parenting – The Conscious Pilgrim

event fatigue

What a week… or two.

The past 11 days has been all over the place to the point that I struggle to know where to begin. Last tuesday, my child (who I struggle to say ‘no’ to) asked for some help with a project.

That project involved dismantling, cutting, and re-assembling, and adding some structure and a veneer to a wooden box that would house the Edmonton Fire Cadet Class 12 legacy gift, a project my daughter was almost solely responsible for. What was assumed to be an evening project ended up being very involved.

While I was doing that, the kid was preparing a short length of fire hose to be painted – but not just painted – it was to have the Fire Cadet Class 12 crest, which she designed, across 3 stacked sections of hose before being discretely mounted inside the aforementioned frame.

I rebuilt the box Tuesday evening, while the kid made a plan for the ultimate display.

Wednesday morning, I dealt with the failing of our provincial mental health support system, as an assessment I was looking rather forward to getting done… that had already been delayed… was rebooked without my knowledge. There are a number of ways this miscommunication can appear to be my fault, but upon sharing the details with a couple people this past week, none of them were surprised. I lodged a complaint with AHS and received 4 separate, VERY apologetic phone calls from AHS and put on the top of a cancellation list… which is a strange move for a large underfunded organization who apparently did no wrong.

In the evening, we went shopping for supplies in a torrential storm (since we couldn’t work outdoors anyway). Thursday evening, while I was otherwise occupied (rehearsing for a show I had on Friday, HA!) she sanded and stained the box and frame during a brief few hours of tolerable weather, and friday morning I added the newly stained veneer to the newly stained box, and mounted the 3 lengths of hose inside roughly 45 minutes before my soundcheck on Friday. The gift was signed by all the cadets at their graduation ceremony at City Hall, where it was presented.

It was all very high-pressure for the kid, and she handled it all very well, and got the job done. The ceremony was incredible, and my daughter was singled out for a monetary prize from the Cadet Corp’s major sponsor.

The next day was father’s day, which meant very little for me as there was a bit of a family reunion happening. I attended and was overwhelmed. I forgot to call my own dad… and still haven’t done so 6 days later… sorry dad.

Monday, the kid collected her diploma from high school… which should be exciting – and was, don’t get me wrong – but really most of us were most excited about the cadet grad two days prior, and ultimately relieved at the success of that.

By Tuesday, I was ready to hide in the waves of sound that can only be made by my rock & roll band, and the boys didn’t disappoint. That was a great jam, and we’re very excited about our upcoming shows.

On Wednesday, I received copies of our latest record and solidified some release party plans for a few months from now (but we will be bringing these records with us for the summer shows, of course!)

I’m suitably ready to collapse.
To give you an idea of how it all feels, I go to work to relax now.
But I am reminded of the depressive feeling that comes with finishing a long race, or coming home from a tour with nothing ‘spectacular’ on the horizon to look forward to. It’s a funny feeling that I am very aware of, and doing my best t handle

The kid? Still going… she’s been to a couple of friends’ graduations and narrowly avoided repelling off a 7 story building as a final cadet gathering. She hurt her wrist a while back and really didn’t trust it, but I’m proud of her for going up in the first place.

She turns 18 in 6 weeks.
A couple weeks later, I become an uncle again.
Shit’s bonkers, I tell you. BONKERS!

All in all, I am plagued with the infamous Ferris Bueller quote at every turn.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Since all of that; and I’ll save the details because it’s really not my place to comment or update people about this sort of stuff, but this house has 2 parental family members in the hospital for some pretty serious stuff, and some of the commentary from the staff and volunteers there is pretty ominous.

We’re hoping for the best and preparing for some life-changing stuff here, just in case.

not my story to tell

I don’t post about it a whole lot, but I’m a dad. I know I’ve mentioned my daughter in this blog before, but I have a reputation as a bit of a public figure, for lack of a better term, and as my profile was starting to raise within the community and my band started to gain a profile, I made a conscious decision to not post about my kid.

Lots of other people do that…no shade… but I wanted for her to be her own person and generate her own online persona IF she even wanted to do that at all.

She has.
Terrific.

I ultimately wanted for her to be recognized as an individual, rather than “Fat Dave’s kid” or “Davey’s daughter” or whatever, and if the price of that is that I get recognized every so often as ‘someone’s dad’ then not only is it a small price to pay, it’s proof that it worked. At this point, I’d rather be the one with a certain level of anonymity, but hey – we carry the chains we forge.

I’m very proud.
She’s done amazing things.
Not the least of which is finish high school (very) recently… she just finished the last of her exams. She’s maintained honours throughout high school up until this semester… but since she got accepted to University back in January, she’s kinda on to the next thing, and understandably so. I’m sure she’d tell you all about it.

Next week, she’ll also graduate from The Edmonton Firefighter Cadets program, and it’s quite likely she’ll receive a scholarship upon doing so. It’ll help her get through a very cool program she’s already enrolled in and been accepted to. That program has welcomed her into a very small demographic of people who’ve seen some specific types of fires, and have lived to talk about it.
I’m sure she’d tell you all about it.

She’s been a certified yoga instructor for 2 years. She got certified to teach shortly after she turned 16, and may have been the youngest certified yoga instructor in Canada for a while, but she’s been doing it for a while and is less young, so that crown has been claimed by someone in Calgary. At any rate, she’s been leading classes and picking up subbing shifts for a couple years.
I’m sure she’d tell you all about it.

She artistic, and musical, and caring.
She’s an entire human, and she feels like one because we’ve made a point of treating her like one. There’s a long way to go yet, of course, but later this summer I will get to be a father to a LEGAL adult JUST as a new baby arrives in our extended family.

You wouldn’t know the difference to look at her, though, since my under-aged kid has multiple tattoos and carries herself like a confident adult. Restaurants mistakenly seat us in the lounge sections on occasion and it’s of no consequence, in spite of some potential legal repercussions. Her mother and I are onboard with tattoos, and for a kid who’s seen adversity, anger, and sadness and still managed to come out the other side of her adolescence while still being a good – no, GREAT person, a tattoo or three is an easy thing to say yes to.
I’m sure she’d tell you all about it.

There have been stones in her passway, and she’s maneuvered them – occasionally stumbling, sometimes pretty hard – but has dusted herself off and kept going, like a boss. She’ll continue to do so.
I’m sure she’d tell you all about it.

At any rate, she’s a goddamn dynamo. She’s staggeringly funny, and an absolute trailblazer, much like her namesake. She’s carving her own path through this life. I’m proud to be in her corner for absolutely anything, no questions asked, and I’m happy that I’ve found occasion to tell her that. And, even though both of us hold our cards pretty close to our chests…

… I’m sure she’d tell you all about it.

failure to land

“Failure to launch” is not a problem I deal with very often. In 44 years of bumping into walls (and hyperfixating simultaneously) with everything from navigating my own skill set in the workforce, to self-propulsion within the arts, I’ve developed a pretty vast knowledge base in a number of areas… project management, contract negotiation, self-promotion, delegation, songwriting, copywriting, policy writing, web content writing, videography, design, photography, guitar playing, composition, music theory…

… it’s a long list.

I thought for a long time that I was a one-trick pony.
In reality… it’s a hell of a trick.

Getting off the ground has never been a challenge for me. But I do have a comfort zone… and as a result, I’ve cratered more than a few projects before they really had a chance to develop out what I can only conclude is a fear of success – the notion that getting good at the wrong thing will make it so that the money will keep me in place and my soul will forever be unhappy has dogged me for a lot of my life.

Since identifying this roughly a decade ago, I’ve worked hard to counter this action. I thought I was keeping myself free, but really I was tethering myself in this safe and familiar struggle.

I now understand this to be a neurodivergent trait. ADHD, specifically.

Negative self talk plays a big role.

What’s interesting though, is that in the face of uncertainty, I’ve been pretty adaptable. I find a safe place to recoup, and I move forward from there. I’m certain that it’s a trauma response of some kind, but I suppose that’s fine, because (a) we ALL have unresolved trauma, and (b) we are learning machines.

I think back to my split with my wife 15 years ago, which was a tumultuous and difficult time, of course. I spent some time living in my emotional state… and then I got to work. My rent wasn’t going to pay itself, and I knew immediately that the way I treated my new ex-wife was going to directly affect my daughter’s relationships with men. Fortunately for me, when it comes to ex-wives, I hit the jackpot… so I got to work on being the best man I could be, which is simultaneously not hard, and impossible.

What we can’t see in the moment is that there’s a process involved. No species ever decided to evolve, but there’s evidence of it everywhere. I never thought “one day, I’ll be THIS, and live happily ever after” because that doesn’t exist in the moment – it exists in the future.

My understanding that “this is a process” exists exclusively in the past and I am only aware of the process because I followed it. There’s lots of guys out there that don’t have a clue about any of this… and that’s their journey, not mine.

That process worked.

My daughter turns 18 this year. She’s spent the majority of highschool on the honour role, she’s more self aware and independent than I ever could have been at that age, and the day she was admitted into University – a day that is still very fresh in my mind – was the day I could officially say that she oupaced her old man. I’m very proud.

I only understand now that there was a process… and thank god I followed it.

In the moment, that process doesn’t mean anything.
The only thing that mattered in each moment of the past 18 years was “How do I love this kid?“

It’s the same for everything else I’ve ever done: How do I solve this? How to I climb this? How to I conquer this? How do I enjoy this? How do I survive this?

It’s in retrospect that I am skilled at anything.

I always wanted an immediate result.
A magic pill.
An answer key.
A hand.

But those things were never availed to me.
If you’re ever wondering what “God helps those who help themselves” (which I believe is a Benjamin Franklin quote, not a bible verse) really means… that’s what it means.

rest

Rest. This is a big one because I don’t get much of it. I don’t allow myself much of it because I take on roles that are relentless, but those roles are important.

Fatherhood doesn’t relent. When they told me 17 years ago that the next 18 years of my life were spoken for, they undersold it by a country mile. I am something that I will never not be, and I wouldn’t have it any other way… even when I feel like complaining.

I’ve been split with my daughter’s mom for a good long time now. It’s fine. The kid is supposed to spend a week at my place and a week at her mom’s but in reality it looks more like 11 days with me and 4 with her mom. It’s not the end of the world. as a matter of fact, I play lots of gigs out of town, and need her help managing the dog.

I love it, even when my old introverted ass is yearning for an empty house with which to play loud music and loud guitar, sometimes simultaneously.

Rock & Roll doesn’t relent. We’d like to think it gets easier when you ascend to the next rung of popularity. That’s bullshit. It’s glorious and all encompassing… but it’s a mountain of work that nobody’s ever going to do for you. The best you can hope for is to have people do that work for you, but the reality is that you only pay people to do things you can’t or won’t due… which means you stay busy.

Then when you’re not busy, you load up a trailer full of gear and drag it down the highway for several hours where you and your equally old (if not older) band members unload it, play all night, and then barely make it to a hotel room to collapse before we repeat the cycle. We get home a couple days later and go to work… which is the closest thing to relaxing we get to do, regularly.

I love it, even when my old introverted ass is yearning for an empty house…

Endurance Sport is relentless. The very nature of endurance sport is that it is something to be endured, so it shares some common ground with parenting and rock & roll in that it takes up a bunch of time and I can’t live without it. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your old tired self is to get up early and go for a run. it makes me a better parent and a better rock & roller so it stays…

The rest of my life fills in the gaps. Being a boyfriend and a dog owner are not particularly taxing, though they do have their moments, just as I have my moments when I need the attention of my family members.

… my life straight up rules. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I have a music career, and day job, and a family and none of them seem to interfere with each other. I have a lovely home, dog, kid, girlfriend… I have cool stuff… I’m winning this game.

But it can be a lot.

We have to take our rest when we can get it. I was reminded of this when my body all but shut down on a monday morning recently. It was the kind of thing where I got up to go for a run and anytime I would turn my head, my eyes took a few seconds to catch up.

I went back to bed. I woke up in time for work, and after work I took a nap. Then I went to bed early. There was no other choice… and sometimes that’s just reality.

I would love to tell you to prioritize rest.
But I don’t do that.
The best I can do is tell you: Listen to your body.

Speaking of rock & roll… today I’m in Drumheller, AB playing a dinosaur’s birthday party. It’s an outdoor, free event, so if you’re not otherwise engaged on this long weekend, it’d be great to see you.

balance

I am always searching for balance.

I have goals to look a certain way, perform to a certain level, run certain distances, eat a certain way, write songs to a certain standard… in amongst working and sleeping and being an attentive adult / father / partner / employee, it doesn’t take much to knock it all off kilter.

So, I have to stop and take stock of where I’m at.

It comes down to what kind of life I want to live.

If I could have everything I wanted, I’d be a Ironman Triathlete who played 250 shows per year to 10,000+ audiences, and have a personal chef, and would train 6 days a week… but it would be a solitary life, surrounded by people and close to noone.

If I trained for an Ironman, I’d have to put my rock & roll band on ice for a while. Any vacation time I had would be spent training. I’d hardly have time for my family because all I’d be doing was training, eating and sleeping.

If I were to chase bigger crowds with my music, I’d likely have to scale back my training, and spend more time at the right parties, socializing, and I’d compromise my health and the quality of my art.

If I lean into my daytime career, I’d likely crater my band, and possibly alienate my family doing so. I wouldn’t train much at all and I’d eat in restaurants and sleep in hotels far too much.

So I try to live my life in the middle… and my life in the middle is pretty great.

I’m 43 years old. I am on 0 medications, and have 0 health complications to be concerned with. I am available to people who need me, including my employer, I have great artistic output with top tier musicians and we do things the way we want them to be done.

All this to say, I am grateful for what I have, and I am happy where I am – because where i am is in a state of progress. I am moving forward in my life and in my art, not backward. I train hard, and I eat like an athlete… but there’s still room in my life for a vegan donuts. I play rock & roll and write songs constantly… but I’m still home for dinner and a dog walk. I work hard, but I’m still available to my family and my friends.

I’m serious.
But I don’t take myself too seriously.

I’ve been trying to find balance for so long that I almost didn’t recognize it when I found it.

aging

I turn 43 this year.
Actually, I turn 43 this weekend.
Tomorrow.
Star Wars day.

Ultimately I’m good with it. I’m not in the shape I was in when I turned 40 and ran a triathlon, but I am on an upward swing in that regard. I’d love to spend more time in the pool and round out my tri-sport fantasies once again, but the advent of a fresh tattoo about 6 weeks ago, followed by another tattoo appointment this coming week keeps me on dry land. Submerging fresh tattoos is a good way to get an infection. But… That’s okay. Running and biking are filling my early mornings in the same way creative endeavours seem to fill my evenings.

I’m in the early stages of making another great record with The Confusionaires, I have a busy summer ahead of me with festival performances, long runs, sweaty bike rides, rock & roll recording sessions, and a couple of quick trips out of town with the family if fortune smiles down on us before the snow flies again. Summers are so fuckin’ short here.

When my daughter was born, and I was 26 years old, I recall doing the math and determining that I’d be 44 when she turns 18. That’s still true. It’s true every time I check, and the math gets easier each time… that’s a year from now, but it might as well be now. She’s grown up well, and smart, and strong. She has ambition that surpasses me at that age. I’ve very proud of her. She’ll be 17 this summer (obviously) and although she’s not done turning into the person she’s going to be, I can tell that person is going to be awesome. We got matching tattoos last month – an honour I share with no one else, and one I don’t take lightly.

I’m 43 tomorrow. Where does the time go? Well, I know where my 20s and early 30s went. Kinda. They’re hazy and were largely fuelled by intoxicants. Not sure how I lucked my way into finding my girlfriend. We’ve been together for 14 years or so. Like I said… hazy. She’s great, and has either joined me or guided me on several journeys that led both of us to places we’d never imagined… like veganism. She’s just begun a sabbatical of sorts, as she’s between vocations and has found herself with a month off before starting a new job. Having her around is pretty great. I think I’ll keep her for another 14 years.

I don’t know where this leads.
Wherever it’s supposed to, I guess.
But wherever that is, I hope they allow dogs.

when it’s no longer yours

There’s a strange thing that happens when you create something, and I don’t know that people really talk about it very openly. Maybe they don’t talk about it at all, but there are so many examples I can point to, and many of them can be triggering for creative people. I hope my perspective; however, is not triggering.

When you make something – anything – there’s a certain point at which it stops being yours, and starts being part of the fabric. Which fabric depends on what you’ve created, I suppose. I’m fortunate to have been part of many creations in my life, and over time I’ve learned that although I’ve been integral in the process, these things no longer belong to me.

The biggest and most obvious thing I’ve had a hand in creating is my daughter. She remains my daughter, and I suppose that will never not be the case, but as far as being part of the creation process of another human being goes – she is very much her own person, and is learning to self-govern by the example of the people around her; because, yes, it takes a village.

In a similar yet different way, I create music with my close friends. I write songs. I take a blank page, fill it full of words that rhyme, ideally with some poignant message about love or life, and I set it to music… and at some point after smoothing out the rough edges at loud volumes in a rehearsal space, it becomes what it’s going to be. Eventually it’ll be performed live, and/or in-studio and recorded, and released.

I may have some rights to it as has been carved out by intellectual property lawyers over the past hundred years or so, but if the magic and the timing line up, the song will take on a life of its own. In a perfect world (in which we do not currently live), someone with a higher profile than me will hear it and want to record it and release a version of it, and it will go on to reach more and more people. It will have taken on ‘a life of its own‘ the same way my daughter has a life of her own, and I the time will come when I have no real governance over what it becomes.

At what point does this happen? Probably when the record comes out, (though some pro-lifer may examine the parallels I’ve made so far and argue that it’s when pen meets paper… please understand that this is not a conversation I intend to have). After all, a painting is not a work of art until it’s finished.

And… making an album available for consumption is called “releasing.”

Regardless, my daughter will always be ‘my daughter’, and my songs will always be ‘by me’ if only as a point of reference: Davey’s daughter. Confusionaires’ songs.

The tendency with these artistic works, to further the parallels, is to be precious about it. To protect and conserve this music so nobody steals it and copies it before you get notoriety for it… and but this is where the parallels stop.

It’s important to let go of these things, and let them become what they are to be. Most of them will go nowhere, and become nothing – possibly ever, possibly just for a long time – while some of them might get picked up by the wind and travel the world. To put a finer point on it, if Bruno Mars heard one of my songs and loved it, and wanted to make a hip, modern r&b version of it, I’d be elated and honoured. However, I’d have to get comfortable with the fact that the majority of the world would know it as a Bruno Mars song because his version of it would easily travel further than mine.

A solid example of this if Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt, which was originally written and recorded by Trent Reznor under his project name ‘Nine Inch Nails.’ Though NIN has a far reaching fan base, that song has become a Johnny Cash song to more people than it is a NIN song.

Trent Reznor also knows that he can write more songs.
I can write more songs, too. And I will.

So to be precious about a string of words and notes that were arguably dropped on me and picked up by my antena from some unseen energy that has deemed me a good conduit for these messages seems selfish to me… especially since if I were to not write the words down, and not conjure up the melody and structure, that the song would keep floating, and be picked up by someone else.