Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Childhood, Comment, Family, Fatherhood, Happiness, Innocence, Jill, London, My Fatherhood, Otis
So we swapped living next to the beach in LA to living next to a park in London … and because of that, we spend a huge amount of our time there … hanging out while he goes off to explore.
Watching him is awesome.
The way he throws his entire energy and enthusiasm into everything.
From the swings and slides to the way he interacts with the other kids … bonding over nothing but the fact they’re around the same age and want to play.
Recently I caught him at the top of the slide with a couple of kids he had just met.
They weren’t talking.
They were just staring.
At a leaf …
Sure it didn’t last a long time, but for a moment, that single leaf held the attention and wonder of 3 kids …studying its shape, it’s colour and guessing which tree it had fallen from.
No electronics.
No lights.
No sounds.
Just nature showing she still has it … exemplified by Otis looking at it like I look at gadgets.
Long may that continue.
Thank you park.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Childhood, Comment, Culture, Daddyhood, Education, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Innocence, Insight, Jill, Otis, Parents
I cry.
I cry a lot.
I cry at films.
I cry at memories.
I cry at just how much I love Otis.
Now I appreciate that’s not the sort of thing you should admit, but that’s what I want to change.
I get why it happens.
From the moment we are kids, we are told not to cry.
To be fair, it’s less to do with any sense of parental embarrassment and more to do with parents hating seeing their precious child being upset, but in my opinion, it’s still wrong.
But it gets worse.
Especially for little boys.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard a Dad tell their little man who has fallen over …
“Big boys don’t cry”.
I totally appreciate they’re not saying it to be mean, but I can’t help but worry for what we are teaching the men of tomorrow.
Especially in America.
I was lucky, I was brought up in a household that didn’t try to hide emotions.
I was taught it was healthy and was encouraged to express how I felt.
Now I know that was pretty rare, but fortunately for everyone else, there was the local pub.
The pub was more than a place for drinking, it was a place for men to express their feelings.
Sure, they did it through banter and jokes, but it was where you could reveal your feelings and fears to other men in an environment that was, ironically, none threatening and none judgemental.
I have no idea if that’s still the case but I know in America it’s not.
Here, you don’t go to a bar to talk, you go to a bar to sit with other men and watch sports.
There appears little outlet for men to express their feelings which means either the pressure of situations add up to unbelievable levels or the response to situations is disproportionate or overly aggressive and confrontational.
OK, so not everyone is like that, but until we teach our children – and especially our little boys – that crying is actually the act of someone strong rather than weak, then we are going to continue stopping people knowing how to navigate the challenges and frustrations that fill our lives. Or said another way, we’ll be stopping our kids from being able to be as good as they can be … which is a crime no parent wants to ever be accused of doing.
Which is another thing we could all learn from the values taught at Otis’ school.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Daddyhood, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis
I’ve written a lot about how amazing I am finding fatherhood.
It is beyond my expectations in every sense of the word.
Of course, a big part of that is my son is a wonderful, kind, considerate and caring little boy.
But there’s something more … and that’s witnessing his development at every stage.
As much as I want him to stay my little boy forever, each stage of his growth reveals new and wonderful traits … which helps me deal with the fact he is growing up way too fast.
One of the big changes is his vocabulary.
I remember how much I loved it when he could only use sounds to communicate.
It was so pure and innocent and yet he could convey so much of his feelings through those little sounds.
Then came the words.
At first they were a hybrid of mumble and language … but over time, he could say Dada and Mama and it melted our hearts.
But now, his language is developing at a rapid rate and while so much of what he says is his brain connecting what he communicate with the context he [so far] understands, it leads to expressions of such beauty – and sadness – that you are left breathless for hearing it.
Don’t believe me?
Look at this SMS I got from Jill a while back …
Sure, when he say’s, “the drips of my sadness” he is being literal with what they are, in the context of the words he knows … but my god, the emotions those words ignite is incredible.
Maybe we are educating the emotional expression out of children like Sir Ken Robinson said we are doing with creativity.
Either way, I love that kid more and more.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Disney, Family, Fatherhood, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis
Following on from yesterday’s post, I’ve taken today off so I can take Otis for his first visit to Disneyland.
I can tell you right now he is going to absolutely bloody love it … and I have to tell you I’m glad he will because it has cost the equivalent of the GDP of a medium sized European nation and I’d be devastated to have to sell a kidney for something he won’t enjoy.
As much as I can be rather skeptical about Disney, I have to say they know how to capture kids imagination.
I still remember taking Otis to a hospital in Shanghai and – as soon as he clapped eyes on the TV showing Frozen – his pain and tears disappeared to be replaced with a hypnotic state.
So that’s where I’ll be today and then I’ll spend the weekend trying to recover from it as well as hope my beloved Nottingham Forest end the season on a high, which – given the position they were in last season – already feels like they’re playing in football Disneyland.
Now I know finishing mid-table in the Championship may not seem the sort of thing anyone should celebrate, but when you’ve had the turmoil we’ve had over the last 20 years – and especially the last 5 – it’s feels really good to have a team that is occasionally in the news for the way they’re playing football rather the way the terrible ex-CEO was playing with the club and it’s finances.
So in a way to honor Nottingham Forest being slightly less shit than they were last year [when they were super shit] I hereby reproduce my ‘everything for a £1’ shop version of one of my favourite Nike/Wieden ads ever.
Horrific isn’t it?
Especially compared to the original.
Putting aside the fact I’m wearing something ‘Adidas’, it’s a bit like comparing a pair of Hi-Tec trainers to a pair of NIKE’s, but then that’s like comparing the current Forest side to the team that dominated Europe in the early 80’s.
Or – said another way – how it feels to be a Forest fan for the last couple of decades.
So now I’ve ruined your weekend, I’m off … see you Monday.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, America, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Daddyhood, Din Tai Fung, Friendship, Happiness, Home, Jill, London, My Fatherhood, Otis, Paul, Queen, R/GA, Relationships, Shelly
So here we are, the last month of 2018, and what a year it has been for me.
Started out in the sunny life that is Los Angeles and end it in the rainy life that is London.
From Deutsch to R/GA.
From Audi’s to the Tube.
From LA Din Tai Fung to the new London Din Tai Fung.
[Let’s be honest, I’d never of come if they weren’t here]
But I’m happy – very happy.
Sure, there’s a bunch of things I miss, but apart from the fact many of them will remain in my life for ever, the rest I can look back on as experiences I am fortunate to have had so I’m grateful I got to have them rather than sad I’ve lost them.
I know, who am I?
But all that is for a an even more boring post sometime in the next few weeks, so I’ll end this far-too-positive post with one of my new favorite songs, ‘Love Can Only Heal’, by Altered Bridge and the Slash band, Myles Kennedy.
I know you will think it’s bollocks – but apart from the fact that means you’re all a bunch of musical heathens who can’t appreciate the brilliance of a melancholy melody that’s orchestrated with a slowly building pulse of drama – you’re forgetting the alternative would be suggesting you listen to Queen.
Suddenly not so bad it is?
And it gets better … because for reasons that make no sense whatsoever, I’m going to be on my way to the US again by the time you read this. Which means you’re free from my blog rubbish till Thursday and given the following week is the final week of blog posts from me for 2018, you are exactly 7 posts away from ending the year on a positive.
If that doesn’t make you enjoy today, then nothing will.
Happy Monday.