My nine-year-old daughter picked out a Slayer shirt for me at Hot Topic last week. So other than my kid being objectively the coolest why am I bringing this up? Because for me, and the way I see the world there is constant change even when things may be largely the same and I believe for many of us, this can be a lot harder to experience than we may initially realize. While we certainly anticipate changes in our lives, often we get so lost in the bustle of the days and the stressors we have that we miss the small moments.

This is my anniversary. January 24, 2013, I started going to the gym and that was the first step in a bunch of changes in my life. Obviously, we could focus on the physical changes that take place when someone joins a gym and commits to their goals, but there was a domino effect here that was apparent in basically every part of my life. There were of course physical changes, but beyond that there were mental and emotional changes that I went through as well. When I was first super active on social media, Instagram in particular I made a habit of posting about it. There were the side-by-side comparisons where I showed the weight I had dropped (112# for those counting at home) and then the posts transitioned to the new goals I was chasing. The first year it was about maintaining the weight I had lost while exploring new aspects of the gym. Then it was about building strength, then about specific lifting goals or competitions I had looming. But through it all, I was never the expert in my mind. Hell, even as I sit here and write this before my first session of the day, I am never the expert anywhere in my life. This is what I want to unwrap with you today.

Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge.

In our society we have normalized the idea of hustle and grind culture, where people brag about how little sleep they get and talk about how hard they work. While there is genuinely a segment of the population who has no choice but to work 80+ hours a week just to make ends meet, working a ton has become this thing we idolize. We see people who followed this mindset and were able to reach their goals and we think that is the model we should be following. Personally, travel has become a much-needed part of my time off. As someone who works from home and owns their own business, being at home makes it far too easy to compromise and allow myself to work “just a little bit”. That means I am not getting the full effect of taking time off and I am not sufficiently recharged. So, I will travel. It does not have to be far and it to this point has all been domestic trips more or less. The importance is getting away and breaking away from my routine and my schedule I normally adhere to.

As a starting point, there is often a point that we have to agree upon before we move forward. That point is that every child is deserving of unconditional love and acceptance.

In honor of the anniversary of me becoming a parent for the first time, I wanted to explore a bit about what parenting looks like, and the ways I see choices as a parent impact kids. Often, the people I work with will grapple with having parents who loved them and provided for them, and who missed the mark in some way shape or form. As a parent, it is damn hard to know if what you are doing is right because there is no handbook, and it isn’t like kids can fill out a satisfaction survey to give you feedback on what you do great and where you can improve. Hell, for all they know, you DO have a handbook and are following it precisely. They have no frame of reference for you and your performance. So, you have to try and cobble together what parenting looks like from your own lived experience, your friends, your family, blog posts, books and tv shows as well as probably 15 other sources that will likely make you feel more like a failure than a success. Unless you are looking at a terrible parent, you will likely often struggle with feeling inadequate.

Recently I have had Killswitch Engage’s album “As Daylight Dies” album playing which has always been one that I loved. There is a track called “Unbroken” on that album which has the lines:

“Through adversity, there is redemption. With passion, fighting. I am, unbroken.” As well as; “The absence of fear is the renewal of our self.”

Following years in an abusive relationship I have gotten to a place where there is some level of appreciation of what I went through. I would never want to go through it again nor would I want someone else to endure it, but for me it was truly a transformative experience.

I wrote previously about the impact of imagery on all of us when it comes to actors and magazine covers and how it creates these impossible standards that most of us are simply incapable of reaching. The problem with this is that often companies and publications will market these images to us in a way that makes them seem attainable if we work hard enough, dedicate ourselves seriously enough, or take the right supplement or vitamin. Hell, we often see our action hero leads as almost an every-man at the start of a film, and then we see them rise to become a hero. This subtly tells us that even a guy who works a job that takes up most of his day and energy, and who raises his kids can have this ultra-impressive physique with rippling abs and bulging biceps even though he eats trash. Magazines and ads for fitness equipment tell us all we need is 20 minutes a day a few times a week to follow this training protocol. But all these conveniently leave out all the factors that go into having this exact physical appearance.