How Do You Make Something Else Great While Raising Children?

We had a session with the couples therapist we’ve been seeing for about a year and as per usual it was a wonderful combination of enlightening, inspiring and mildly dread inducing. One of the reasons it is inspiring is I just almost always feel better after spending an hour with my wife. In this case, we get to drive somewhere together, celebrate the “90s is still alive and well” vibe of Rice Ave near scenic Lake Owasso. Our therapist shared that it’s generally thought that couples get back to having a significant amount of just the two of them time when the YOUNGEST CHILD IS TWELVE YEARS OLD aka a super long ass time from now. Remember 2012? The distance from now to then is the same as the distance from now to our youngest being TWELVE. The thing is, everything goes in stages, things change slowly, nothing changes overnight. This year has been about accepting not having as much control over my own life as I wish I did. I’ve spent some of this year with no kitchen at home, no running water at work. And having kids this age, I don’t feel like I have much control over my days, my weekends. I’ve heard many people say that work becomes some sort of sanctuary when you have kids, cause suddenly it’s less stressful than whatever you’ve been facing at home. Of course whatever sanctuary you enjoy while you’re at work, your partner might not enjoy the same sanctuary. And significantly for me, with my work starting later in the day, many of the hours of my workday are full on parenting hours for Rachel. What a treat.

I’ve made and been a part of great things in my life. I think Heiruspecs is a great band, has put on great shows, has made great songs. I think Trivia Mafia is a great company, has thrown great events, has provided great content. I also think I’ve made great radio, though that is notably more ephemeral. There’s a couple great pieces I could point to, things I could press play on, but there isn’t the same receipts you get from being in a great band or running a great trivia company. But all these efforts have required extra hours, long periods of time, longer than a full day. I think I’m beyond pulling all nighters, it seems very possible that I will never stay up past 3am ever in my life again AND GUESS WHAT MCPHERSON CLUBBERS, it’s gonna be partying with friends, drinking and smoking. I’m not staying up to get a mix right, I’m not staying up to finish the sixth round for a trivia night. My heroes did those things, I’ve done those things, but I don’t see those in my future considering the drain of what one feels like the day after pulling an all-nighter.

Okay, so at some point, it’s a matter of hours, it’s a matter of stamina, it’s a matter of energy. And your energy is needed a lot more places once you have kids. If I wake up, make the breakfast, set up the slow cooker for dinner, drive the girls to schools and daycare, come home, walk the dogs, exercise, go to work, schedule music, create new clocks, respond to promoters, schedule tweets, interview artists, play music on the radio, say charming things, give away tickets, drive home, eat dinner, put my oldest to bed, walk the dogs. . .I’m not chipping away at my masterpiece in the late evening hours. I’m writing this blog, I’m ready to work hard if other people are coming over, band practice et cetera. But I don’t want to go down to that basement. I’m sitting on my comfy ass couch right now listening to Larry Mizell Jr.’s KEXP show from today. I’m writing for a bit, and then Rachel and I are going to discuss the book “Bowling Alone” in bed before falling asleep. That’s a full ass day, hold the masterpiece. Here’s how I actually feel: once you have kids the shit you get to do that isn’t raise kids has to pay you or be incredibly rejuvenating. Now that’s not how I want it to be! I want to do some volunteer work, I want to fix up the garage, I want to learn how to really work a drum machine. . .but, not tonight, and not tomorrow night and not next week. And man, I’ve been a huge “if not now when??” kind of dude. Do you know about that Dylan Hicks “Emma’s Moving to Chicago”.

No, you don’t know this Dylan Hicks song. I don’t even know if Dylan Hicks remembers this song except every time I see him I tell him how much I love it. It captures this free spirit of a young woman moving from Minneapolis to Chicago. It captures the fear that Minneapolitans have about the bigger cities. We’re jealous and suspicious of everyone who is moving to the big cities and we secretly/publicly hope they fail. When they succeed we act like we knew it all along, when they fail we act like we knew it all along. But in my head the most important thing about this song is that it’s about the future tense. Emma will be moving to Chicago. Part of me thinks of this song as being suspended in time, capturing the moment when Emma thinks it’s a done deal that she’s going to Chicago, but who knows what actually happens on Saturday?

So for years when I talk to students about how to make a music career I talk about the fact there are always musicians in Minnesota who have spent twenty five years of their life “moving to Chicago next month”. It’s that bullshit. Put out your record, test the market here, make your pitch here. Stop putting it off. Stop mixing your record. Start building your legacy. But, now that I feel I’ve approached this moment in my life where I have ambition but no hours. . .I am in the situation where I am forever one week away from setting up the turntables and seeing if I can still do the merry-go-round, seeing if I can pull some music into a sampler and start cutting it up and making some beats. I can’t wait to do that next week. I even told a couple musicians I’d start thinking about some new music when I’m holding Heiruspecs VINYL in my WARM ASS HANDS and not one day sooner.

Making great things takes time. And I don’t mean pure inspiration time. I mean requesting the download cards, registering the songs with BMI, going to soundcheck, putting up the posters. I love all that shit/can’t imagine finding time to do it. But there’s no great without that work. At this moment I think it will take me being in a different phase of parenting life to do something that is primarily self-initiated greatness. I say that cause Felix wants to see Heiruspecs be more productive in the coming years (might I add, that is a low bar, being more productive in the next couple years than Heiruspecs has been in the past couple years is the equivalent of being “more chipper than a sloth!”. Your life is seasons, this season I don’t think I can make anything great. But you stay in the mix, you practice your bass when you can, you write with others, you keep this up to talk about what you’re going through. You do that. And you stay in the line to find some greatness when you can. Remember, you are a human who has sought out greatness and delivered, but under different circumstances, at a different time. It’s not that season. You can’t will it to be that season again, you just have to do what you can this season while you do one of the most important, rewarding and inspiring things in your life: raising these children. It’s amazing, but it ain’t quite the same amazing return in the moment of hearing beautiful music you helped write come out of the speakers. I know I’m supposed to tell you it’s better, because in the grand scheme it is better, or at least more important, but I can’t tell you that 100%. I can tell you if I could only choose one of those two feelings I’d pick the raising kids feeling. But if you say I can have both, which one do I like more. . .and the speakers the music is coming out of. . .they’re big?. . .and everyone else in the room thinks the song sounds great. . .Yup?. . .okay, I think that’s better. Sorry, I do. That doesn’t make me a bad dad, that makes me an honest dad.