This Dad Talks Honestly About Parenting, Toddlers, and Trying To Work
"I feel like I'm thrashing through mud."
"Tell me, what has parenting changed about the way you work?" I asked Jay Acunzo, dad to a 2-year-old and 4-year-old and the co-founder of Creator Kitchen.
He laughed. "The real question is, what hasn't changed?"
"For those of us that are hard chargers, people who like to take life on at a run, parenting is something else entirely,” he said.
We talked about fatherhood and work, sharing an unfiltered look at how parenting had affected their work and careers. Towards the end of our conversation, Jay Acunzo shared a metaphor that was so spot-on for what it’s like to parent and work that I asked him if I could share the story here.
“How would you explain parenting to someone?” I asked him. “What advice would you give to someone else thinking about starting their parenting journey?”
The story below is from Jay.
For those of us that are hard chargers, people who like to take life on at a run, parenting is something else entirely.
All of our lives, we've been running. Trying to max out everything. We didn't let ourselves get the C+ or the B grades in anything. It was always a pursuit.
For the most part, running has been something we’ve done all of our lives. We’re used to running, it’s a great pace, we’re comfortable with our shoes and the goals and the game we’re playing.
As we keep going in life, we learn how to face hiccups while still maintaining a running pace. We take on challenges. These challenges are like sticks and branches and rocks on the trail. We learn how to dodge and jump and throughout it all, we're able to keep running.
But for those of us that are hard chargers, people who like to take life on at a run, parenting is something else entirely.
But when you become a parent, it's like the ground itself completely changes.
The world is now different. You are now different. Your relationships change, your emotional life changes, your responsibilities change, your inter-personal navigation changes. Everything changes.
To use the running metaphor, it's like the ground itself has completely shifted. It's no longer solid ground. The ground below you has become mud. And so you can't run anymore.
If you're a hard charger, if you're someone used to running, the temptation is going to be to try to find ways to keep sprinting.
'Of course I can keep running,' you'll believe. You'll try everything.
But you can't run through mud.
For a while, you might try to run, but you’ll end up thrashing. You keep pushing harder, but it’s not working. You end up flailing and tiring yourself out.
If you keep trying to run like you used to, you’re just going to end up stuck.
That’s when I realized that trying to continue to sprint in the mud was the cause of my anger. I was stuck. The thrashing made it worse. I had to come to terms with the fact that nothing was solid ground anymore.
So what do you do, as a new parent trying to survive and build?
Here's the most important thing you can do:
Embrace that you're in mud.
Realize that you can't sprint on this kind of ground. Instead of trying to run at top speed, the way that you used to, you'll need to embrace where you are.
In fact, all the thrashing makes it worse.
What you can do now is trudge.
Your life now is learning to trudge through the mud.
Trudging is an entirely new skill.
And if you can trudge gracefully? That makes all the difference.
That is what parenting and working feels like.
Jay Acunzo is the co-founder of Creator Kitchen, a place where content creators, marketers, and entrepreneurs learn to stand out. You can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
— Sarah Peck
CEO & Founder
Startup Parent
PS: To listen to our entire conversation, with advice, stories, and wisdom from the entire group of dads I interviewed, upgrade to become a paid backer on Substack. Next week I’ll share the entire conversation and the stories on the Ask Sarah Podcast.