Being rock and roll when you're being a parent

posted by Jeff | Thursday, July 29, 2010, 9:32 PM | comments: 0

I'm very excited to report that, in the last five days, we've gone out twice in the evening, with Simon. Sunday was the PEPS group I mentioned previously, and tonight, my officemate invited us over for some grill action at their place. Against all odds, Simon took a little nap on Diana's shoulder, and we didn't leave until 8. I'll say it again... 8! It also gives us a little bit of context about the different stages of kidness, as Aaron's kids are 5 and 7.

As Diana said on Sunday night, it's a little surreal to consider that this is our life. It's one of the things that I've found so overwhelming lately. We have friends with kids, and in fact most of our social interaction here exists solely because we're new parents (work friends not withstanding). For someone who has mostly had friends in their 20's without kids, even as I went into the 30's, that's pretty strange. I've always identified more with younger people in the pre-children stage of life, generally in their 20's. Maybe that's why it was so cool last weekend to meet people our age just starting out with a baby.

But there's a part of me that worries about keeping my edge, and some days I feel like I've lost it a bit. I'm not just talking about the days when I had awesome hair or visible piercings either. In the early parts of my career, much of my success was derived from being a bit rock and roll. It wasn't so much a persona as much as it was an attitude. It wasn't just about questioning the establishment, it was about successfully challenging it.

Now here's the weird part of it... Being a dad hasn't made me more conservative and go-with-the-flow. It has done just the opposite! Just as I was compelled to challenge corporate America ten years ago, I now challenge what you're "supposed to do" as a parent. I don't do it to be different or to spite The Man, but I do it because I'm not content to just be handed information as the holy word.

This desire to look above and beyond what is generally accepted is rock and roll. This week I spent some time wondering how that would affect my career. It's no secret that Microsoft has a reputation for being "big, slow and dumb," but the exciting thing is that you can see in various parts of the company that while it may have been true at one time or another, it has changed a great deal. That's where being rock and roll in your 30's has advantages. Not only do you desire to challenge The Man, but you also know how to sell it and work the system. Anyone could have said, "Yeah, we should make a video game system," but it took someone to understand that the way to sell it was, "Hey, this Xbox could be our ticket into living rooms everywhere!"

The shock to my life's well-established comfort zone has in many ways knocked the complacency out of me. I'm feeling more energized than I had before, and I'm starting to figure out how and where I can have impact at work, in my hobby-business and in the life of my baby boy. I fully expect to do some really stupid things along the way, but it's better than doing nothing.


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