months, since week last spoke:

I’m really curious how much of my life prior to having a kid was attempting to find pursuits that mimicked the biological drive for fatherhood.

That is to say, I found a lot proxy children to raise. Somewhere out there is my neglected inspirational clothing company that’s wondering if its dad is coming back from getting milk and cigarettes.

Mostly whatever the new shiny side hustle was that year but with some other things sprinkled in.

Which is part of why I’ve been struggling to write newsletters. Do I actually like writing for the sake of writing? Or was it something the internet told me I should adopt as a proxy child to give me fulfillment and money down the line.

Honestly hard to tell right now.

All I know is I get 10x or 100x more fulfillment out of being a good dad than writing a good newsletter. Which thankfully is how it should feel.

My observations over the last few months, at least in my corners of the internet, have been the following:

1. Having children is becoming less common but people still need something to parent. The result is hustle culture, TikTok culture, HR culture or therapy culture astroturfing most adult interactions.

2. Everything people do that isn’t attempting to replace parenting is some form of death denialism. Sorry dude but your supplement stack or perfectly optimized workout routine isn’t going to save you.

There is a lot of talk about a purposelessness crisis that young people are going through.

I’m convinced 90% of it is just not having kids.

Now that the baby is less of a blob attached to Mom — although he is still very attached to mom — my job as a dad has kicked into gear and I care so much less about the outcome of everything that isn’t his success.

As a result almost all of my free time and energy has gone from striving pursuits, the proxy children, to decompression pursuits. Letting me pour as much of the energy as I can back into him.

It’s also “cured” a lot of my type A, “it has to go in the calendar or to do list mentality.” The to do list is always full, I’ll get to whatever it is when it’s important! The word optimal isn’t a part of my vocabulary anymore. I once heard parenthood described as one prolonged inconvenience, which is mostly true in the most loving way possible. Everything takes 3 times longer than it should but I promise it’s a good trade.

It’s weird to see that evolution and some of the cognitive dissonance it has generated for me.

I wrote a newsletter a couple years ago about how I couldn’t relate to people who just wanted to watch Netflix after work. Although, maybe that statement still holds water for people who don’t have kids and just want to watch Netflix.

Now all I want to do after the baby goes to bed is sit and watch anything or play a video game for a couple hours before bed.

And, the kicker is, I feel much more content with a simple life. Aside from the lack of sleep… Seriously, if you have any tricks I will trade you a kidney at this point.

I still have too many hobbies or pastimes but at least I no longer feel like a failure when I can’t get to them all.

I’m not gonna sit here and tell you kids are the meaning of life. But they sure do sort out your priorities real fast.

The caveat to all this is that the world is probably still too full of cheap dopamine in junk food, endless catalogues of TV and video games. And, I probably need to fight back more on not picking the cheapest form I can find to decompress EVERY time.

But, if my choices are between: funnel energy into my kid or funnel it into anything else, that’s been an increasingly easy decision.

Who knows, maybe all of this is just a giant cope and I should be working harder.

I don’t know if any of this made sense. More about knocking the dust off and not using AI to write anything this time. It’s turned into a homogenized blob of words, the Dead Internet Theory is no longer a theory.

Words I Wish I Wrote

Links & Learnings

• Deliberate Deoptimization.

• The Dead Internet Theory.

• A spicy take on parenting I mostly agree with. Most of your job as a parent is properly picking the other parent.

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PHOTW (Parenting hack of the week): Productive iPad time Ello or Mentava.