Future kids, The Manning broadcast is not good, and why it's okay to quit.
So far I am really winning this unrealized gain tax thing.
I’ve already claimed 4 kids I plan on having in the future and I’ve told the IRS that I’m planning on HUGE charity contributions once I withdraw my retirement account.
That’s how this works right? We are supposed to be taxing money we haven’t made, or given up yet right?
The Eli / Payton broadcast of MNF is terrible. I want to like it, I really do. It’s a great idea to have raw, unfiltered opinions from two of the greatest while watching a game, but the execution is at best a huge distraction. I’m sure it will get better, but right now, it’s awful to watch.
What I do find funny is the huge dichotomy it brings to light.
Nearly every middle-aged (old) person I know will tell how they just do not understand how their kids can watch other people play games online while they talk. They will tell you “What’s the point”, I’d rather play the game myself instead of listening to other people describe it….as they watch two retired players, sit on a couch, and stream a broadcast of other people playing a game that they themselves haven’t played in four decades.
Growing up, it was a common practice to teach your kids never to quit. The mantra was, if you started something, you finished it, and if you didn’t, you were simply a weak individual. I grew up hearing this a lot, although it never really fit my mental construct. Still, too young to really figure it out, I did my best to adhere to this standard. After all, it sounded right.
The older I got, the more I realized how silly but when I had kids, I leaned back on my upbringing to try to raise them the same way. But no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t feel right. It came to a head the day I let my son “quit” baseball to pick up his guitar. He was a good baseball player, but high school was gonna be his peak. With that instrument in his hand, he can make the universe sing. He liked baseball, but he is music.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with quitting. In fact, I would argue, that the most successful people in life, figure out early that in order to truly be great at some things, you have to quit others. Quitting is not the same as giving up and I find if happiness is your goal, you better learn to quit.
As I study adulting, quitting is all over the place. People quit jobs, quit hobbies, quit smoking, quit friendships, and basically quit everything, all the time. The truth of the matter is that most people I know work their entire life for the single purpose of quitting. Quitting is their ultimate goal, so why do we raise our kids to be so against quitting.
From my vantage point, without quitting, people stay in the same boring, dull job that they hate for 40 years, in a marriage that their spouse is at best so-so, at worse abusing them, and hang around the same friends as they did in junior high. Without quitting anything, you never change, never grow, never stretch. You have to quit and learning the superpower of saying No, will do more for your well-being than trying to stick through everything to prove to some unknown person that you are tough enough.
In parenting this can be hard - I know first hand but things are different now. When we grew up, all things ended at some point. There were seasons, or clubs, or times of the year where whatever event naturally came to an end. When our parents forced us to stick it out, they were asking us for a two-month commitment, a couple of days a week. That was fair.
Now, everything (and I mean everything) related to kids is non-stop. You have to be all-in, or you cannot play anymore. It’s an absolute absurdity but no one asked my opinion when making these new rules. There is no end, no stopping point, no break. It doesn’t matter if you are on the football team, 8U baseball, or the chess club, everything today is so over-saturated that it is a 12-month event, taking up 4-5 days a week, requiring you to drive 90 minutes a day, costing you parents $1000/year. When you are asking your kid to “stick it out”, you are really asking them to give up their entire life, with no end in sight, for an interest/hobby that they simply may not like, and almost certainly will not matter in a few years. You are making them choose between being a kid, and being 3rd string on the tennis team.
If they are fed up with practicing 5-days a week, for 3 hours at a time, simply to play in 17 hours worth of tournaments, only to do it EVERY week for 11 months, who could blame them. What would you have done, at their age, if that was asked of you instead of riding bikes, playing in the woods, or trying to hold the hand of the girl/boy down the street? How many memories do you relive today that would not be there if you did what your kid has to do today? If they don’t love it, they shouldn’t need to devote their entire life to a sport, a club, or playing the snare drum in the marching band. It makes no sense. Let them quit, it won’t make them a big loser, trust me. They have time.
We live in what may be the most wonderful, opportunistic time in the history of the known universe. We are blessed with the greatest inventions ever created (hearts, souls, brains). Let that sink in. Look around at what we can do with all that. I mean really look.
Why waste any moment of your life doing crap you do not want. If quitting puts you in a better place in life, move on, quit, and go do something else. If someone thinks you are weak for doing so, that’s there problem, not yours.