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
Yeah.
I wanted kids. But I don't think in retrospect that I had really spent that much time thinking about what it meant. I think that I just grew up in a healthy family with two kids, knowing a lot of other healthy families with kids. And having kids was the only vision I had of a life. Jen is literally texting me right now. We need more bread so we can make the kids lunches.
This is just the things that you got to think, right? Like I got to make, can't I just focus on my own lunch? No, I make the kids lunches. I don't know what to think about this. I don't know what to think about this thing that I'm about to say to you. Maybe you'll have some thoughts. When we decided to have kids, I had a different idea of how my life was going to turn out.
I was a magazine editor and only a magazine editor. And to me, all the things that I wanted to accomplish could be mostly accomplished by sitting in front of a computer. I just dreamed of writing things that people read. And the idea of starting companies, multiple companies, flying around the world, and being invited to the incredible event, that wasn't on my radar. I didn't have that.
And that didn't show up until I had... Two kids or one kid or something until I had kids. And so I almost wonder what would have happened if I had a different set of career opportunities at the time when we were making decisions about kids and whether or not I would have wanted to sacrifice those.
Maybe the answer is that you just are never fully satisfied and it doesn't matter what life decision you make. I was just reading, I don't know if you saw this, but Michael Strahan, a former football player, is now on Good Morning America and on every television show. Michael Strahan is now talking about retiring from television because he's done a lot of it.
And he wants to spend more time with his kids. Mark Cuban is leaving Shark Tank to spend more time with his kids. And these are not like politician excuses where you're stepping down from something, but because somebody's forcing you. But I think these are genuinely like, they did it. And it was great. And now they're done with it and they want to refocus on this other thing.
And so that's another thing I have to keep reminding myself. I don't know what another parallel version of my life is like, but I can also pretty much guarantee that if I at this moment in my life cannot recognize and be satisfied with the successes that I do have, then I don't think some other set of successes would have made me feel any more satisfied.
It probably would have made me just feel like there's something else to accomplish. My kids are great, right? We've spent almost no time talking about that in this conversation. And that's fine because that's boring. Everyone talks about how great their kids are. It's so boring. Just trust me. They're great. They're great kids. They ask interesting questions. We have fun experiences.
They're great. Getting them cereal in the morning sucks. I'd never want to do it. I definitely never want to wipe an ass ever, but they're great.
The things that come out of their mouth are usually great, even though I don't want to deal with the things that come out of their butt.
I would say- Great parent with a great kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, everybody's life circumstances is going to be different. As you were saying that, the first thing I thought of was make sure you have great communication with your partner. But not everyone has a partner. I have friends who are single parents and they're making it work and are entrepreneurs. You can make anything work.
I think that my advice is simply to tell you, you can make it work. It just requires a lot of thinking and communication and gritting your way through things. There are parts of it that are gonna be hard and they're gonna get easier. And you're not even gonna recognize that they're easier because there are other things that are hard. This is my life right now.
It's actually really useful for me to see someone who has an 18-month-old, my least favorite time, here's my advice, hang on, one to two and a half is my least favorite time. And the reason is because that is when they are mobile but incoherent.
So that's when they're like walking around but they don't understand anything and they're like grabbing at everything and they have zero survival instincts and they're trying to stick things in sockets and they want to cook anything that could be brought down to the ground, but it's awful. You cannot sit down anywhere because they will not sit.
Try going to a restaurant with a one to two and a half year old. Not possible. They want to walk around the restaurant. Try flying anywhere. They want to walk up and down the aisle. I hated that time. And then you know what? They grow out of it. Then they grow out of that time. Then they're not that anymore. And now they're able to focus and play and eventually ask you interesting questions.
And it just changes. And you have signed yourself up for a life of... change. And if I've learned anything, like my whole thing about my career, like the thing I've actually based all of my speaking on and my writing is all about how change doesn't have to be bad. It's not bad. Change is just different and it is what you make of it.
And so make the best of it, but do not for a second think that you're doing something wrong. If you are standing in in a public restroom and you're changing a diaper and some old person walks by you and thinks that you should be having a great time and you're not, don't think that you're doing anything wrong because you're not.
Tell them to change that fucking diaper themselves.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's see how to podcast and how to co-host.
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