New Look, New Location, New Outlook

MvD has moved.  Please go check out the new look on Wordpress byclicking on this sentence!  

Thanks!

-JB

Moment of Self-Awareness

I've been known to be funny.  I have developed my sarcasm.  I ignore my introverted-ness at times.  I exploit my Alpha-Dog within.  I hide my inner Geek (sometimes).  I stomp out the urges to yell.  I still don't understand emotions (mine or others').  I know how those who don't know me may categorize me upon seeing me, and it intrigues me.  I used to go to the store in baggy hooded sweats and have headphones in my ear without any music playing just to hear what people say when they think you can't hear them.  I love mirrored sunglasses.  The behavior of people intrigues me; that's why I do what I do for work.  

I don;t think there's a way to translate the behaviorist side of myself into this blog.  My sense of humor is passive-aggressive, sarcastic, subtle, inappropriate, and just mean sometimes.  But how does someone bounce back and forth from mommy-issues to a vacuum they enjoy, to manhood, to anger-management, to his little princess, to his son, to race issues, to techie concerns, to special Education developments, to whatever and still maintain a captive audience?  

If I've learned anything from no one, it's that anyone can teach you something at any moment.  

I have had a great response to some of my more"inspired" posts, and I think that the pressure I felt to do some equally deep follow-up posts was self-imposed.  Yes, I want to discuss some heavier issues in my life, but I am not a deep, touchy-feely, cum-by-yah, "everyone's a winner" kind of person.  I am, in fact a fairly simple person... or at least I think I am.  My own philosophy is that if you have to tell people you are something, then you are not it.  If you were, then people would know that.  But is that the case when it comes to an online persona?

Am I doing the Modern Dad a disservice by trying to stick to one niche?  since today's dads are "EVERY-MEN", who am I to try and stick myself into a box?  My own Twitter profile explains the many sides of me thus far: Ex College Athlete, Husband, Dad, Geek, Special Education teacher... Just trying my best.  But that still scratches my surface.  I am a diapering/greco-roman-style baby wrestler.  I am a battlefield medic, ordering the able troop (Peables) to go retrieve supplies while helping a downed soldier tend to his wounds (poop and a diaper rash).  I am the strongest-weakest, fastest-slowest, best-worst wrestler/dancer ever as I balance being the strongest dad ever with getting beaten up by my kids.  I have Love-Amnesia: I get annoyed at little things my wife does, but I'm so happy to see her when we're home that I forget, and she's just perfect.  I am a dormant volcano of a has-been athlete that I have to calm myself from going too hard too fast when I get a chance to compete.  I am a pushover of a disciplinarian.  I am the head, and I show examples of how to follow, and how to lose.  I can nap while my kids are jumping all over me.  I am an educator of modern-mythologies (comics). 

I am a dad.  I am a modern dad.  

I am everything my pack needs me to be. 

There IS No HOW-TO

A common trend I see among the Dad-Blogosphere are the how-to tips for being a "great dad" or a "better husband".  As helpful as these tips are, they reflect on the way men see the world... Here's a problem that needs fixing... here;s the steps needed to fix it.  

What we forget, is how people do not follow formulas.  What may work with someone, for example our own kids, today, may not work for them in a similar situation tomorrow.  I WISH relationships were like cars, or something with an owners manual where I could refer to the FAQs or the troubleshooting section and call and talk to someone if needed. 

This is one of the reasons I dove into the Dad-Blogosphere.  Not so much for some weekend-warrior quick-fix tips, but for the ability to connect and share trials and triumphs.   I have enjoyed it, and I enjoy the people I have met, and look forward to meeting more! 

Profiled

I got profiled on Dad of Divas' blog in his Dads in the Limelight Series.  Check it out!

Superficial Manhood

Just a quick post about the distortion of manhood in America.  I have recently started a subscription to Men's Health magazine because I've hit a plateau in what I can do to get back in shape on my own.  With my paid subscription, I received the Big Black Book of Secrets: The Guy Guide to Male Wisdom. 

I have had this for about a week, and have only been able to make it as far as the table of contents.  I will lay out the sections of this guy's guide, then explain where I see the issue. 

1) Muscle up fast
2) Lose your gut
3) Dating and seduction
4) Power food for men
5) Supplements for men
6) Awesome Abs
7) Over-the-top performance
8) The sex position playbook
9) Look great, feel great
10) Fast health fixes
11) How to be a great dad

Did you catch it?  Issue number 1... actually, my ONLY issue is that Men's Health's idea of manhood doesn't include anything that deals with internal health.  I don't mean the foods you eat, but the mental and emotional health that men also need to work on.  The only section that you may think comes close is the being a dad section, but even that one is a series of quick how-to blurbs. 

Being a man is not something you do, it is something you are.  In an age where male and female roles are no longer separate, there are too few things that we do that we can say make us men.  However, there are plenty of things that we are, and can be that make us men. 

So here's the discussion question: What intangibles make up the men you admire most, and do you strive to become yourself?

30s-A-Comin'

30 MUST not be that old.  Granted, I don't feel like I did when I was 20, but then again I didn't feel like i was 10... so why look back?

What's most messed up about looking at 20 fondly is that I had bad health habits.  I played college ball, I ate like a billy goat (whatever crossed my path), and I worked out 5-6 days each week with great athletes.  Now, I can only average working out 2-3 times each week and jump on the Kinect a couple more times, and I lift alone.  So it's easy to get caught-up in wanting to lose the full 40 lbs I've put on since college ball.

I know 40 lbs sounds like a lot of weight, but here's my (unhealthy) diet that kept me at 200 lbs during the season.  I woke up, ate nothing for breakfast, went to classes, would lose my appetite in the cafeteria and eat a large salad for lunch, or nothing again, have a mandatory team workout, practice, get home around 6, and carbo-load on pasta for the next day.

If eating different and less would do it, I would have been there.  I was down at 230 (about 10 away from my current goal), but I had not worked out for several years and it was all muscle atrophy.  Once I started working out again, I immediately put on 10 lbs.

Now my thinking is that I want to go from 240-220, add some muscle bulk, add lots of conditioning, find my abs again under my padding, and rediscover my athletic-ness.  I will lose weight and add the muscle in a way that is sustainable to my life now with two young kids.  In other words, slow and steady wins the race. 

So I'm going to be 30.  I've been to Canada (a short drive from Seattle), Mexico, Ecuador, and Greece.  I still have yet to visit Asia, Australia, and Africa visit a friend in Nigeria).  There is much left to do, and 20-something me couldn't do it, but 30-something me will.

THEN & NOW
20s - Working jobs, trying to make it through school.

30s -Working my career and providing for my family.
20s - No plan, just wingin' it.

30s -Deliberate and directed.
20s - Known as someone's brother and someone's son.

30s -Known as someone's husband and someone's dad.
20s - Assumed things about people.

30s -Learned things about people.
20s - Believed the hype.

30s -Became the hype.

Come on 30s!  Whatchu Got?

Son, On Your First Birthday

A Letter to My Son, DMHB,

            Hey buddy.  Since today is your first birthday, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about your first year of life.  To be perfectly honest, this has been a very trying year, but looking at you has made it all worth it.  The time since you were born has flown by; so let me start by getting some of the tangibles out of the way.  In the last 12 months, I finished my Master’s in Special Education and started a new teaching position in North Bend, your mom has started a new position and schedule at the Hospital, and your sister has started preschool up at MVP.  We moved in with Nana and Papa for a few long weeks before finding a rental home close by.  You rode in an airplane to California where you got to sleep and poop in Disneyland, and meet your Great Grandma. 

            D, in this short year you have shown yourself to be silly, charming, happy, affectionate, fun-loving, easy-going, opinionated, smart, and a very good boy.  In short, you fit into our crazy family perfectly.  Your sister loves you, and is happy that you are getting more and more mobile every day.  Your mother could not love you any more than she does now; you are a momma’s boy, and she’s glad for that.  As for me, you are my boy.  You are not my chance to right the wrongs of my childhood.  You are your own life, and choices, and consequences.  My only hope is that you allow me to go on this journey with you. 

            You are mine.

            I am yours.

I love you son,

Dad

A Question of Race

Do I want to bring RACE into the MvD equation? I don't know. I am not afraid to discuss race with ANYONE. I do not believe racism does not exist. But there are other blogs that address the topic of being a Black father on a regular basis. Is that something I want to take on? Is being a Black father something that needs extra support, or something that has wrongly been given a bad reputation? Am I an exception to the norm, or am I part of a growing minority of Black fathers with their heads on straight? I don't know... Thoughts?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

An Education in Manhood

My own thought caught me off guard today.  Aside from being a husband and father searching for my own manhood, I am a Special Education teacher in a Middle School.  There are constant discussions and debates over the roles of teachers and the lines they can and should cross, and what it means to "educate" children.  Maybe I come back around to this idea over and over, because I have written a post about this before.  Click on the link and feel free to leave a comment on my Education Blog.  Where are these boys seeing manhood for 6-7 hours everyday?  Who shows them how to try, fail, and try again as men?  Who is there to say "so what?" "Suck it up", "pull it together", or "be a man"?  

Not many, that's who.

Late Night Ramblings

Some days I feel like I was a kid floating through life doing what I felt I was supposed to be doing. In and out of relationships, screwing up along the way. And then, one day, I wanted to be a man. So I decided to "do" what I thought a man does, and think the way I thought a man did.

As my 30th birthday approaches, I am caught in the dilemma of being a dad, and the whether the march of time makes me an old kid or a man. It is a milestone, but it will only mean I've survived another year, not that I've matured another year.

By losing all father-figures in my life, have I lost any chance of becoming truly validated in manhood. Or am I left to just guess?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

DADDY'SDOWN, BUT NOT OUT!

Getting to know Chris reveals a survivor...

After my [email] interview with Chris, the author of DaddysDown.com, I found myself with a deep respect for him. This is the kind of respect one has for an individual who goes through hell and comes through the other side a better person. For this reason, he reminds me of my own biological father, whom I’ve only known for the past seven years. He too was recently clean and sober when we met, and he had also endured some rough years. However, the man I met on this side of those hard times was a gentle gracious man I’ve grown to admire. Pulling yourself out of your own muck and mire, even with the help of friends, family, or faith, is an undertaking few have success with.

THE INTERVIEW:

Chris is what happens when you allow the harsh truth to stop making excuses for you, and you let it set you free. The one thing that attracted me to his blog was his About the Author section where he explains how he suffered from Paternal Post-Partum Depression (PPPD). Since I had never known anyone who had suffered from this, I was intrigued. I won’t go into it, because Chris does a great job in this section and in a recent post. However, this is something that does hit new fathers, and can be an isolating downfall for new dads who think they are failing their kids, and have nowhere to turn for help, for a helping hand, or for a way out. Chris has provided them this.

I strongly believe that we are not the mistakes we make in life, and that we are defined by how we respond to what life brings us. The insights Chris can bring as someone who has dealt with addiction (continues to beat addiction everyday), someone who has gone through PPPD, someone who has ADHD are numerous, and creates a platform to draw many to his site.

WHY DADDYSDOWN:

Chris has been blogging for about three years, and has been working on DaddysDown (in one form or another) for about a year and a half. The initial reason for the blog was to spread awareness about PPPD and to tell his own story about his experiences with it. However, the purpose of the blog has evolved in a natural way to address more issues of fatherhood. In Chris’ own words,

“Daddy's Down described a father that was depressed or for lack of better terminology, down. It has since morphed into a commentary on how beat up I often feel as a father after a day of parenting, especially when I haven't had my coffee. It also tends to create an image in people's mind of this dad, passed out cold, down for the count. Daddy's Down just seemed to continue to work when I changed the focus of my blog.”

Even though DaddysDown was not started as a brand, it has branding potential, and you could picture merchandise with the label on it someday. DaddysDown has many connotations to it, and I think it can mean a lot of different things related to fatherhood. Money is not Chris’ motivator, and has four main goals of his blog:

1. To tell my life story to the world so that they can learn from my mistakes and not have to learn from their own as well as learn from my successes so that they can experience their own.

2. To give dads a toolbox that they can use to be better dads and raise excellent children who will one day be better dads and moms.

3. To be a place to vent and hopefully have someone who will listen.

4. To be entertaining. I love nothing more than to make people laugh and smile.

While I would love to one day be able to make a little money by blogging, that would only be a byproduct of the four goals that I have listed.

KEEPING UP THE FIGHT:

Chris strikes me as a good man who continues to try and do better. Like any good man, he has a great woman behind him. He credits his forgiving and supportive wife with helping him remain accountable daily to being clean and sober. What a blessing. His children help to motivate him to stay clean, and much like every dad, he wants to be present, engaged, and able to remember their childhoods and watch them grow. Chris credits those in his life who loved him enough to pray for him for the fact that he is not currently in a gutter somewhere. “Thank God that HE is a God of second chances and forgiveness,” he says, “HE has put my wife and kids in my life, and I believe that HE uses them as daily reminders of how good I have it.”

One of the last questions I asked Chris was what lessons do you hope your children learn from your life? I liked his answer so much I will just quote it.

The answer is very short and simple: Be honest, be honorable, love God, and always do the right thing even if it hurts.

These are things that I wish I had learned as a kid and the lack of them caused me to travel through a very dark path in my life. That dark path is one that almost cost me everything. Had I only learned early on to be honest, be honorable, love God and always do the right thing even if it hurts, then my life would have been a whole lot easier up to this point. I would never want my kids to experience the things that I have experienced. They can avoid the pitfalls of my life by learning those four things.

I liked his answer because it has to do with creating a better life for his kids than he had, which is what fatherhood commissions every man to do. Thank you for your efforts Chris.

To his readers, Chris wants you to know the following things:

I want them to learn that a good cup of coffee and a big bear hug are essential to life. I want them to learn that you have take care of yourself if you want to take care of your family. I want them to learn that in the worst of times you can be assured that things will always get better. I want them to learn that being a father is a gift, but one that comes with much responsibility, The rewards however are endless. Most importantly, I want them to learn that God loves them and wants them to be happy.

Chris, thank you for your struggles and triumphs. Thank you for your efforts, and for your blog. Thank you for sharing your life with the world. And thank you for the DADTIFICATES they are one of my favorite parts of your blog. Keep them coming. And thank you from me for being my first dad blog interview!

Legacy of the Superman

I was looking to feed my geek side today on deviantart.com by looking through some of the interpretive works on some of my favorite comic characters. When I was looking through the Superman pictures, I noticed that hardcore fans of the character have a hard time letting go of their favorites. Now, it's not so much the character of Superman whose legacy I want to talk about as it is Christopher Reeve's embodiment of the character that has left a lasting impression on our culture.


There are countless iterations of Superman with the likeness of Reeves. Why is that? Superman has already returned to the big screen with Brandon Routh taking his shot at the icon. How did he not stack up to a movie and special effects that were decades in the past? Why is it, that every Superman that comes after wards will have to be compared to the original big screen Supes? It is more than the ability to act the part, to show the powers, and to be the secret identity. It is a high expectation that were shown. This icon was cemented into culture, because when watching the movie, we forgot about Reeves, and were watching Superman. Superman Returns was a disappointment because we found ourselves in the theaters watching a soap opera actor try, and fail to become the character. The legacy of Superman has become tarnished because the bar was set so high, and we as fans will not tolerate a mediocre showing when we know what is possible.


SO WHAT?
What does this have to do with manhood or fatherhood? That's a good question, and I'll talk about it on two issues. First of all, I have somewhat alluded to my own examples of fatherhood growing up. Well, I have the pleasure of being married to a woman whose father was a Christopher Reeves, and I'm Brandon Routh trying to fill shoes I don't fully understand. My wife is a missionary's kids, her dad is now the associate pastor at the church. When you talk about a man being a spiritual head of a house, he IS it. There are things she became accustomed to growing up that I don't even know how to do for her. The bar for being the man of the house was set very high for me, and I'm still trying to reach it. Her dad has created a legacy and an example of what she expects that makes me continue to strive to be a better and better husband and father.


On the second issue... Superman is a perfect analogy of Manhood vs. Dadhood. What is it that Superman did for the citizens of Earth? He provided security, stability, enforcement, and the respect and awe that no matter what, he would be there for us. Superman is the Dadhood side! In apparent opposition is Clark Kent, his humanity, the frailty of his relationships, his childhood, his past, his attachments... his Manhood. These two sides of the character are both parts of the whole, and both necessary for creating a complete person. Without one, the other is unnecessary.

So now, the question for me is not what happened to my examples of Superman and Clark Kent? Where is the legacy that I'm supposed to look to? Instead, I'm asking myself how to be Supes and Clark for my kids. How I will show them strength and vulnerability. How I will show them how to fail and try again, and be that stable security they need. How to enforce the rules, and break them with them on occasion. I love my kids... and it only takes one lifetime to build a legacy!

The Biggest Room in the World...

As I continue to lay the groundwork for the discussion of being a dad while searching for manhood, I want to explain some assumptions I will be making.

The number one assumption is that fatherhood is relative. As a father to our kids, and as a friend and husband to our wives, what we do is relative to expectations. The fatherless just want someone around, and those with fathers seek their approval. Single-parent homes want stability, and nuclear families search for excitement. What one father struggles to do for his family, another sees as a minimal requirement.

All that to say this: No matter what you're doing as a father, you can always do more, or be better. After high school football games where my team won 40-0, my step-dad would ask, "What's the biggest room in the world?" The answer to this question is simply, "The room for improvement." Regardless of how much you think you're doing, you can always be doing more.

I don't mean this to imply that no father is ever doing enough. However, the moment we become complacent, we stagnate. How do we expect to help our children grow when we stop growing ourselves? I will not engage in discussions of details. I will not try to determine who does more, or comparative arguments. I strongly believe that we can always do more, not matter what place we are at in life.

Thanks for taking amoment to read this. Please follow along and join the discussion.

Manhood vs. Dadhood Mission Statement

It took me a few hours to come up with a name for a personal online identity that I felt would help me to create a positive personal online community.  As I reflected on my life, I have been known as many things.  I was a good student, I was a high school football star and a college athlete, I am married for 6 years now, I have 2 kids (one and four), and as a special education teacher I already have a Professional Learning Community through my @EmeraldCitySpEd identity.  It is my role as the Man of the House and father to my son and daughter that I wanted to be known for.  Now, I do not fall into the normal Young Black Male stereotypes as growing up without a father-figure in a broken home... or at least I thought I didn't.  It wasn't until I was 19 years old that I had a revelation that I was fatherless, and that has had a deep effect on me since then. 

Back when I had the real possibility of getting married in my early twenties, I had my reservations.  My hesitation did not stem from my now wife of 6 years, but from my family history.  My mother was with her third husband, my step-dad, who was on his second marriage.  Without a clear, or positive, example of what marriage is supposed to look like, how could I be able to have a successful one myself?

My reservations didn't stop with marriage, but with raising kids.  I was very anxious when we were pregnant with our first child.  Thankfully, our first was a girl, and my step-dad set the bar pretty low for raising a well-adjusted young woman.  On the other hand,  my son is about to have his first birthday, and my concern is going to be how to turn this boy into a man when I barely found the way myself.  I though I grew p with a good example in my step-dad, but it is difficult to listen to someone's teachings and ignore the decisions they make in their personal life.  Some things are just unforgivable by man. 

All this to say that I'm trying to come into my own as a man and as a dad, while trying to figure out how to take this baby that will grow into a boy, and make him a man someday. 

So why do I have Manhood in opposition to Dadhood? 
Quite simply, they are viewed as conflicting by society.  I want to examine what it takes to be a man, and what it takes to be a dad (and a husband when necessary), and discover why the two do not always mesh.  So the title of the blog, and my Twitter name @ManvDadhood, are just the ice-breakers to a social discussion I hope to start.

Please feel free to follow me on my journey, and join in with comments.