You Are Who You Are

Both of my girls have experienced night terrors at points in their childhood.   As a parent, this means being awakened by a screaming child - usually 5-10 minutes after you yourself finally get to sleep.   The child is awake enough to be completely and inexplicably freaking out, but clearly still asleep so that they aren’t receptive to words, comforting touch, or any kind of reassurance.   They’re thrashing about, pushing you away, and making hideous noises that neighbors may possibly interpret as evidence of criminal activity next door.   You feel simultaneously completely powerless and completely frustrated as a parent – your kid is in crisis, and you can neither wake them up nor soothe them back to sleep. Recently, Anja (age 5) had a sequence of these night terrors, a handful over the span of a couple of weeks.   It seemed to come on during a time of stress and anxiety for me personally this summer – conspicuous timing, to the point where I, by God’s ...

“If you are what you do… then who are you when you don’t do what you do anymore?” – Joe Stowell You can’t go very long after meeting someone new before you’re asked “what do you do for work?”   As a man in a notoriously hard-working and dutiful Midwestern town, this experience may be even more prevalent for me than some others.   In the average social interaction, people feel comfortable with simple, recognizable exchanges on this point.   I’m a teacher of middle school science at a charter school.   I’m an attorney focused on intellectual property.   And so on.   For many years, my answer was pretty straightforward – “I work for so-and-so, I’m in such and such a field.” When I decided to quit my job earlier this year without knowing what my next one would be, I thought a little bit about how I would answer this “what do you do?” question once my employment had ended.   If I’m honest, I roughly figured that I’d try to make it subtly clear t...