walking down a street in new york with my kids and it's warm but not hot outside and we already did a lot of stuff and we're just going home now and talking and looking at people and feeling the air and the sun is going down and it's peaceful yet buzzing with life and stories all around us.

I was trying to explain to my kids the other day how different my 40 was to my dad’s 40. I skateboard sometimes, play video games, buy motorcycles. I ride bikes now. Like, man, I’m a real action-packed 40-year-old dad, like, relative to what a 40-year-old was like when we were growing up. Also, I have this thing where I meet people whose kids are, like, superhuman perfect: "She speaks three languages now, blah blah." That used to make me feel shitty. Like, "Aw man, I really have to crack the whip and do this and that." But then I watch their kid for a while and then watch mine. And my kids look actually happy. And I learned early on that perfectionism and parenthood is a toxic combination fo...[Read more]

No. You know, I joke around about being a parent and being, you know, a parent that doesn't know what he's doing, and I don't know what I'm doing. But being a dad will remain the most important thing I'll ever do in my life, and having 5 children is something I love and I'm totally unequipped to do.

Get as much help as you possibly can. Relatives, a night nurse, anything you can afford. Doing it yourself is hard on everyone. Every other country seems to do it. You don't have to do it just the two of you. You're gonna be fine. Your natural instinct will kick in. Be selective in listening to other parents, don't listen to the negative ones, doom and gloom. It's a little rough the first three months but all worth it. Your kid will be a jerk if you let your kid be a jerk. It doesn't have to be as hard as all the assholes say it will.

My kids know everything about what I do and about jokes and what jokes are and what comedy is. All we do is laugh and joke when I'm not raising them or feeding them or cleaning up after them or enjoying their company.

It changed everything. There's this beautiful thing Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche says about putting down your project or agenda and just being with someone else. That's a great map for the territory of fatherhood. This kid blows my mind. We have an orange tree and the people who lived here before us grew strawberries so every day he gets to harvest and eat fruit with me and his name for fruit is "nann" He'll point up at the orange tree and say "nann" and it's gotta be what the angels sound like when they are singing in heaven. laying on the hammock eating oranges with him and laughing and listening to him say "Nan" has altered me permanently for the better.

One thing that has helped me is to try to think as objectively as possibly when you're teaching them things or correcting them. One thing I ALWAYS do when I correct my kids is to let them know I did the exact same things they did. We all make mistakes, and that's how you learn and grow. I try to be as vulnerable in that regard as I can. I also tell them that I love them as much as life itself and that my goal in explaining something or correcting them is just to make them grow and develop into the happiest, best person they can be. Even though I'm not sure how much of that gets in at 3 or 4, I think if you keep explaining things that way eventually it becomes a standard idea in their little ...[Read more]

I think as long as he's interested it's a fine time if you find a really good instructor. Don't take him to the first place you can find, look around and do as much research as you can. mixedmartialarts.com is an amazing resourse for finding out about schools near you. I think for little kids one consideration is to not push them and make sure they're having fun. He's just a little boy, and as long as he's enjoying it he's going to grow, but I always worry with kids that age that if you push them into something it can deter their enthusiasm for it for a long time. Another thing that can be of benefit to young kids is learning traditional martial arts. I wouldn't recommend many forms of tradi...[Read more]

It’s made me quit caring so much about my career, and where it’s at, and what I’m doing. It’s so hard to remember the career is the thing that’s just always happening. I think we always look forward to when will I have the job where I go, “There, I did it. I made it to the top of my personal mountain of achievements. And here I am.” I think Roger Waters had a great quote, that I will misquote, but the gist of what he said was: In Pink Floyd, they were always playing and he felt like it was a big rehearsal for a big show until he finally came to realize the big show was always happening. It wasn’t a rehearsal, it was always happening. I could relate to that a little bit.