Jason Pfeiffer
speaker
203 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Jason Pfeiffer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They won't need that from me forever. They need that for a certain number of years. And so the thing that I have to remember is... If this is not a joyful task for me, which is just constantly getting food for my kids, then I just have to make sure that I don't, in my head, equate my experience of parenthood with the annoying things that won't last forever.
This is the good thing about kids versus a dog. A dog... doesn't grow up but kids do eventually i know everyone tells me there will be this time when they don't want to spend as much time with me or any time with me and so i'll tell you one other anecdote that everything that i'm just saying here reminds me of which is when my kids were in diapers
and I would need to run into public restrooms to change them, which, as anyone knows, is just an at-any-time kind of thing. You're in the airport, you're at a restaurant, you're walking down the street, and suddenly you've got to find the nearest public restroom and change this diaper.
When I would be in public restrooms, larger public restrooms, so there's people coming in and out, this thing would happen all the time, which was that some older man would walk by me And he would see me changing this diaper, and he would say, enjoy every minute. And I understand what's happening, which is that he's seeing... His kids are probably...
grown up and on to their own lives and careers. And he sees me, young dad, young kid, in this stage of life. And it makes him think wistfully back to the good times with his kids. And he's telling me to enjoy every minute, which is what he would like to be able to go back and enjoy those times. And I always want to turn to... I never did. I always just say thank you.
But I always wanted to turn to him and said... If you enjoy this and do you want to come change this diaper? Because I don't. I think that it's okay to acknowledge that some parts of this phase are not satisfying. You can't enjoy every minute. There are plenty of moments to enjoy. There are plenty of minutes to enjoy. I just took Fen, my nine-year-old, to a Pokemon convention in Orlando.
It was great. He had a blast. It was very satisfying having that experience with him. It was great. I would like to do that. But I don't want to change another diaper in my life. And I don't want to pretend like that was a moment to enjoy.
Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it. so this is the funny paradox of everything that i just said which is that i spend a lot of time focused on and being stressed like a lot of just internal monologue time in my life focused on and being stressed by all the things that i can't do because i'm a parent i have a long list of them jen has heard it too much and yet my career has accelerated
I would say, faster and stronger in the years in which I have been a parent than in the years in which I was not. Now, part of that is that you just get smarter as you get older. I was a parent on the latter parts of my life, not the earlier.
But another part of it, I think actually very interestingly, is that when you have kids, you are forced in a way that, at least for me, I never otherwise had to experience. be incredibly rigorous about how you spend your time. Whereas I used to be a lot more leisurely about how I spent my time, I am now regimented.
And when my kids get out the door in the morning, I know exactly what I need to get done in the hours before they show up back home. And I obsess over that. Now, there's still a downside to this. Yesterday is a good example. I had a lot of work to do yesterday, and I really wanted to take a walk. I hadn't gotten out of the house.
I was anchored to the computer, just taking a walk and listening to a podcast. is a way to just feel calmer for me. And I kept watching the time tick down and it was like 3 p.m. And I would say, oh, I got a little more time left. I got to get a walk in 4 p.m. Oh, I got to get a walk in 5 p.m. And then I got to 6, which is when I'm on as dad. That's the rule here is 6 p.m.
is when like pencils down. And I never got the walk-in. Now, if I didn't have kids, I could have worked a nice full workday and put things down at 6 or 6.30 and then a lovely walk and maybe met a friend for dinner. And I can't do that. Instead, it's like I'm on dad duty. And I was actually telling Jen about that. And she was like, well, why don't we take a walk as a family? And that's what we did.
And I'll be honest.
because the kids were complaining like crazy the whole time. They were on their scooters. Colin, of course, fell halfway through and was screaming his head off. Jen and I can't have a conversation, but the kids are like constantly coming back and forth. I physically walked, but I wouldn't say that it was the relaxing experience that I wanted. But, but it's made me more efficient.
I am a more focused person than I was before. Number two, having kids allows you to relate to other people who have kids, which is actually a really useful business skill. Because talking about your kids is just like often a thing that comes up. I found that to be useful. I am sure that it has created in me some of the things that people say that parenting does.
It makes you a more patient person, more understanding, something. I don't know. I don't know how to evaluate or identify that. Having kids does introduce you to other interesting people. My friend Matt, Matt Elblanc, who's also my book agent, I met him on a playground because our sons had become friends.
And I've met a whole bunch of other people who I really, really like, who sometimes are very useful, both personally and professionally. And I don't mean useful, like whatever, good friends and they become good colleagues through having kids. So yeah, there are upsides, but it's still, it's like upsides that live inside of attention.
Yeah, sure. I was. And like anybody, I think you are more refined in your talents. You have a stronger network, just like however much older you get. But having kids certainly didn't hold me back from... I feel... I don't even know how to say it. Maybe a life in which I was able to say, yeah, I have no kids to come home to. So I will just fly around the world doing speaking engagements nonstop.
Maybe I wouldn't like that life. Maybe the quote unquote bigger life is not one that I would actually enjoy or appreciate. There's no way to know, right? This counterfactual thinking is not actually helpful, but it's certainly a tension that I live with.
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