The Idea Phase

My favorite Golden Gate Bridge fun fact is that it takes so long to paint that the team walks right back across to start again as soon as they finish. The job never ends, it simply continues in perpetuity. One conjures up images of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill each day only for it to wind up back at the bottom again tomorrow. The thought can be ominous if you linger on it for too long, because our lives aren’t so dissimilar.

Wild animals toil endlessly for survival, while we, the vastly superior beings, have eschewed our upright walking in favor of mechanized travel and plenty of other cushy modernities. sFire was cool and all but my Instant Pot has 12 cooking modes. So what then to do with all of the free time that such convenience affords?

What I’m quickly learning is that there will always be a task at hand if you are an impulsive human like myself. The very instant I’ve scrubbed the cars clean, vacuumed the house or mowed the lawn, the world immediately conspires to ruin my efforts. Without cause or direction, I find myself walking endless circles around the house, chasing one nibbling task after another. There’s a misplaced sock on the floor, so I take it to the laundry room and see a bathroom in need of toilet paper on the way. The cats are out of food, our recycling is full, and my mushrooms need another spritzing. So it can go for hours. Is this really healthy, though?

I’m on week three of this new adventure and the time has come for an injection of purpose into the routine tasks. I have a sense of what my weekly responsibilities look like at this point and some notable wife requests have been knocked out. In order to steer this ship in the right direction, here are a slew of goals I’d like all of y’all to hold me to in the coming months:  

Fun Dad Summer

I officially changed my LinkedIn status to “Stay at Home Dad” which they make as hard as possible. The dropdown menus judge you real hard when making such updates. It’s time to start living up to my illustrious title. And, by the way, summer is coming. With the advanced knowledge of my departure, Allison has not filled up our calendar with the usual slew of camps. This means it’s on me to entertain our little ladies and offer up experiences that make them better humans. Without breaking the bank, I’ll be planning an activity-filled curriculum to get us out of the house and have a memorable summer.

Feed Off the Land

I might have ten square yards receiving full sun around our house, but that hasn’t deterred my ambitions to grow as much food as possible. With an eye on limiting our dependency on the local supermarket and spreading the love around, I have set out to do two things. One is to plan days in the future where I will eat only items that come from our property. This is going to require an immersion in methods of preservation and even a little foraging, otherwise I’ll be lucky to get by on leaves of lettuce. Goal number two is to check out our local farmers market and start planning a product of my own, with any income (or leftovers) donated to the food pantry at our church.

Crank it up to 11

I love playing music. The rub is that I’m not terribly skilled at any particular instrument. Call it a joyful noise. To encourage routine practice and fluff up my rockstar dreams, I’ll be planning a live performance this summer at our annual fundraiser with the stipulation that my kids have to join me for at least one song. Typing that just made my palms a little sweaty.

Chef Chappy

For someone who hasn’t worked in food service since the age of 16, I sure do read a lot of books on what it is like to be a chef. My wife credits Anthony Bourdain and her gift of a Big Green Egg for turning me into an obsessed foodie. Cooking for people makes me happy, especially when I get to plan out a unique menu and push myself a bit. As circumstance would have it, I owe two groups a “Chef Chappy Dinner” from a silent auction that got out of hand. It is time to settle up and expand my repertoire of dishes. (Note: Minutes after I typed this, I sliced off a decent chunk of my thumb while making a salad. Need to revisit the knife skills as well.)

Stop Being so Selfish

I’ve dipped my toe in the waters of volunteerism in the last few weeks and it feels gooooood.  I’m ready to champion a cause, commit and show my face on a regular basis. If you have followed along thus far, it may come as no surprise that this will be a food-related charity. 

Yoga Posin’

I claim to practice yoga, but what I’ve really been doing is putting on my Yoga with Adriene videos and following a routine of my own making. Every now and then I add a new pose for giggles, but there really hasn’t been much growth in my skill level over the last two years. I asked my wife if scorpion pose would be an attainable goal and she just shook her head. We’ll give it a go anyway and see what happens.

Hold onto your butts! I’ll be posting updates on my progress for each of these challenges. Should be an interesting adventure.

The Sum Total of Our Inputs

How much water have you had today? 

This would be my Mother’s response to virtually any issue you may encounter. In a bad mood? Got a headache? Slept like crap last night? This seems like such an oversimplification, but your body is made of sixty percent H2O. If the system is malfunctioning, common sense tells us that is a pretty good place to look first.

Our bodies and brains are very sophisticated machines. We tend to forget that sometimes. Understanding the math of it all, however, is still pretty simple. What goes in is balanced with what comes out. Energy is conserved. Not only are we fueled by what we eat and drink, but every stimuli around us brings with it an impact. Your friends, hobbies, shows, phones, job and kids can have a significant effect on your well being. In the words of my homie Thich Nhat Hanh, “we are but a sum total of our inputs.”

With a big life change comes an opportunity to peel back the layers and decide whether your litany of habits are worth keeping or need to be tossed in the bin. To start, the general look on my face could use significant improvement. I do my best not to be photographed, but the rare exceptions have captured pretty sour looks. “Here is Chappy in his native habitat and boy he sure looks grumpy.”

Forty years of life do provide occasional perspective. I may be one of the most impatient people on earth (working on that) but it is unreasonable to think I’ll be a fresh new person immediately. The first week of this new life was about examining how I fill my hours and sorting out what needs to go. This list is quite impressive.

One admittedly caustic practice has been the need to give my phone some attention at least fifty times per day. This mindless routine offered up no substance or utility. It’s as if I didn’t know what else to do but fire that puppy up and doom scroll away. My first official act of unemployment was to delete Slack (and it felt so very satisfying), but let’s not pin all of our shortcomings on one application.

The troublesome element at play here is my overwhelming urge for distraction. I feel so distracted at times that I can’t even pinpoint what I’m diverting attention from. I’ll have an audiobook in my ears and a TV on as I dart about doing anything that keeps me from sitting still and hearing the cries of adoration (I can only assume) from my children. Question: How can you be a peaceful human if you don’t invite any peace into your day? 

On day one, I skipped the vitamin D3 supplement and headed straight out the front door. My walk was lovely. I worked in the yard, digging and planting until I had soaked through three shirts. Gardening is a medicinal exercise in my view because you can’t rush plants. You can walk circles around them and diligently tend to their assorted needs, but the bloom only appears when nature decides it is ready. How easily we trick ourselves into thinking that we can bend this world to our will. Order it online and it will be here tomorrow. Microwave on high for three minutes and voila - dinner is served. If we’re not careful, this persistent immediacy in all things can easily skew our perspective. I want to turn this tide with a lot of doing. From scratch, by hand, with love.

Many smart, quotable, and totally chill people in history have identified that giving of oneself for the good of others does wonders for your personal well-being. Also, facts. Having known this, you’d think I would be out every weekend, dragging the kids along for some humble acts of service. Not so much, and I’m a little ashamed of it, frankly. Time to change that! As if by serendipity, my first volunteer opportunity in this new era reunited me with a friend I hadn’t seen in many years. We caught up while planting seeds and learning a few gardening tips. I was all smiles on the drive home.

And on the third day, the Lord saw what he had done and proclaimed ‘Let there be golf.’ At least I think that’s how it goes. Anyway, I was blessed with a leisurely eighteen on a beautiful day with a good buddy. My phone stayed in the cart for hours.

It’s rare that we associate with friends outside our little bubble. In both human interactions mentioned above, neither exists within the two mile radius we Chapmans typically operate in. That is one thing I’d love to inject into my newly retooled schedule. I believe the mind goes on autopilot if you only do the same thing all the time. We constantly crave new, novel and deeper interactions.

The wife and I departed Thursday for a rare couples weekend at the beach. We had a house full of old friends and a marriage to celebrate, with a few evening events on the schedule. It was a hilarious social experiment seeing how everyone chose to spend their precious free days in the absence of children. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time. Best we could guess was it had been at least 8 years since we had done anything like that with this crew (legendary for our annual Festivus party). Time had aged us but it all felt familiar again.

Back at home, I’m not walking around grinning like an idiot at all hours yet, but I dare say that the look on my face is changing. Next week, we enter the idea phase.

‘I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’ - Kurt Vonnegut