My eldest daughter has been a teenager for two months. In that time, she’s performed a live concert with her garage band, gotten a major role in her theater’s next production, and won an academic award. Teenage suits her very well, it seems!

All of these things are “extra” things – things she’s gone out of her way to pursue herself. Nobody made her do any of this. She’s trying on new facets of her identity every day (she’s also in Girl Scouts and Track & Field, plus draws or paints for an hour or more each day) and that pattern has been delightful to watch.

She’s strong, courageous, sure of herself, clever, and charismatic. I’m incredibly proud of her. And the best part is that with each new thing, she excitedly rushes to share it with me. On top of everything else, she’s devoted to her family. I took her out to dinner tonight to celebrate all her wins, and she chose the restaurant her siblings like as the location.

Fatherhood is joy!

Sometimes you need to know that everything might not be okay. And that’s okay.

Look, sometimes things will go wrong! You can’t prevent it, and trying will make you miserable. A general sense of calm, reasonably competent preparedness, and an adaptable spirit will serve you much better than a series of increasingly niche preventative measures for disasters you can’t possibly predict.

So cultivate an openness to the future, even if that future is wild and dangerous. All the fun stuff is on the other side of the messy parts, anyway!

Today was a day filled with chaos. It was very much the fun kind of chaos, even though I knew it would be a bit on the overwhelming side. When faced with that kind of a day, I’ve only found one mental preparation technique that lets me navigate it all with calm and poise.

Right from the start, I give the whole day to the madness & antics.

I say to myself: “Today is about fun. Nothing will get accomplished today. People will get messy, and they will stay messy. They won’t eat healthy, and they’ll go to bed late. One day of that is okay – even good. Embrace the chaos.”

And it works. A day of madness is fun now and then – with the right mindset.

The stories behind things are amazing. There’s just so much incredible lore out there. Colors have origin stories. Food has traveled thousands of miles. Wars were fought over pepper.

Humans create new stories all the time – some are just fantasy, but those are just as amazing to explore. And some of those will become real just because enough people believe in them that they grow up to manifest them into reality. You ever wonder why flip phones existed? Because all the people who designed phones loved Star Trek with its handheld communicators that looked like that!

Dive into the lore, the scaffolding stories that hold everything up, any time you can.

I know it’s hard, but don’t punish people for apologizing.

When you’re upset with someone, it’s easy to want to push them away. It’s natural to protect yourself, and a little distance isn’t always bad if it lets you cool off. But if the other person is trying to apologize, don’t respond with more anger. Especially if they’re using more than words – gestures that take effort are meaningful. If you attack the gesture, you teach the other person not to try that again in the future.

If you find that you’re still angry even after such efforts, then that’s the time to talk. You’re still angry because you feel like the core issue is unresolved, but the other person has opened the door to that discussion. They’ve shown that they want to make things right, and if you have a specific way you want that to happen, say so. It’s harder than staying angry, but it’s also much more rewarding.

Happy New Month!

As new life blooms all around me, I feel the need to see that change in myself as well. It’s been a long winter and I’m ready to shake off the limitations to my health journey. I’ve been happy with my progress, but lately I’ve hit a bit of a plateau. I haven’t backslid – a success in itself! – but now I want to step it up. So my resolution this month is to add to the home gym and re-evaluate my dietary choices. I’m excited for the next stage!

May life always bloom wherever you want it!

Anything that’s normal for you, you tend not to notice. You don’t notice the feel of your socks on your feet or your own blinking because they’re so ordinary that your brain edits them out to keep you from being overwhelmed.

The inverse corollary is that if you notice something, it’s because it’s unusual. A disruption of your pattern.

If bad things were happening to you constantly (literally constantly), you’d stop noticing them. We look back on people who lived hundreds of years ago and we can’t even fathom how they weren’t miserable, but whatever conditions they lived under were simply their “normal.” In two hundred years, people will be amazed that we lived like we do today!

What’s the upshot of all this? If something bad happens to you, a positive reframe is that you only notice it because it’s so unusual that anything bad should happen to you at all! Your life is pretty great; you just rarely notice because “pretty great” is your normal.

So notice the normal! When something unfortunate befalls you, appreciate how nice it is that such misfortune is the exception. You probably paid attention to your blinking when you read the beginning of this post, but until just now you’d already forgotten about it again. The misfortune will pass just as quickly, but you can choose to appreciate the blessings whenever you like – or whenever you get a little reminder.

Some local construction workers had just poured new cement near my kids’ school. Perhaps in an oversight, they didn’t mark the area, and I fell victim to this clever trap. Extracting myself from ankle-deep cement, I cleaned off my boots and picked up one of my kids. On my drive to get a different kid from a different location, my hat blew off my head out my sunroof and I had to pull around and find it on the road.

I love stuff like this!

Minor misfortunes are just that – minor. My boots are clean, my hat is recovered, and a fresh sense of gratitude that these are the worst things to happen to me today has washed over me. Sometimes it takes a little stumble to shake that into you; too many identical days, even pleasant ones, can start to dim the sense of wonder.

May you laugh in the face of all misfortune, minor or not!

The best time for conflict resolution is before there’s a conflict.

Reach out to people in times of peace and tell them how you’ll handle difficult times. Ask them how they’d like to be communicated with when there are problems. Establish all the steps of conflict resolution when things are as good as they can be.

We thrive on shared experiences. There is a connection that can go so much deeper than communication can ever create, and it comes from experiencing something that affects you on a deeply emotional level with others. When the emotion is negative, they call it “trauma bonding” and it can still create some of the deepest and truest friendships despite the dark origins. This is also why such strong but unlikely friendships can be forged in youth; the emotional experiences are simply stronger.

Go see live music. Go see live music that you love, and go see it with people.