Half-Life

Quick take : Vacation Re-Entry, Fatherhood is Humility and Progress Being a dad of a neurodivergent child is remembering, fatherhood is humility and progress. We were away from home for over 3 weeks; most in New Orleans with a finish in Panama CIty Beach. Art camp, an unexpected Pokémon event, wandering & exploring, good times, disappointing times, learning… always learning. I bent to him, he…

I’m 59, still running long trail days in the Black Hills, and I’ve stopped pretending I can out-sprint aging. I’m training for durability now—being “less slow” later in the run and later in life. That means Zone 1–2, time on feet, hiking on purpose, and caring more about aerobic decoupling and TSS than braggy splits. The goal is simple: move well when I’m tired, stack weeks without breaking, and keep saying yes to long days outside for as many years as I can. I wrote about what that actually looks like here.

Parenting a pathological demand avoidant child breaks every script I grew up with. Expectations in, cooperation out was the deal in the ’80s. With my son, the more I push, the more his nervous system panics. It looks like defiance from the outside; up close, it’s anxiety wearing armor. I’m slowly unlearning “won’t” and learning to see “can’t,” rebuilding our days around autonomy, trust, and far fewer power struggles. I wrote about what PDA actually looks like in our house, how it tangles with ADHD, and why the ODD label misses the point.

Sometimes I’m scared of the dad my kids might remember—the one from those rare explosions of anger, not the thousands of quiet, gentle moments in between. When my anxiety, hormones, and old stories pile up, a kid’s “no” suddenly feels like a verdict on my worth, and my nervous system goes straight to fight. I hate how fast the shame hits after I raise my voice. In this new post, I write honestly about father insecurity, rare anger, and trying to choose curiosity over control instead.