Link to Part 10

When my daughter switched school districts it became clear that I needed a steady job. Though less lucrative than it had once been, my business was still running. But we weren’t sufficiently well-off that I could justify not re-entering the workforce in some way. And even if we were, I was afraid of appearing lazy by focusing on my own interests rather than what was best for my family.

There was just one minor problem, and that was that I found myself absolutely and totally incapacitated by the very thought of doing so. My inability to take action was so extreme that it felt as though something was physically holding me back. I hadn’t applied for a job in almost twenty years, and the prospect of having to do it again – interviewing, playing politics, kissing ass – was daunting. Hell, I didn’t enjoy that stuff even when I did it semi-regularly.

As always, my mental state played a huge role. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was still recovering from the major life changes that occurred – or were thrust upon me – after my daughter was born. I had been forced to put my career on hold, had spent the better part of a decade finding purpose elsewhere in spite of extensive programming telling me that my primary value was in how I made my living, and was now being expected to resume some sort of career.

And then there’s anxiety. My anxiety disorder is so all-encompassing that it is visible on Google Earth. Or rather, it used to be before I made a formal request that it be censored. Google may be an entity so evil that their former slogan, “Don’t be evil”, meets the legal definition of gaslighting, but to their credit they did respect my privacy and censor my anxiety from view.

Perhaps it was the thought of being faced with such a major life change. Perhaps it was the thought of not having some semblance of control of my daily life for the first time in nearly twenty years. Perhaps it was the knowledge that by getting a job I’d be essentially admitting that my business had failed. Sure, it wouldn’t have been my fault; I didn’t ask to give up control of my business to become a stay-at-home parent. But there was no way that voice in my head wasn’t going to tell me that if I’d worked just a little harder at it before my daughter was born, I wouldn’t be in such dire straits now.

Another reason for my inability to put myself out there was my impostor syndrome. If I couldn’t see sufficient worth in myself to make friends or even to be social half the time, what chance did I have of impressing an employer? Given the enormous gap in my resume, I was convinced that any respectable business would have been crazy to take a chance on me.

By this point, it was clear that the situation had caused severe strain in my marriage and I had to figure things out or risk losing everything I held dear. Please understand that during this time, I was not simply hiding from the problem, or hoping for some deux ex machina to intercede on my behalf. For all my faults, I’ve never been lazy. Unsure? Maybe. Afraid of making a bad choice? No doubt. But in this case, I was working hard to get my brain to a place of sufficient health to proceed.

I looked into positions related to my business, thinking that the extensive expertise I had in that field could prove useful to an employer. But I didn’t get far into my search before my efforts were tabled by the Coronavirus. It wasn’t until months into the pandemic that I managed to resume. But the process proved difficult, and before long I took a job that I found beneath me.

(I realize that that last comment sounds elitist and privileged as hell. For the record, I do not actually believe that any job is beneath me, certainly not at this point in my life. However, much like being a stay-at-home parent, it wasn’t a job I could ever have imagined myself doing prior to actually doing it.)

The nature of the job doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that it was semi-solitary, meaning less chance of breathing in somebody’s Covid vapors. This was months before I was vaccinated, and the thought of contracting the virus and passing it along to my loved ones was, frankly, terrifying. The job required me to get up at 5:00 AM five days a week, and for much of the time that I was doing it I was out of the house approximately ten hours at a time. Additionally, weekends and evenings were not off the table, especially in the beginning. It was tiring, and at times it was really stressful, but it was something I could handle.

It wasn’t the greatest job out there. It wasn’t the most glamorous, or the highest-paying. But my ability to do it wasn’t affected by the psychological barriers that had inhibited me for so long, and that was the only thing that mattered in that moment. I got the hang of it quickly, and I was really good at it. Reviewing my work, a client said I was a god. And that was maybe two months into it! Further praise from satisfied individuals followed, and would have proven one hell of an ego boost if I’d not been too exhausted to appreciate it.

I held the job for several years, and the sense of accomplishment I got from it made a huge difference in my mental health. Sometimes when things feel particularly dire I try to remember how it felt. It’s been a long time since I experienced that sense of purpose and pride, and I’d very much like to again. Plus the money I was making may not have been what I made when my business was at its peak, but it gave my self-esteem a needed boost. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m unable to shake the notion that I’m only as good as the last time I got paid.

Right now I can’t get past the fact that everything I did – every 5:00 alarm, every late night, every $50-to-$60 tank of gas, every bit of stress I experienced on the job – ultimately counted for nothing.

Up next: Conclusion, wherein I conclude this long, unwieldy mess.

Link to Part 9

(cw: child abuse)

Okay, I lied.

Despite the promise I made in the teaser at the end of the previous post, there is no way to completely undo the mistakes your parents made. Sure, you can take steps to correct these mistakes; taking your mental health seriously and seeing a therapist seems to work wonders, although I don’t recommend you wait until your forties like I did.

No, as I’ve stated previously, the closest you’ll actually get to a do-over is to be aware of what your parents did wrong and strive to not make those same mistakes. Of course, you’ll make your own mistakes, because parenting is in no way an exact science. There is no definitive instruction manual, nor do children display error messages one can type into Google in order to find solutions. Plus, kids are always growing and changing, installing new software updates if you will. All you can do is parent them to the best of your ability, accept that something you did might someday inspire your kid to seek therapy, and hope it’s more “embarrassed them in front of their friends by being uncool” and less “carelessly caused easily-preventable harm”.

My father raised me as best as he could. He never beat me, never threw household objects in the direction of my head with intent to injure me. That’s what his father did. And while I have no basis for this assumption, I’m going to guess that my grandfather, miserable and abusive though he was, didn’t terrorize or physically injure his kids quite as abominably as his own father did him and his siblings. (Which is not to excuse any of it.) But whether it’s physical or sexual abuse, neglect, gaslighting, narcissism, or even just gross negligence that we suffered, I like to think that most of us are capable at some point – maybe not while it’s happening, maybe not for years after it stops, and maybe not without the help of a mental health professional – of recognizing that what we went through is not normal or healthy, and then find it in ourselves to do better.

Even before I realized just how many missteps my parents made, I had already identified problematic child-rearing behavior in my extended family. Long before my daughter was born – hell, before my wife and I had even met – I saw things that made me say, “Okay, I’m never doing that.” And yeah, people without kids talk a big game about the compromises they see other parents making, insist they’ll never make the same ones, and then immediately backpedal once they have kids and realize some of the compromises they previously condemned are part of an ongoing negotiation that comes with being a parent.

At the end of the day, who cares if the kid wears Spider-Man pajamas out of the house? They’re fun and they’re comfortable, and besides, you’re just going to the grocery store. Let them wear the pajamas so they can pretend to be everyone’s favorite friendly-neighborhood wall-crawler or you’re never going to leave. Plus, you have given your child agency – I got to choose what I wanted to wear! – and you’ve allowed them to use their imagination, because any kid wearing Spidey jammies in the car is probably imagining they’re swinging on webs from building to building as you drive to the store.

Sure, when my daughter was a baby I hoped that when she was old enough to pick her clothes she’d opt to wear something other than a princess dress, a reflective construction worker vest, or last year’s Halloween costume when we ran errands. But suddenly she’s three and her whole universe depends on her being a princess at Target. You learn to pick your battles.

Beyond that, I was giving my daughter the freedom to be herself. In that moment, for reasons I can’t fathom, wearing something batshit crazy allowed her to do that. Ultimately it does no harm, and if anyone at Target judged me for letting her do it, they were either not a parent, or else they were the sort of parent whose kids currently resent them.

(Also, don’t shop at Target if you’ve got other options. Fuck them and their racist, anti-LGBTQIA+ garbage.)

But the aforementioned problematic child-rearing behavior I saw in my extended family is nothing as innocuous as superhero jammies. I’m talking about demonstrating in front of an impressionable child just how tenuous your relationship is by arguing vehemently in front of them, or even fighting. I’m talking about using the child as a pawn in your petty marital conflicts. I’m talking about being so suffocatingly overprotective that you install iron bars on their windows and then insist they sleep in your bed until it’s years past the point of being acceptable, thereby instilling in the child a sense of fear so all-encompassing that it makes me look like Daredevil. You know, the Man Without Fear.

Every time I consider that my parents may have screwed me up somewhat, I usually feel gratitude that I’m not the cousin who went through everything I described in the previous paragraph. Still, I don’t let them off the hook. Beyond the aforementioned “something to fall back on” line, I was also told that while my parents loved me, I shouldn’t expect anyone else to. Now, that’s not necessarily the exact wording they used. I don’t even remember it being said, but my mom does. And as with the other line, I understand her reason for saying it; she was trying to keep me grounded and create realistic expectations so that I didn’t go through life with delusions of grandeur and expect that people were going to fall down at my feet and worship me.

Or was she trying to further my dependence on her and my father? I suppose it’s possible. Maybe it’s even probable. Honestly, I don’t want to know. It’s not like I’m going to confront them and tell them what awful parents they were. I’m sure they already have a pretty good idea; I doubt either of them look at me and think, “Damn, we really knocked it out of the park with this guy.” But you know who does have thoughts like that? Me, every time I think about my daughter. And that’s what I mean by a do-over childhood.

Oh, is this where I’m supposed to mention that the reason my daughter is so capable, so high-functioning, and so successful is that I analyzed my own damage, learned from my parents’ mistakes, and did the opposite? Any praise of my daughter is praise of my parenting skills as well. As I said previously, I mention this a lot.

Up next: Back to Work, wherein I go back to work.

Link to Part 8

(cw: child abuse)

Once my daughter switched districts, I couldn’t discern my purpose. I didn’t even know who I was, really. Maybe I should have spent some of my stay-at-home Dad years figuring it out because obviously that era was destined to end eventually. My daughter was nine years old; though I had been taking her to school in the mornings and picking her up in the afternoons right up until the switch and would have continued to do so had she remained where she was, the fact is that she was less dependent on me than she was when she was five. So it was inevitable that there would come a time when stay-at-home parenthood ended for me and I segued into some other phase of life. It was necessary for my daughter’s independence.

In other words, I had to put my own needs aside for the sake of her well-being. And I hate to keep beating the “my parents didn’t know what they were doing” dead horse and I hate to suggest that the reason my daughter is so well adjusted is because I learned from my parents’ mistakes and vowed to do better than they did*, but I really wish my parents had the same foresight and the same consideration for what was best for me and for my independence.

*Okay, no. I don’t actually hate this. I’m proud of it, and I bring it up in therapy as well as in casual conversation as often as I possibly can. Keep an eye out; I’m sure to mention it again.

My mother lives to be useful. My father too, to an extent, though in a more misanthropic way than my mother does. I don’t believe I cooked a meal for myself until I was a legal adult, or at least until I was in my late teens. This is either because my mother needed to have purpose more than she needed to know I possessed basic life skills, or because she thought I was too stupid to figure out how to microwave a TV dinner according to the package instructions, and she figured it would be easier to do it for me than to try and teach me to do it myself.

If it’s the latter, I realize it speaks more to the nature of my upbringing, or at least to their inability to guide me, than it does to my actual intelligence or capability. Either way, it’s a moot point; I was never as helpless as they assumed – or perhaps hoped – I was. But I can admit that I’d be a lot more well-adjusted at age forty-eight had they assumed instead that I was capable of doing the things they insisted on doing for me, and perhaps of doing even more than that.

`When I was a child and a teenager, my parents were overly protective and somewhat controlling. They raised me with an unhealthy amount of fear – not only of them, but to an extent of the world at large – which conditioned me to be dependent and compelled me to pass up many of the opportunities I was given, but also led me to take risks and make bad choices in order to prevent them from finding out when I rebelled, or to evade the consequences if they did. It took me years to purge myself of as much of that fear as I’ve been able to; I know I haven’t gotten all of it.

I don’t know their motives. Maybe they weren’t deliberately trying to raise me to be dependent in order to further their sense of purpose. Maybe they did what they thought was best but fell short because what they thought was best was based on antiquated and unhelpful advice handed down by similarly uninformed, wrong-headed relatives and friends. I’m talking about an era when it was considered perfectly sensible to throw a child into deep water in order to teach them to swim. (No, this never happened to me.)

Moreover, my father – and perhaps my mother as well, but definitely my father – was raised in an abusive household by a man who terrorized his wife and his children to an extent that one day my grandmother gathered up all five kids and, in the words of Raekwon, bounced on old man. She raised five kids on her own in the 1960s when unmarried women had significantly fewer rights than they do today. Until 1974, women in the United States could not open a bank account or apply for loans or credit cards without a husband or other man to co-sign for them. Until the same year, landlords could refuse to rent to single women. To suggest that my grandmother had a difficult time once she and her kids left would be a colossal understatement, but she had to either find a way to make it work, or continue living in the same house as the violent and manipulative man she married, and my grandmother had no time for that bullshit. She worked her ass off to support herself and her kids, all of whom turned out far less screwed-up than they would have been if they’d stayed. Twenty-five years after her passing, I still miss her, but not my grandfather. Fuck that guy.

The point I’m trying to make with all of this is that in childhood my parents – my father especially – suffered the kind of trauma that makes me hesitant if not ashamed to use the word “trauma” to describe my experiences. While they may not have been the most effective or efficient parents in the world, they’re considerably better than the parents who raised them. I believe it is the job of every parent to improve upon their own upbringing, which leads me to the obligatory reminder that I learned from my parents’ mistakes and ultimately raised my child better than they raised me. Look, I warned you that I was going to mention that again.

Up next: The Do-Over Childhood, wherein I impart to you my sure-fire method of completely undoing every mistake that was made by your less-than-qualified parents as they were raising you! You do not want to miss this!

Link to Part 7

I think some of the reason that I de-prioritized my needs – or at least my wants – after my daughter was born is because when we found out my wife was expecting, people – my mom, mainly – impressed upon me that the purpose of my life was now to provide for my child, and that making sacrifices for the good of my offspring was the only accomplishment I had to look forward to. (That’s not verbatim, but it’s definitely the lesson I retained.) No one said this to my wife, just to me. Maybe the people who knew me best saw me as a selfish manchild who was likely to trade his baby for a mint-condition copy of The Incredible Hulk #180 or a life-size replica of Han Solo in Carbonite. Granted, I don’t think I’ve ever come across that way, but there had to be a reason that multiple people felt the need to tell me this.

I’ve always been pretty easygoing, the sort of person who goes with the flow and tries not to make waves. I suspect this behavior was modeled by my mother, with whom I spent a lot of time growing up. Additionally, while my parents were good providers who made sure I had everything I needed and much of what I wanted, there were no promises or guarantees made about anything in the latter category. I grew to not like asking for things.

To be clear, my parents didn’t scream at me or physically abuse me if I asked for something. They didn’t send me to my room for not being happy with what I already had. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for me to get the thing I was asking for, though depending on what it was I usually had to wait for my birthday or Christmas. But again, I didn’t like asking.

The lesson I should have taken away from my upbringing is that parents need to see to their own emotional and financial needs before indulging their kids. When you’re on an airplane listening to the safety demonstration, they tell you that if there’s a change in cabin pressure you must put on your own oxygen mask before assisting your children with theirs. If you don’t take care of your own needs, you’re not going to be able to see to those of a child.

(More than a decade before I became a parent, I remember trying to impart this very lesson to a much-older cousin who found himself in a similar boat. This was a person who, while raising two young children solo and in an isolated setting, regularly found himself overextended and couldn’t make time for self-care. We were close, but I doubt he appreciated the unsolicited (but sound) advice from a kid twelve years his junior who had barely started living.)

Unfortunately, the lesson I actually took from my upbringing was that my needs are less important than anyone else’s, and this programming came back when I was told that my own life was essentially over once I became a father. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for not learning the other lesson. It’s not as though the messaging I received once my baby was born – not just from people I knew, but to some extent from cultural osmosis – was anything but “Your own journey as a person stops here.”

In the years since then, I’ve tried to justify it by convincing myself it was for the best. “My own journey wasn’t leading anyplace good [though in moments of clarity I know that this is 100% untrue] and the most important thing I’ll ever do is raise my daughter to be a strong and successful adult [this is probably true].”

In that respect, I seem to be succeeding.

Up next: The Parent Trap, wherein I consider that my parents might be partially responsible for the mess that I currently am. More than I have thusfar, I mean.

Link to Part 6

Last year, my wife and I took our daughter to San Francisco overnight. It was nearing the end of Spring Break, and she wanted to do something out of the ordinary. We got a hotel room, and spent a couple days doing touristy things that we generally take for granted. We went to Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf. We ate dinner at Ghirardelli Square. We played indoor mini-golf, and went to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in Chinatown.

Before heading home on the second day, my daughter wanted to take part in some sort of creative activity at the Japan Center Mall in Japantown. It was something she’d heard about on YouTube or wherever kids hear about things these days. The nature of the activity is unimportant; just know that it was a fairly extravagant indulgence, though not exactly break-the-bank expensive. Something frivolous but apparently fun. She enjoyed it.

While she did the activity and my wife waited nearby, I wandered around the mall. It occurred to me as I browsed the Kinokuniya Bookstore that I’d love to engage in some sort of frivolous activity that makes me happy without worrying about how much it might cost or feeling like I haven’t earned it. Is that an ability that died with my childhood? It had been so long since I considered doing such a thing that I had no idea whatsoever what sort of activity I might do, nor how I’d put myself in the proper frame of mind to believe I deserve it.

Every few years, we go to Disneyland. (Before we were parents, we’d go several times a year, but that’s beside the point.) Whenever we find ourselves at Galaxy’s Edge, the expansive Star Wars-themed area of the park where guests can hobnob with Star Wars characters, ride kickass Star Wars-themed rides, and drink mind-altering intoxicants in a genuine wretched hive of scum and villainy, I see people walking around in their Jedi robes carrying lightsabers and Astromech droids that they built themselves at shops dedicated to that purpose.

I’m not saying that building a lightsaber is necessarily the sort of indulgent activity I’d take part in – I was always more of a Han Solo fan than a Luke Skywalker fan, to be honest – but it always looks like fun. Everything in Galaxy’s Edge is basically what little Jack – and young adult Jack – daydreamed about. Even though I’m nowhere near as die-hard a Star Wars fan now as I was in my younger days, I suppose that if I could have gotten past the whole “I can’t do things I enjoy without feeling like I’ve earned them” mindset, I might have been so caught up in the Star Wars of it all that I would have built a lightsaber, bought a Rebel Flight Crew jacket, or gotten Darth Jar Jar tattooed on my bicep. That’s a thing you can do there, right?

I know that part of the reason I simply can’t indulge myself in such a fashion is that that it’s hard for me to spend money because I don’t make enough of it. Granted, I can’t say for sure that if I made three times as much as I currently do I’d allow myself the occasional pricey frivolity; it’s possible I still wouldn’t believe I’ve done enough to earn it. At any rate, I don’t want to be a burden to my family. I don’t want them to think that I spend money with reckless abandon on stuff that isn’t necessary for my continued survival. And I’m sure that for the last fifteen years I thought that showing that kind of restraint would save me from some sort of metaphoric guillotine – or Rancor pit, to stay on-theme – when my usefulness was depleted. It didn’t, but I’ll get to that later.

Sorry, as I write this I’m very much in Star Wars mode as I’m still reeling from last night’s three-hour Andor series finale (around three weeks ago by the time this post is published). Fucking amazing.

The thing is, I wasn’t like this before I became a parent. I had no problem indulging myself, whether in the form of a once-a-week trip to the local comic shop, the latest video game console, or some sort of expensive collectible. I didn’t feel like I had to justify doing so; I worked hard running a business, and I guess that was all the justification I needed. You may recall that I used to have a pool room; it might not come as a surprise to find out that one of the bedrooms in that house was used as a geeky sitting room where I could relax and read comics while surrounded by high-end statues and busts of my favorite characters.

After fifteen years spent storing much of this collection in my parents’ garage, I’m currently in the process of selling it off. Nothing lasts forever.

Up next: Life Ends at Parenthood, wherein I try to shake off yet another shitty life lesson.

Link to Part 5

One day I woke up and I wasn’t a stay-at-home Dad anymore.

In the interest of allowing our daughter to realize her full potential, my wife and I decided to pull her out of the elementary school she’d been attending since kindergarten – a school that did not challenge her at all – and enroll her in the district where my wife taught. It was my suggestion, and it was not made without significant inner turmoil. I knew that if she switched districts, I’d no longer be needed to drop her off and pick her up. I’d have to figure out a new day-to-day purpose.

While I’d initially been hesitant to embrace the role of stay-at-home Dad, for ten years it was almost all I knew. It had been the largest part of who I was for nearly as long as I could remember. I deeply enjoyed forging a close relationship with my daughter that I otherwise might not have. Above all, I was very comfortable in that role. It suited me. But suddenly I found myself once again at the precipice of a complete overhaul of my identity and my very life.

I recall the day years earlier when my wife and I went to something that can probably best be described as a preschool fair, i.e. a place where representatives from various preschools promote their institutions to the parents of prospective students. I went through all the expected emotions and had all the expected thoughts, most of them along the lines of “I can’t believe my baby girl is already starting school!” There was also a trace of “Am I really okay leaving my child with strangers?”

But there were also feelings of dread related to my sense of purpose. For the first time ever, my daughter was going to be out of my custody on a regular basis. Granted, the first year she was only in school two hours a day a couple days a week, but in my mind I needed to immediately find some means of justifying the oxygen I was drawing into my lungs during that time. If I wasn’t actively parenting my child, what good was I?

I had four hours a week to myself. After three years spent parenting a young child almost around the clock, this level of solitude was unfathomable. I couldn’t imagine how many weeks it would take me just to get used to the idea of being alone for that long. But I knew I couldn’t afford to dwell on it; I’d need to find a part-time job that could accommodate my limited schedule. Otherwise my family would surely resent me for being a freeloader.

I know none of this is realistic. Two hours of solitude a day twice a week isn’t enough time to handle laundry, dishes, and the myriad other things I couldn’t get around to on the typical weekday, let alone steady employment. Hell, two hours of solitude twice a week wouldn’t have been enough time to catch up on the sleep I lost since becoming a parent. But in my mind, if I wasn’t with my daughter, I needed something to show for my time more significant than clean bathrooms, spotless dishes, and folded laundry. Remember what I said about my parents inadvertently conditioning me to equate my worth with my income? This is how that lesson manifests itself.

Obviously I didn’t get a four-hour-a-week job. But over the next few years I helped out in my daughter’s preschool class as often as my social anxiety permitted. It wasn’t always easy, but it allowed me to feel good about myself and to feel like I was contributing in a small way. In addition, it allowed me to see her occasionally on school days, which mitigated the separation anxiety. Also, helping out in her class made me truly appreciate the solitude I experienced on days when I didn’t, because anything beyond like four or five kids at a time is overwhelming. I don’t know how my wife does it.

While it is in my nature to overextend myself for the people I love, and while I enjoyed and continue to enjoy spending time with my daughter simply because she’s wonderful, it has occurred to me that I might have helped out in her classroom and chaperoned almost every field trip specifically because I knew the situation was finite. Perhaps on some level I was banking credit, doing as much as I could with her even when she was in school because I figured when she started getting rides from friends or otherwise didn’t need them from me, I’d have a tough time justifying my existence.

If that theory is accurate, I kind of wish I’d known then that all the good will I’d tried to accumulate over the years didn’t last.

Up next: Treat Yourself, wherein I examine a possible root cause of my loss of identity and geek out about Star Wars. It’ll make sense in context, trust me.

Link to Part 4

Over the years my impostor syndrome only got worse. It’s still awful, in fact.

Between 2018 and 2024 – with a couple-year break thanks to Covid – I attended a local writing meetup, and much like the aforementioned polyamory meetup I had a lot of fun writing in a social setting. I enjoyed the small community of leftist intellectuals I found there, and I always felt welcomed and accepted with no compulsion to prove myself to those in attendance. In fact, the default respect I received from my fellow attendees usually felt misguided or even flat-out wrong.

I didn’t spend every minute of the entire two-and-a-half-hour meetup writing; there were days when I just couldn’t make the words happen. There were days when I was preoccupied with something else and figured since no one could see my screen it didn’t matter if I spent the whole session focused on whatever it was. And I’m sure there were days when I spent much of the meetup sexting women, back when women found me hot and felt compelled to say so. But at least 80% of those meetups were spent being very productive.

That said, to some extent I still never felt like I was truly a part of the group. Many of the attendees were published authors, and those who weren’t were almost certainly better writers than I. I’ve never read any of their work and I have nothing on which to base that assessment, but certainly their writing is way better than my own. I mean, just look at them, in their business-casual attire, sipping their lattes carrying their top-of-the-line laptops and tablets in designer bags. They’ve clearly got it together so much better than I do. I’m sure these people weren’t asked to give up their identities, their lives, their dreams! Or if they were, I’m guessing they had sufficient feelings of self-worth to be like “Nah.”

Okay, that’s obviously disingenuous. I think I’m a decent writer. I’m sure all of the people who attended the meetup are too, but it’s certainly possible that any one of them might read something I wrote and tell me it’s fantastic. Perhaps they’d have constructive criticism to offer. But I doubt any of them would read a piece of my writing and condemn it as irredeemable dreck. Even if they were inclined to lie in order to spare my feelings, I doubt they’d even think it’s irredeemable dreck. Still, it’s hard for me to put my work out there, to offer it up for scrutiny. Perhaps it’s my drive for perfectionism that inhibits me. Perhaps it’s Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria; I’m told those two things go hand in hand.

I am certainly a perfectionist. And I definitely exhibit signs of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, also known as RSD. But I can think of another possible reason why I seldom let others read or otherwise consume my work. To fully explore it, we’ve got to go way the hell back to the 1980s.

As a child, I had a vivid imagination. Accordingly, I was obsessed with creative pursuits. I wrote short stories. I drew pictures and even very basic comics. I sculpted figurines. I drew rudimentary cartoons on the edges of notepad pages and animated them by flipping through the pages with my hand. I can’t say that I was especially talented with regard to any of these activities, but more than one of my teachers used adjectives like “industrious”, “inventive”, and “clever” to describe my talents. Of my very primitive attempts at animation, my very impressed sixth grade teacher told me I could be the next Walt Disney. Eleven-year-old Jack thought that was very sweet of her to say, but didn’t believe it for a minute. I mean, that’s nice and all, but get real. I knew I didn’t have what it took to create anywhere near that level, much less on it.

But what if I’d just accepted the compliment? What if I’d taken heed of the fact that she saw something in me, even if it was just the tenacity to keep trying? If there had been more people in my life who truly encouraged these frivolous pursuits I enjoyed, maybe I could have believed in my talents enough to do something with them. Maybe something I created – a novel, a painting, a low-budget film – would matter to someone somewhere. Maybe they’d remember my name as the guy who made that thing they like. I didn’t necessarily want to be rich and famous, though I’ll admit that living in financial comfort sounds really good right now. I just wanted to make a difference. I wanted to have something to show for my existence.

My parents were generally supportive, but no matter what creative activity I got excited about, they always said the same thing: “You’ll need something to fall back on.” Bear in mind that I wasn’t in my twenties at the time. I wasn’t even in my late teens. There was no impending danger that I was going to squander my adult years making Tijuana Bibles or engage in some other dumbass flight of fancy. No, I was a child, an adolescent, and a young teenager when this advice was doled out.

In the 1980s it was considerably more difficult to produce and distribute media. If you wanted to shoot a movie, you had to get a real movie camera and pay for film or, theoretically, buy or borrow a Camcorder, shoot the movie on videotape, and accept that it wouldn’t look like a “real movie”. You couldn’t edit your movie on a phone – such a suggestion would have made no sense circa 1987 – and rather than uploading it to YouTube, the closest the typical amateur filmmaker came to distribution back then might have been inviting friends over to watch it projected on a wall screen, or perhaps on the family VCR.

Writing was probably the easiest of the aforementioned creative pursuits to share with an audience, but back then even that was more difficult than it is now. One could certainly write or type something on paper – a novella, a comic, a magazine – and then make copies and give them away or even sell them. But the distribution channels available in 2025 were difficult if not impossible to imagine when I was a kid. Today one might publish their writing on a blog, or produce a digital work and make it available for free or for pay, either as a downloadable .pdf or through an e-reader app.

Given the limitations of the era in which I grew up, as well as the competitive and potentially unstable nature of such pursuits, I understand why my parents cautioned me against trying to pursue a career in a creative field. I know that it was intended to benefit me in the long-term; I certainly could have tried to write comics or make short animated features, and it’s possible that I could have succeeded. But if I was also a banker, a certified public accountant, or an attorney I’d have had financial security either way. It’s good advice, honestly. But back then what I heard was “You’re never going to make a living that way”, “You’re not good enough to be successful doing that”, or “We will not support you”. Eventually it pretty much killed my passion.

Decades later, it is abundantly clear that when a young child develops an interest, their parent does not need to warn them that said interest may someday preclude them from paying their rent. You don’t need to tell a five-year-old that collecting rocks doesn’t look good on a resume or a college application. You don’t need to tell an eight-year-old about the long-term financial implications of being super into taekwondo. You don’t need to tell an eleven-year-old that hula hooping isn’t a career. Of course it’s not a fucking career.

Perhaps those examples are bad ones. Taekwondo, hula hooping, and rock collecting are certainly fun activities for kids – perhaps less so in the era of Minecraft, media on demand, and instant gratification than they were thirty years ago – but I don’t see them as creative pursuits along the lines of art, music, or dance. I might be wrong about that, but either way the point is still valid: Don’t give a young child – or an older child, or an adult, for that matter – a reason not to do the things they enjoy. When my daughter expressed at age five an interest in ballet and tap, we didn’t say “Okay, but it’s a very competitive field and we’d hate for you to be disappointed if you don’t become an international superstar.” When she expressed an interest in softball and soccer, we didn’t say “Okay, but there’s no way in hell we are going to drive you to tournaments all over the state if you’re still doing this as a teenager.” We just filled out the forms, paid the fees, and let her be a kid.

I wish my parents had approached it the same way.

Up next: The Circle of Life, wherein I find myself at a crossroads. Not the crossroads I’m currently at. A different one.

Link to Part 3

I didn’t realize it at the time, but being a stay-at-home Dad gave me impostor syndrome, or perhaps awakened from dormancy the impostor syndrome I already had. For all their flaws, my parents raised me to understand the importance of a hard day’s work. Unfortunately in doing so, they inadvertently conditioned me to equate my self-worth with my income. For a person with such a belief to find himself in a position where he is unable to earn to the extent he’s accustomed to earning, and thereby unable to provide for his family as much as he believes he is supposed to, is to lose much of his sense of self-worth.

Over the years, I met a lot of people as a direct result of being a parent: Parents of my daughter’s classmates and friends. Parents of her soccer and softball teammates. Fellow theater parents. Teachers. Coaches. Assistant coaches. Dance instructors. I accompanied her to birthday parties, mingled at many a post-season barbecue, and chaperoned her school field trips. The people I met were all people I could have conceivably connected with as friends if I felt like I had the slightest speck of worthwhile life experience to share. But virtually every first conversation I had with one of these people included the question I always dreaded: “What do you do?”

This obviously furthered the notion that my value as a person was tied intrinsically to my financial worth. Hey, before I begin a conversation with you and perhaps get emotionally invested in you as a human being, I want to know what social benefits interacting with you will provide my family and I. Given the circumstances it’s understandable that I might withdraw into my introversion, or at the very least try to avoid mindless conversation. And when I did find myself fielding such a query, I always replied that I was self-employed, and volunteered the nature of my business if asked. Even if I told them that I was a stay-at-home parent, I always led with the occupation that made me money.

I found it increasingly difficult to believe I belonged anywhere. I even found hanging out with longtime friends somewhat awkward because I had little else to talk about other than my kid and experiences I had because of her. Had I seen any new movies? Of course not. Was I watching such-and-such TV series? No, just Dora the Explorer. Did I go anywhere fun lately? Yeah, the park so she could run around. I pushed her on the swings for like twenty minutes. Do you want to hear more about this?

The smart thing would have been to join some sort of support group for stay-at-home Dads, but at the time I knew of no such thing. They may have existed in the area where I was living, but they weren’t on Meetup and none of the relatives who tried finding such a thing for me to attend ever did. There were Mommy and Me groups, and perhaps they allowed stay-at-home Dads to join. But I wasn’t about to inflict my presence on a group of women who might conceivably want to whip out a titty and feed their babies.

Even when we opened our marriage and got involved with other people, the self-esteem boost I derived from my adventures didn’t always last. Extramarital sex, group sex, play parties – on some level these things were a stopgap measure. A Band-Aid. A dose of MDMA to take my mind off of how disappointed I was in myself and the course my life had taken. Sure, I enjoyed being a stay-at-home Dad, but I missed the home and the life I gave up to be one. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I regret none of the relationships I forged nor the sex I had during this time, and I’d like to do it all again, please and thank you. But my point stands.

I suppose that it didn’t help that the things I probably put the most effort into – my bountiful sex life with my wife, as well as the many extramarital relationships I had after we opened up – aren’t things I can talk about with most people. Blame society and its repressiveness when it comes to sex, I guess, but when I was at my in-laws’ annual block party and a neighbor asked what was new in my life, I couldn’t tell them that I’d just gotten back from a weekend hotel stay with one of my long-term partners. And that’s on the tame side! Imagine if I’d instead told them, for example, that said partner and I had done alkyl nitrites and fucked in front of an appreciative crowd at an out-of-town sex club. Not necessarily saying that I did this or anything.

Hell, forget about things I’ve done with women who aren’t my wife. Let’s take non-monogamy all the way out of the conversation. What if I told this hypothetical neighbor that I’d given my wife a facial the night before? Or found her G-spot right before we left for the party? Fucked her until she almost passed out? I’d certainly have been proud of myself if I’d done any of those things. But noooooo, polite society only wants to hear about our accomplishments if they don’t involve sex. That’s bullshit! Some of us don’t have anything PG-rated to boast about.

But Jack, you might be saying, why not just make friends with local kinky/non-monogamous people with whom you can share such filth? For various reasons, paramount among them my wife’s need for discretion, we were never really able to do this. Maybe it was a cop-out, I don’t know. But this is why most of my partners over the last decade or so have been a plane flight – or a long road trip – away. It’s also why, throughout our non-monogamous adventure, I’ve usually been unable to date locally.

Circa 2019, I attended a polyamory meetup. I liked the thought of building a local social circle of like-minded kinksters or similar, but even if I didn’t manage that I thought it would do me some good to be around people with whom I could talk about the highs and lows of loving multiple people at once. I enjoyed the meetup, and I found it very freeing to tell others about my experience and hear about theirs. I’d shared such details of my life on this blog for years, but that’s not the same as sitting on comfortable furniture in a well-lit and very inviting room among people who seemed to be deriving as much validation from the experience as I was.

I made friends among the attendees, and even hung out with some of them outside of the meetup. However, I didn’t attend for long, and eventually I let go of those friends, a couple of whom were by then more than just friends. There are a couple reasons why I gave up on it: For one, I didn’t think my wife liked that I was attending a regular event related to non-monogamy. Sure, we were open, and both she and I had other relationships. And sure, I would have much rather attended the meetup with her, but schedules didn’t allow for it – or maybe she just didn’t want to attend – and since it was something I had sought out because I was interested in it, I opted to go alone. She seemed to disapprove, and I stopped.

But a more pressing reason was impostor syndrome.

Up next: Something to Fall Back On, wherein I discuss the proper way to encourage childhood dreams to flourish.

Link to Part 2

The shock of losing the life I worked hard for quickly pushed my feelings of inadequacy into the realm of depression and self-loathing. Fortunately, this period of intense, awful feelings didn’t last. In fact, it may have been my reflexive distaste over how society seemed to perceive stay-at-home Dads that made me increasingly at ease with the situation. Where I once answered the “Daddy’s day with the baby” question by just saying yes, or “Something like that, yeah” – anything to terminate communication and get the hell out of the store – it wasn’t long before I began rolling my eyes at such thoughtless dipshittery.

Simply put, I got used to being a stay-at-home Dad. While I am not one to regularly express self-confidence outside the kitchen and the bedroom, I realized I was doing a really good job. Where I once felt too self-conscious to leave the house with the baby lest some rando criticize some aspect of my parenting – which is something that did happen – I eventually reached a point where I had no problem taking her on multiple necessary errands, or even elective outings to the park, the library, or anywhere that crossed my mind.

Yes, things would happen while on these outings, but I knew I could handle it without my daughter suffering permanent damage. There would be explosive diaper blowouts. Hourslong crying jags (hers, not mine). I’d forget necessities at home. She’d drop her pacifier into the gutter two minutes into a walk. She’d spit up in the worst possible places. In fact, I’m reminded of the time I cleaned up such an eruption at a restaurant. Trying to hide my mortification as we left, I told the employee at the counter, “Sorry about the mess.” In my mind I was Han Solo leaving the Mos Eisley Cantina, but I’m sure to the staff I was just some asshole whose baby puked like a tiny Mr. Creosote.

Furthermore, I didn’t worry about the local equivalent of Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched – or Marie Barone, if you need a reference from this century – sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, because by this point I knew I was nailing it and if anyone felt compelled to tell me I was doing it wrong, I had the confidence to know otherwise.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t open to outside input, at least in theory. Nor is it to say that I knew everything there was to know about raising a child, or even taking care of a baby. But just a few months into the gig, I could handle routine operations as though I’d had the job for years. At the time, my social anxiety wasn’t as bad as it would become five or six years into stay-at-home-fatherhood; I had no trouble walking her to my favorite by-the-slice pizza joint. I’d wheel her in, detach her carrier from the stroller, fold up the stroller and leave it in an empty corner of the lobby, then order myself a slice of whatever struck my fancy that day and take a seat at an unoccupied table.

While I waited for my pizza, I’d make her a bottle if she didn’t already have one. She’d sit in her carrier and drink while I ate my lunch. One day as I ate I got props from another Dad, who told me that when his kids were babies he could never achieve the state of calm he apparently saw in me. And for that matter, his kids were never quite as chill in their carriers as mine was.

I appreciated the encounter. It bolstered my confidence and further inflated my ego. Today I suppose the insidious voice in my head would tell me that if the guy really knew me, he’d know what a fraud I was, but back then I sure as hell didn’t see myself that way. I was enjoying my new role, and I still had a thriving business that I didn’t even have to manage on a day-to-day basis. My friends had yet to distance themselves from me, so as isolated as I felt, I still enjoyed regular social interaction. I had a loving relationship with my hot wife, made even closer by the new addition to our family. Why wouldn’t I feel like I had life by the balls?

Up next: I Don’t Belong (Anyw)here, wherein my impostor syndrome makes its presence known.