“I’ve never really backed down from my fears, “I explained to Gem. “I’ve faced a lot of stuff that was very scary, but my fear never stood in my way – at least not for very long.”

“I know. It is one of the things I most respect about you.”

“But this…this scares me and it’s why I haven’t dealt with it before.”

Let’s call the boss of my boss, Bear. He intimidates the shit out of me and while he says he doesn’t mean to do that to people, I think he really does. He does play the power game and is happy to push you as far as he can until you crack. I don’t believe for one second he thinks I am irreplaceable – in his opinion, everyone can be replaced. And even better, they often can be replaced more cheaply. He’ll save money by squeezing the people who work there for a few months and then he will hire a replacement at a significantly lower salary. If this “management style” resulted in lower costs for our customers that would be understandable. But we’re a non-profit with a set, guaranteed, yearly income. He does this solely to make himself look good to the board at the cost of employee effectiveness and morale.

Recently, he handed me my third job with no pay increase or even a “thanks.” (more…)

One of the things I have tried to do, but feel is essentially impossible to actually get across is to explain to expecting parents that once your child is born EVERYTHING CHANGES. I don’t just mean the way we live our lives, the lack of time, the sense of chaos, the exhaustion. I’m talking about everything – even down to seemingly little things like movies. Even movies we saw before our Okapis were born are different now. That has never been so true as last night when we watched Footloose with Kevin Bacon.

We have seen Footloose several times and when we found it was on – and we both wanted to watch it, surprisingly – we settled onto our couch and got ready to watch an enjoyable flick.

We were both caught off guard by how much we were affected by scenes we had already seen many times before. (more…)

“Are you still here,” my wife yelled downstairs.

Because of my slightly passive/aggressive nature, but more because of my true understanding of “It just doesn’t fucking matter” culture at my organization, I’ve been taking a later train more mornings than not. It means my mornings are not so rushed, I get slightly more sleep, have more time to stretch and ride my back, and get to see my Okapis every morning. Not a bad deal. On the other hand, I’m like those old Army commercials where I do more before 9am than most people do in a day.

This morning for some reason both Okapis cried as I left and I have no idea why. (more…)

I had a rare treat yesterday afternoon. I got to watch sports with my Okapis. Much to my chagrin, Gem doesn’t like sports at all and I don’t get to watch much of them. I get my fix of SportsCenter in the morning while the house is still filled with the steady breathing of my sleeping family, but that is about it. I try to read sports news during the day, but there is nothing like seeing sports live – rather than just highlights.

Yesterday, we watched the end of the British Open – one of golf’s most important tournaments. It is often played on a terribly difficult course and many a great player has been humiliated there. One of the hardest parts of watching sports live is watching someone collapse, throw away a potential win because they made one or two very bad plays. Golf, especially, is cruel that way. One hole can truly make or break you – especially if it is the last hole, the 18th.

When we tuned in yesterday, Padraig Harrington was having a horrible 18th hole. His tee shot bounced most of the way along the walkway over the stream that runs through the course. Most of the way. Before it fell in. He had to drop another ball, which counts as his second shot and had to collect himself before what was now his third. As soon as he hit his third shot his face revealed that it was a bad one. It, yet again, went into the water and he had to drop another ball. He started the 18th winning by one stroke and finished it losing by one stroke.

It was obvious he was unhappy, but with thousands of people watching you, not to mention the millions on television, what can you do to make yourself feel better?

Then his little boy came running out to give him a hug. I had seen his mother holding him back from running to see his daddy earlier, but this time she either didn’t react fast enough or realized daddy needed this as much as his little boy. His boy, no more than 6 or so, had no idea what was going on – he just wanted to give his daddy a big hug. Harrington opened his arms as his boy charged him head first. Once his boy was in his arms he lifted him upside down before they hugged.

I pointed this out to my Okapis, showing them another father who loves his boy, who clearly understood about the priorities of life. Sports are very important, but not as important as family.

I was struck by two things. One, how our children, even though they don’t really understand it, can mean so much to us, can make us feel better when everything feels so bad. I feel this regularly as work gets worse and worse, but my relationship with my Okapis gets stronger and stronger. Two, was how the announcers actually talked about perspective, about how special the moment was instead of dwelling on Harrington’s collapse. Fatherhood as salvation, as having a healing power, instead of it being a distraction or something frowned upon as it has been for a long time.

With so many successful men becoming fathers recently (Tiger Woods and Jeff Gordon to name only a couple), there has been so much talk in the world of sports about how it will negatively affect their game, the time they can devote to practicing and preparing, to their mental concentration. But fatherhood can also add a sense of perspective and a deeper sense of strength, of purpose to men who may have only thought winning was important.

Will fatherhood make them better competitors? Maybe, maybe not. But will it make them better people if they allow it to? Absolutely!

It just doesn’t seem possible to describe what it is like to be the love of your daughter’s life. My sister has been in town for the past several days and Gem remarked to her that Jordyn is in love with me. And it is completely true. My little girl adores me. She thinks up new ways to show me how much she loves me through drawings, crafts, and, of course, hugs and kisses. Last night at dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, she sat on my lap before dessert arrived and kept coming up with different flavors of kisses (especially pineapple and coconut) for me to make sure I would know she loves me. As if it wasn’t obvious.

As if the feeling wasn’t mutual. (more…)

In my second of two days of mourning I am realizing more and more about how devastating an impact my mother’s intentional absence from my life is. Last week a friend of mine from work asked me for lunch. I thought she was joking and didn’t even respond until she said something later and I realized she was serious. Then a couple of days ago I had a similar incident with a friend who is leaving our organization (lucky guy!). His going away party is today and I had a previous lunch scheduled. I asked him if he would mind if I missed it and he reacted rather sarcastically, before he said, “OF COURSE I would be UPSET!” and I realized what an idiot I was being.

If my mother doesn’t love me, if my mother doesn’t want to speak to me, why would anyone else? (more…)