Jason Feifer
speaker
848 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 12 Jun
Jason Feifer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And it also applies to raising the child. And that was a really helpful unlock for her to see that the thing that she's doing now is consistent with the thing that she was doing before and is consistent with whatever it else that she does next. And I really loved that. And so I offer you that as a way of thinking like, This will absolutely change some way in which you understand yourself.
And it has to, right? Because you've oriented yourself so much around work. And now there is... That's not to say that you won't do that in the future, but you will now have another thing to orient yourself around in some way or another. And so to bring those things into coherence in some way, which I'm certainly not perfect at at all, but...
aspire to, I think, is to give yourself a better understanding of your identity instead of shaking your identity.
You know, the answer is that it just happens. you just kind of grow into it. And then also some days you also just don't shower. It's also true. You just don't, but you know, also it doesn't matter because whatever, I mean, look, I, I really liked that. That is a, that's a really cool thing. I did.
I didn't know that you had gone through that first exercise and that you're now almost doing it in reverse. But I think that the real answer is that like anything in life, any big important thing in life. There's no way to actually plan for it. The best you can do is march into it with open eyes and open ears. And then you just kind of figure it out.
People have asked me for advice on how do you balance this? And the answer is that you don't start by running. You start in the, well, I was going to say baby steps, but it's just before baby steps, before the baby can even take a step, baby poops. And you just work your way into it. And you end up working your way into self-discovery and you work your way into growth.
And whatever comes next is going to be awesome. Not that you were asking for my advice.
Well, but here's the thing. Here's the thing is like, okay, there's this podcast called The Longest Shortest Time, which I think is just the best name for a parenting podcast you could have ever come up with. The thing is that I am... I am... often very frustrated about life as a parent, but also I have an awesome life. And I think that's the thing that I'm trying to reconcile.
I like everything that I've built here. I mean, I have a I have a great marriage and I do great work and I'm very proud of that work. And that work keeps growing and it keeps making me more money and it keeps being more satisfying. And although I am often frustrated with parenting stuff, also, I have great kids. They're great kids.
And I can be annoyed at them, but also I spend time with them that I enjoy. And I guess that's just kind of life. Yeah.
Both are true. It's like all of it is true at the same time, I think is the answer. That's the reason why I really hate the parenting talk that is all oriented around how great everything is, because it's not true. So many things can be true at the same time. I can be really frustrated by a lot of things and then also appreciate them.
And I can say that this is a pain in the ass, but also that the outcome is awesome. All of it can be true. So it's more fun, frankly, to me and more cathartic to me when I have the sympathetic ear of a friend who can be like, yes, that sucks. It's more interesting to me to talk about the challenges of parenthood than to talk about the delights of parenthood.
I actually find talking about the delights of parenthood to be completely boring. I never want to talk about it. But that's not to say that they don't exist. It's just like they're mixed in with all these other things. And I feel like I have to spend more time grappling with the hard stuff because that's where my... Those are the knots that I have to untie.
Whereas the awesome stuff, we take for granted something that somebody told me at some point, and I can't remember the context, but they told me that just a remarkable thing that humans do is... that we can return back to a normal state for ourselves. If something is really exciting, it's exciting for a bit, and then it returns to whatever our normalness is.
If something's really sad, it's sad for a bit, and then we return back to normal. We just have a good ability to do that. Yes, things can throw that off and some things are too traumatic and it's hard to get back to normal. But generally speaking, that's what we do. And I find that true for myself in basically all circumstances.
If I'm really excited about something, it's great, but also the excitement wears off pretty soon. And even the worst things that have happened in my life, I've told myself, you will return to normal. I've seen it happen enough times that it will come back to normal and it always does. So When things are really high, I don't have to grapple with them.
It's not like, oh, what is this highness and what do I do with it? But when I'm feeling frustrated, I do have to grapple with it because that's when I really want to return to normal. And that's, I guess, probably why if I'm to self-assess myself here, I think that's why I end up talking a lot about parenting like that.
But the end result is the same, which is like you build your normal and the normal is the thing that matters. And in a way, that's kind of what we've been talking about here. This episode is like, what is normal? And then what is the new version of normal that you will kind of establish and always be returning to?
Oh, the actual act of it. Yeah. We don't report stories about the dog woke up and had a nice bowl of food and went to sleep. Yeah. We report when the dog something terrible happened to the dog. So, you know, most people have a totally good experience and then it's just not worth talking about because it was a totally normal experience.
Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you, the story with Colin was really funny. Colin being my youngest, which was that we went in, Jen went into labor, and it was the day before my dad's birthday. And so the big question was, is Colin going to be born before or on my dad's birthday?
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