When my son lived at home, he would come home from school and start talking to me. I'd half engage without looking up from work. One day I realized I was telling him he didn't matter.
I liked working in the kitchen because of the light. Parker would start telling me about his day, and I'm ADHD, I'm a founder, I'm a hundred different things. So I'd say yeah, yeah, yeah. Nod. Keep typing.
It took me embarrassingly long to figure out what I was actually communicating.
Here's what I've come to believe about parenting, marriage, and startups. Most of it is neither awesome nor miserable. Most of it is just showing up.
Still married today? Yup. Still a dad today? Yup. Most of the time with my wife/kids just... is.
That sounds boring. And sometimes it is. But it's the whole game.
And founders are terrible at it.
Most of the time, we live in the future. What do we need to build? Who do we need to hire? Who do we need to call? All for goals that are months, years, sometimes a decade away.
And if we're not living in the future, we're relitigating the past.
What if I'd handled IGN differently? What if I'd taken the Fred Wilson money instead of selling to Yahoo? What if, what if, what if.
Very rarely do we actually live in the present with the people in front of us.
So now, when Parker walks in, the laptop closes. The phone gets flipped over. I turn to face him. You are what matters in this moment.
It's not perfect. I'm not always on my A game. But here's the part I want every founder to hear:
That is not something that just happens. I have to make a conscious choice to do it. Every. Single. Time. Get rid of the distractions. He matters right now.
Presence isn't a personality trait. It's a decision you make over and over again.
Don't take as long as I did to figure that out.
(That's Parker and I, post mosh pit, at the Dance, Gavin, Dance show last night. 53 is both far too old and exactly the right age to hang out in a mosh pit.)