I Got a Job (or How Going to Dad 2.0 Changed My Life)

I got a job.

Rather, I should say, I got a new job, as I already had several jobs both paid and unpaid. The most important and lowest paying one, Father, is easily also the most grueling and most worthwhile. But earlier this year, I decided to look for an additional new challenge.

Something that I could get excited about doing every day and be proud to share with people I meet.

Something that would get me back to being a professional people-person. And not just people in diapers.

Though overdue, I procrastinated the search knowing that it would likely be a major challenge I “didn’t have time for”. Or that’s what I kept telling myself. But then a magical thing happened. I found inspiration in possibly both the most, and also the least, obvious place for me: Houston, Texas.

One only eats things like this in Texas. 

Since I live in Los Angeles, what in Houston could make a loyal West Coaster decide to change his life? Beside good Bar-B-Que, of course. The Dad 2.0 conference. When I attended the second annual conference early this year, I wasn’t sure exactly why I went. Beyond the opportunity to meet and spend time with an amazing group of writers from around the globe, I knew there had to be another reason. Turns out, it was finding a new life path.

At that conference, I spoke to several great Dudes who each inspired me in their own ways. They are all tremendous writers and even better people. So I wanted to thank a few of them for their incredible support, encouragement and friendship of this Dude.

·         Jim Lin: Though I don’t remember the exact dialogue, I’ll never forget Jim’s “Three-Headed Dad” speech where he literally proved just how many hats Fathers really do wear.  Sure, we are parents to our children, and as I mentioned above, that is easily the most important hat we wear, but it’s the other hats we wear that shape us as parents, spouses, employees, consumers and more. Jim’s inspiration extended beyond the conference as I sought to blaze a new trail toward the future.

·         Alan Kercinik: I’d never heard of Alan’s blog before his address at the conference and was quickly blown away by some of the observations this advertising guru presented to a motley crew of Dads. Approachable and open-minded to helping some Dude he’d similarly never heard of before, Alan’s encouragement led me down the path to where I am today.

·         Ron Mattocks: Ron’s practical advice as a Social Media professional gave me the courage to look for new options and really try to find my way toward something great. Ron gave me great inside information that I was able to utilize in my search process. 

·         C.C. Chapman: C.C. gave an inspiring keynote at the inaugural Dad 2.0 in Austin last year and we became Facebook friends sometime after that. When I introduced myself in person this year in Houston, there were two things I wanted to talk to him about: a book and a tattoo.  Just before the conference, I’d noticed a picture on C.C.’s Facebook feed of a tattoo he’d recently gotten that said “Not All Who Wander Are Lost”. That quote was familiar to me from my days following the Grateful Dead, as I remember it emblazoned on t-shirts at Dead shows in the early 1990s. I discovered that it’s a J.R.R. Tolkien quote from Lord of the Rings, and is something I’ve thought a lot about during the last few months of my quest. 

      The quote was apropos when considered alongside C.C.’s book that had been recently published before the conference, Amazing Things Will Happen. I asked a little about the book and C.C. generously offered to send me a copy, which he promptly did and for which I am extremely thankful because I am happy to report that, just a few months later, amazing things have happened to me. Not only did I find an amazing new career, but I found one with a company that respects families and encourages its employees to be active parents via extremely flexible work schedules. For this, I am grateful. 

You  might be wondering why I am telling you about this stuff that really doesn’t fit into the greater parenting theme of this blog. The reality is, without this blog, I never would have gotten the job. When I started writing this blog 2+ years ago, the shoot-for-the-moon goal I had in mind was to parlay it into writing for television. A friend encouraged me to start a blog as a way to keep practicing my craft while building a portfolio. So I did, and subsequently discovered this incredibly supportive community which I’ve developed through Social Media. My blog’s Social pages are not the biggest, nor will they ever be, but they are strong enough that they have led to amazing friendships and opportunities, like attending the Dad 2.0 Conferences. And they led to a Management position for an established Social Media company that works with some of the largest corporations in the world, who I am already working with after just a few weeks.

To quote the great poet Robert Hunter “Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

It’s true, C.C., amazing things can happen.

I’m living proof.  

I highly recommend that you grab a copy of C.C.'s book. 

You can find "Amazing Things Will Happen" here on Amazon. 

And if you don't already know the Dudes mentioned above, click the links on their names and check out their great blogs. Trust me. 

Late Night Baby BBQ

As you know from New Kid in Town, I was lucky enough to win a pass to the Dad 2.0 Summit in Austin, Texas recently.  It was quite an experience and I made some great friends there while learning how to improve my blogging skills. If you consider them skills.

Because I booked my plane ticket last minute, I flew in a day early because the ticket cost half the price. It was also a great excuse to spend some time with an old college friend I hadn’t seen in many years.  Christy is the proud mother of a beautiful 4-month-old little girl, “Baby E”. Jeff is a great Dude who not only owns one of the best clothing stores in Austin, downSTAIRS Apparel, but is also a well known DJ in town.  It was very refreshing to see their relaxed, yet progressive, parenting style but I would expect nothing less in the town that brought us Whole Foods.  

Christy picked me up at the airport around 8:00pm, baby in tow.  We headed back to their house and caught up on the last few years. She and I had been very close in college, but geography and life happened and we basically fell out of touch. If not for the magic of Facebook over the last couple years, I wouldn’t have known where she was or what she was up to in life. Or what she had for dinner last Tuesday.

My hosts asked what I wanted to for dinner, and after much deliberation, we settled on an authentic Texas BBQ joint called Uncle Billy’s around 9:30pm. Since Austin is 2 hours ahead of LA, dinner was right on schedule for me.  We jumped in the car, with the baby and Zucca, their fluffy chocolate poodle, and headed out for the night.  

This was only part of our meal.

The weather was Texas perfect, right around 72 moist degrees.  As we sat on the patio and caught up on life we ate amazing smoked turkey, juicy brisket & ribs.  The onion rings were the size of small tires and must have been fried in the sweat of angels.  As we ate and laughed, Baby E napped in her infant seat then after a while she woke up and watched us eat.  Even though it was almost 11:30pm when we left, she was perfectly content and happy to be with us. So was her doggy/brother who was lucky enough to find some gristly bones to gnaw on.  

Sleeping beauty

We got home and Baby E had a nightcap from the fountain, then went to bed around 12:30am. She quickly passed out and the grownups stayed up to talk more about people and places from our pasts, present and future.  Just as we regularly did in Columbus many years ago, we stayed up chatting until 3:00am. The big difference is that back then we could sleep until noon the next day with the only consequence being possibly facing the wrath of an angry professor. Now we were at the whim of a sweet cherub, who thankfully slept long enough for us all to get some rest.

Everyone parents differently.  Whether you’ve read 20 parenting books or none and just fly by the seat of your pants, a lot of babies’ tendencies are environmental.  For Baby E, the child of night owls, it was no big deal to stay up and out late. If she was just going to hang out in her infant seat, it didn’t really matter whether we were home or out.  And the flexibility Christy and Jeff are instilling in her will greatly benefit her as she grows.  I’ve known many kids, from infancy through adulthood, who have been the product of strict or rigid parenting and have noticed that, in many cases, it sets them up to be rigid and inflexible adults.

When my Little Dude was born, if we had somewhere to go we took him whether it was to restaurants, parties, etc.  That’s not to say we took him to midnight screenings of Harry Potter (mainly because even I wouldn’t go to that), but we also didn’t have to be home at 5:30 so he could have dinner and go to bed at 6:30. Now that he’s 2+, it’s a little more tricky, but we still try to be flexible when possible. 

I give Christy and Jeff major props for dictating Baby E’s life, not the other way around. It’s easy to get caught in self-inflicted baby related traps that can be nearly impossible to break out of.  But sometimes when it’s late and you need a platter of lean brisket and hot links, you just have to go with the flow and know that the baby will not break as a result. 

Austin is likely as close as I'll ever get to Luckenbach, Texas. 

Here's one of my favorite tunes nonetheless. 

New Kid In Town

Remember the first day of school and how much it always sucked?  If you were new in the neighborhood, maybe you’d met a neighbor or two who offered to show you the ropes. Or maybe everyone was a jerk. Either way, you had to go and make the best of it and hopefully get something out of the experience.

Much like when I started 10^th grade, I had a similar experience attending the inaugural Dad 2.0 Summit bloggers conference in Austin, Texas recently.  After attending a local meetup for attendees, I was the lucky winner of a free pass to the event.  It was a little nerve-wracking to travel to an event with 200 dudes that I didn’t know and had to make new friends. In hindsight, I should have brought candy. Or, after meeting this group, liquor.

Let me preface things by saying that the weather in Texas sucked.  It was almost like if a typhoon and a hurricane had a baby in a Wal-Mart bathroom.  It was cold, wet, ugly and generally depressing.  But since I grew up in Ohio, it wasn’t that big of a difference to me.  

The view from my room upon arrival. 

The Hyatt Lost Pines is quite a distance from Austin proper. Once I got to the property, it was a few miles down a curvy road to the resort.  As a very curious person, I had to wonder why the posted speed limit on that road was 19mph. Not 20. Not 15.  As we got closer, another sign listed the limit as 11mph. As a generally curious person, I had to know why. I asked at the front desk, waiting for a quirky or creative Texan answer and all I got was an “Idaknow”.  Based on his eloquence, that guy must be a writer.

At the kickoff party that night, I quickly ran into the 3 people I’d met in LA and they introduced me to some other people and so on and so forth. My nerves were quickly settled, even though as a novice blogger in a world of big timers, I felt like a rookie called up to the big leagues for the first time.  The people I met were very friendly and outgoing while offering real insight and advice that was very useful.  So thank you to whoever paid for the open bar.

The peanut butter cookies were epic.

Over the next 3 days we ate more varieties of meat than I think are even legal in California. I think I saw something green to eat once during my trip, but it might have just been a bug or a napkin.  They fed us amazing homemade cookies at 10:30am each day, presumably to inspire us to behave for the keynote speakers.  That seemed ironic to me since most parents wouldn’t give their generally unruly kids cookies in order to get them to sit still for an extended period of time. 

I heard some great speakers, including both the opening and closing keynote speakers who detailed their experiences fighting the inner-ear malady tinnitus. My guess is they were kidnapped from a nearby hearing aid conference.

I gained practical advice from some amazing panels of expert bloggers who probably didn’t realize how inspirational they were to a newbie like me. Sometimes I just listened to their conversations and learned, like the previously mentioned rookie watching a veteran slugger taking batting practice at Spring Training.

I got to test drive the new Honda Pilot, which inspired me to want to figure out how to make money blogging since my own Pilot just turned 8 years old.  I learned that you shouldn’t call those famous building toys “Legos”. They are referred to as “Lego Bricks”.  They can also be referred to as “@$!#$!” after you step on them with your bare feet after giving them to your kid when you get home from a long trip.  I drank root beer after eating some fiery New Orleans-style beans and rice. This was primarily notable because I hadn’t had a root beer in over 20 years. So I had like 9 of them.  Even modesty is bigger in Texas.

I met some great writers whose work I’d admired from afar that I can now call friends.  I’ve also located a network of great writers who all live within 15 minutes of me whom I’d had no idea about just a few weeks ago.  And I learned that if you think it’s smart to go out at 1am in a city you don’t know, stick to McDonald’s and save yourself a big chunk of time.