(on January 1,2020 I wrote this summary of my 2019 for a friendly mailing list I was on. I meant to edit it a bit; then a pandemic hit and upended much of the life I described herein. So let's timecapsule: after some August 2020 touchups and clarifications, this is here published & backdated:)
By the end of the year 2019 I feel like my world contracted, my vision contracted, and I am so grateful for this focus. We had a second child in August. He emerged healthy. His sister freaked out about losing the prime lap place, and then she started preschool.
We deliberately chose a co-op preschool, I pushed my wife a bit. I wanted to dare myself to commit to being in the classroom with my daughter amidst all the other appointments I'd be making & keeping. This mean asking my partner to also take time being in the classroom and so we share the 4 hour Wednesday morning co-op preschool shifts.
We were initially scheduled in the afternoon. After training during a summer preschool session where the adults outnumbered kids, I learned that the afternoon is about cleanup and napping. The morning instead was about cooking and riling kids up. That sounded much more like my kind of party, so we switched to the morning shift.
I make snack sometimes - we use a range of plug in appliances to make a protein, grain, vegetable, and fruit to serve each day. Or I've read a book at storytime, I've been the ticklemonster on the playground, I've been conned into helping preschoolers who are avoiding putting on their own shoes. These kids are so blunt - "will you be my friend?" "no - I don't want to play with you." - it's the type of social interaction that adults have just layered so much protocol on top of. It's fascinating to watch human dynamics play out amidst this group of tiny people whose every emotional experience explodes across their face in concentrated feeling.
<insert a photo here walking with my son on my front and holding my daughter's hand with a preschool group to the library down a street next a rainbow mural when I can take the time to blur out all the faces of people who appear who are not me>
The bud.com cannabis delivery business has grown. As a co-founder and last buck on customer service, catalog management, delivery logistics, eCommerce, and web hosting, I've been on a "bathroom break" in the back of the preschool discussing eighths and ounces, and it's just like any other parent taking a moment break from story circle time to conduct their affairs. There's even another parent in this small community working in cannabis. But the preschool fundraiser auction still won't accept any gift certificate donations from bud.com - too potentially sticky for finances, non-profit status.
There are huge exciting developments for the company plus evolving roles and learning to keep me highly engaged. I'm juggling so much and there's much happening.
We have had a hard time hiring. Well, we offer folks a chance to have a 3 month probationary hiring trial with us and most don't make it. I find my impulses to be permissive and inclusive and experimental have required me to get good at firing & laying people off. Hey come work for us, let's see how it goes, and then we can take it from there. We find fun, smart, motivated people. But quickly you learn about the communications involved, and the assumptions people are working with, and the ambient chaos of a semi-legal industry involving psychoactive substances, and it's too often soon time to part ways. Over the summer I was liquidating savings to make payroll deposits; that made me quite keen to get the best work out of every dollar.
Every few months another collaboration dream died. but it was a huge refocusing each time: seeing the kind of alignment we would need to grow and sustain. There's up to 34% taxes when you're selling cannabis in a legal state, so the illegal market thrives. But we have a great product, and we're in it for the long haul. And over the course of the last year, we've greatly increased the rate of repeat customers and 5/5 reviews.
We raised some more money this winter, thanks to my dynamite partner the CEO. I was pleased to see our initial group of bud.com seed investors had a gender split 2 male and 2 female.
I have begun to microdose more frequently throughout the work day. I typically use less pot on the weekends, when I'm focused on my kids. The interrupt-driven non-urgent urgency of commerce has me enjoying the mental balance that two sips from a vape pen offers. Practically it can lead me off into a new exploration for 20-40 minutes after I dose. But I rigorously use a task manager to ensure I come back to focus and prioritize my time properly. If I don't use weed I sob routinely - between family and work and the world I just feel so much without an occasional calming agent.
One highlight: working with comedian/activist Tommy Chong to make a video wherein he proclaims: "what stoner can forget bud.com?"
My life partner and I have learned to support & enjoy each other, I believe. I know the range of trials in life, something of, and we are still on training wheels together. The generation before us is beginning to stumble, and they may soon need to lean on our arms. Losing a child or becoming a single parent would totally change the balance of my life. I'm grateful that I look at my partner and get turned on, excited to hear what she has to say, eager to take up new projects with her, returning to difficult topics with an ability to hear her out. And from what I can tell I don't promote suffering on her part unduly.
A friend who is a public figure was caught up in a scandal that received widespread attention online. I was unsettled and felt myself climbing further into a social media turtle shell. I have experimented with oversharing like overshare.links.net and now I can barely utter outside myself. The life posing that has become commonplace makes my skin crawl, especially as the attention amplifiers have turned up, at the same time I have a wild fascination in front of me: this family I'm a part of.
There's now a second new roommate here. So far he responds mostly with a smile to my face. He's healthy and funny. He poops and suckles and burbles happily when you do lifts of his tiny wriggling body above your face. Watch out for fast-dripping drool strings.
I work from home, so I end up cooking breakfast, cleaning up from breakfast, running laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning up from dinner. My family fills a hole in my heart that I think I knew was there. I got halfway to 90 this year. I'm grateful for a chance to be present for these folks.
Now that a new numerical decade opens, I realize we'll probably move during the 2020s. We have a single stall shower in the same room as our sole toilet. I really want to provide a bath experience for my kids. I loved loved the bath growing up. I've researched tiny tubs that would fit in a shower stall, and I've researched feed bins you can adapt to be outdoor bathtubs. We're deepening ourselves into a place - neighbors with kids our ages attending the same school. Arranging childcare, pickups and dropoffs as close to home as possible. But I'm wary of expectations of permanence -
Ten years ago I was in my last year of a different marriage. My partner and I had just taken a belated honeymoon after getting married whilst trying to start a business together. Our company had just been wound down, and we were both seeking other jobs in the video game industry. We were recalibrating our relationship, fresh off some good vacation vibes. We would be divorced about seven months later.
February 2010 I had drinks with a couple who then had a kid. 2017 the father died of cancer at the age of 47. I think about him often, that in spite of all my best intentions I could leave my family on very short notice, with very little agency. Right now while I'm still standing I'm delighting in a chance to leave the trail cleaner than I found it, perhaps by replacing memories of alcohol-fueled conflict with strangers in public with cannabis-fueled play engagement at home. I realized this year I've probably already spent more time in the presence of my children than my father had spent in my presence by the time he died when I was 8. So if there's any shallow way of keeping score on the father to father front, I've already rocked more engaged hours with my kids and it's profoundly rewarding. I hope I can live to see them evolve themselves for decades to come.
