Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #127: Monday Rainday, Business Cards, Relax or Else, etc.

1. Monday Runday was Monday Rainday this week. I will take a little rain over 85 and humid, though every day of the week. It was fitting, though, that after just over 3 miles of circling an old school track in varying intensities of rain, the water stopped. My legs were tired, so I had no plans to run to reach my desired 3 miles. I just had to walk faster and endure the rain. One thing I have been very happy with is the durability of my headphones. I have had the same pair of big red over-ear headphones for going on 8 years. I know that someday they will break and I will need a new pair, but that wasn’t the case on this day. The rain didn’t short them out, although I didn’t risk it, and when the rain got steadier, I took my headphones off and hid them in my shirt. Years ago, at my peak as a runner, I used to enjoy running in all sorts of inclement weather. I’d run in rain, wind, snow, whatever. I guess since I ran all of those races and ran in all of the different types of weather, I have lost the desire to do so again.


2. One day this week, I was training an 87-year-old client. She was brought by her daughter-in-law and also had her 7-year-old granddaughter in tow. I have known them over the years at my work, as the daughter-in-law is a patient at my work. The 7-year-old I have known since she was a toddler, and I give her free rein to come into the gym if I am training someone and she is there. On this day, she was just hanging out while I trained her grandmother. This was after she and I failed to find a rogue cricket that had been calling the gym home. Anyway, I was training her grandmother, and so she grabbed a dry-erase marker and started scribbling on our green dry-erase board. When she left, I saw what she wrote, and it was so sweet and cute that I decided to leave it up there. I won’t erase it, but there’s no guarantee it won’t be erased. The fun coincidence was that her other grandmother was a client of mine in the afternoon. She practically melted when I told her who wrote that sweet message. I won’t leave you in suspense. I did take a photo of it to share.




3. No matter how many speaking events I do for my books, I will always feel blessed and humbled. I am always happy that people, the vast majority total strangers, take time out of their day to come out and hear me speak. That’s why I do my best to make each and every event the best I can possibly do. This week I had an event at the Eldredge Library in Chatham. Despite it being a sunny, 80-degree day in early summer, there were close to 30 people who chose to come inside, sit, and hear me speak about my latest book. In Their Footsteps: The Interesting People, Places, and Events of Cape Cod History features 40 stories from the Cape, all in chronological order. It was a fun event, and I have a few more this summer. Come and see me on July 15th at 5pm at the Snow Library in Orleans, or on July 23rd at 6pm at the Dennis Public Library. They will both be great shows, I promise!

Coming up next!

4. This week marked the 250th episode of the In My Footsteps Podcast, which I have hosted since November 2020. It’s amazing to think that the idea I had once, my brain had cleared after giving up alcohol, would have such staying power. It began as a way to distract myself from the alcohol demons I was fighting off. It was just me talking about all of the subjects I enjoyed. Slowly, it morphed into my favorite thing I do. I actually love the research, planning, recording, and yikes, even the editing of these podcasts. A podcast is easily the best way to keep in contact with your audience. You can speak about anything you want, and I bet you’d find people interested. A lot of it comes down to time. Doing all of the work surrounding the podcast can be time-consuming. If you’ve ever thought of starting your own podcast, all you need is some sort of computer, recording software, a decent microphone, a topic, and the desire to create it. My show is now strictly GenX nostalgia, but that covers a ton of ground. It ends up being nearly anything that has occurred between 1960 and 2005. You can see why I believe that I can easily do another 250 episodes. If you’ve never listened, now is your chance to start. They are fun and breezy at around an hour each. Thank you to those who have listened, and here’s to the next 250 episodes!



5. What do you do with outdated business cards? In 2009, I created my first business card. It featured Chatham Lighthouse and simply described me as an author. This was despite not having any published books or even a blog. For some reason, probably because it was a better deal, I had something like 500 cards printed. They lasted me until 2017. By that time, I had 4 published books, so a change was needed. I bring cards to my speaking events because they are a way that people can possibly keep connected, even if they don’t buy a book. The most recent cards I had made were when I had 6 published books. I now have 10. I am currently in the process of designing new cards that I should have for my next event. The outdated cards are something else. Around the time I redesigned my author cards in 2017, I also created personal trainer cards. I thought I might be able to drum up business for in-home training if I had my own business cards to hand out. I might have had 100 made, and in the 9 years since, have probably handed out less than 20. That means I have a boatload of cards with a photo of me from 2014 promoting something I have no desire to do again currently, that being in-home training. Oh, but wait, there’s more. I also created cards for my podcast. Again, about 100 made. The problem is, since I printed those, I changed not only my podcast logo, but what the show is about in general. So those are even more useless than the training cards. Yay. I have something like 150 useless business cards. I might keep one of each and then send the rest through the shredder at work.


6. Family get-togethers used to be a regular occurrence when I was younger. Now they have become fewer and further apart. Despite having a pretty busy schedule for the most part, I try my best to make time if a family get-together is on the horizon. This week I was able to do so. I went to have dinner with my cousin Patrick, who was still on Cape Cod from Las Vegas. We were at our cousins Richard and Dale’s house. They are our 2nd cousins. It was a wonderful and worthwhile experience. The weather was perfect, so we all ate outside. I sometimes forget that Dale used to run a restaurant on Cape Cod decades ago and is an accomplished cook. She just casually whipped up a Bearnaise sauce, Greek salad with dressing, and fresh whipped cream like it was no big deal. I was tired from a busy day, but didn’t want the dinner to end. At this point in my life, I do realize that you never know when another family moment like that might happen. Even when the sun was starting to go down after 8pm, I stood out in the driveway with Patrick and just talked about anything we could. It was a battle between fatigue and genuinely wanting to stay and chat as long as my body would hold up. I am grateful for these moments today, when, as a kid, they were so common that I felt almost as if I could miss a handful and not miss a thing. Patrick says he might come back to Cape Cod next year, but you never know what happens, so I am glad we got a lot of chances to spend time together during this visit. If you are lucky, you end up with many family members that you would rearrange your day just to spend some time with. I am that type of lucky.




7. Every time I go into a certain local supermarket, if a specific employee is working there, they always say hi to me. Not ‘hi’ like they’re just going through the motions, but saying it like they know me. I see this guy who has to be maybe a few years older than me, going about his job, but nine times out of ten, if I pass by him, he stops and specifically says hello to me. He even occasionally asks how things are going. I am sure he is probably just friendly, and he does the same thing with other customers, but I don’t have any other employee at any other supermarket do that. Part of me wants to stop and ask if we know each other, but I doubt it. He never says my name or asks anything more specific that might make me think we have a history. Believe me, it’s not a bad thing. I’d much rather have someone go out of their way to say hi to me than the alternative. I could only imagine having someone shoot me a dirty look every time I was in their store.


8. When I was at my peak as a runner, probably 2015-2016, I used to run sometimes as much as 40 to 50 miles per week. I definitely had my share of aches, pains, and injuries, yet somehow I kept going year after year. Once I injured my right hip while training for a Top 10 finish in a 5K in 2018, things changed. The injuries tipped the scales, and slowly but surely, my running career faded. I kept trying, but it was an exercise in futility. A few years ago, I made a concerted effort to return to running races. I at least wanted to do one, even if my time was nowhere near what I used to be able to do. I competed in three races between 2024 and 2025. The last race I did, my time was something like 6 minutes better than I expected. My confidence was sky high. Only a few weeks later, I severely sprained my ankle and everything shut down. I haven’t run a race since and haven’t run much at all. In the last month or so, I started wondering if there was anything that I had done when I was at my peak as a runner that I might be able to add back into my life that might help me start running more. Two things came to mind. One was making BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids) part of my daily life. They help muscles recover from strenuous exercise. The other was adding more glucosamine to my supplement regimen. It helps with the lubrication of joints and overall joint health. When I was running 40+ miles a week, I took more than the recommended dose of glucosamine regularly, and my knees and hips always responded well. I figured it was worth a shot to try that again. It takes two weeks or so to get the full effect of any vitamin or supplement into your body, so I didn’t attempt anything before then. I have noticed in the time since I started taking 1.5x the recommended amount of glucosamine that my joints, specifically my knees, feel better than they have in quite a while. This came to a head this weekend when I went for a long walk. It was like my legs were craving running, so I gave in. It wasn’t like it used to be. There were no stretches of sub-7-minute miles. But I did end up running much more than I have in months. There were even points where I thought I should stop and walk, but my body was on autopilot like the old days. I just kept running and focusing on my stride. Only time will tell if this is a significant development in my running life or if it’s my brain tricking my body until something else breaks. Either way, it felt good to be running on a beautiful summer morning on Cape Cod again.


9. It’s amazing how a little dose of the old runner’s high can make a route I’ve gone down hundreds of times feel fresh and new. A favorite running route leads along a river to the beach. It’s through a historic village and is in total just over three miles from my front door to the ocean’s edge. When I was a competitive runner, I’d enjoy the route but be more focused on my pace. Now I can stop and take it all in at times. Little coves, flowers, loads of walkers and riders, historic homes, and ample beachfront views. I figured, why not create a little video of this route? You never know who might get inspired to check it out themselves. You can drive it if you want, but walking or cycling is better.




10. In recent weeks, I have started to try to make Sundays into a day when I don’t do anything major. I make it a day where I sit around and relax. No exercise, no content work, just mindlessly recharging my battery. It’s not that I’ve lost the desire to work hard on my content or enjoy some sort of exercise, but I have found that if I never relax, I feel like I am in a constant state of fatigue to start my new work week. My brain automatically goes to projects I should be working on. I admit I will do some minor work, like posting links to projects on social media. However, more involved things have to be put on the back burner at least for a day. There have been long stretches over the last 5 or so years where I have felt in a state of perpetual burnout. My energy levels crater, and I get agitated at that. A month or so ago, I decided to force myself to sit and relax all Sunday. I did this by binging several episodes of the Netflix series Dark. I felt for so long that if I wasn’t constantly working on something, I’d fall behind whatever imaginary metric there was to show my progress in creative fields. Now I have come to realize that if I don’t take at least a day to fully relax and recharge, it could lead to longer stretches where I just can’t keep that pace up physically or mentally. Not just for me but for anyone, make sure you take some time, some real time, to relax and recharge. It will do you a world of good.

When Teenage Dreams Meet Middle-Aged Reality

Donate to my fundraiser for The Cabin:  https://gofund.me/3f4b435dd

What did you want to be when you were younger? Where did you want to be? Who did you want to be?

I’m not talking about when you were little. I’m not looking at the days when we all wanted to be ninjas or princesses. I am talking about when you became a teenager. Those were the years when things started to crystallize a little better. What was your dream at the time you entered high school?

Flash forward to the present day. Are you that person? Are you where you’d hoped you’d be? Doing what you’d hoped you’d be doing? I hope you are.

For me, my life over the last thirty years has consisted of having one foot in the so-called ‘real world,’ and one foot struggling to keep its footing in those teenage dream years. Maybe you’d say I’ve held on too long to dreams that might never come true. I’d counter with maybe you gave up on your dreams too quickly.

I have always dreamed of working in some sort of creative field. I have had ten books published, have hundreds of blogs, hundreds of videos on YouTube that I have created from scratch, and hundreds of podcasts. Everything has been created by me from beginning to end.

The time between when I graduated high school and the green-lighting of my first book was fifteen years. In those years, I was a stock boy, landscaper, and cook. There were many days that the fire or my creative dreams were reduced to a tiny glowing ember underneath a pile of ash.

I never gave up, though. Even when my life was a mass of turkey clubs and fries, I never stopped dreaming. My hope of someday using my creative brain to make a living kept me from falling down a rabbit hole of despair in my 20s that I probably would never have gotten out of. Sometimes a little hope goes a long way.

Giving up on my teenage dreams has always felt like I’d be slapping my younger self in the face. My dreams of being a writer or a filmmaker in high school carried me through a home life that was chaos on nearly every level.

I had a biological father who couldn’t have cared less about me unless I had money I could give him. I had a stepfather who it felt like had a mission to break my spirit both physically and emotionally. That teenager fought to keep going, so this middle-aged man fights to keep those dreams alive.

You don’t understand how important a little hope is until that’s just about all that you have. Through rejection by my father, I had hope. Through abuse from my stepfather, I had hope. Through depression, breakups, and confusion, I had hope.

What ended up happening is the older I got, I’m talking later 30s, I started to feel that hope turn to something else: purpose. The older I got, being unmarried with no children, the more I started to step back and look at my situation on a macro level. There had to be a reason why I was where I was at that point in my life.

It easily could have morphed into fear and desperation. Oh no, I need a wife, and I need to have kids and settle down before it’s too late. I went the opposite way. I said, the fact that I am almost totally unrestricted must mean something. It gives me freedom to keep pursuing those teenage dreams.

There is an inspirational meme that I have gone back to many times over the last several years. There are two men in tunnels digging with pick axes. Both are slowly digging toward a giant stash of diamonds. One man is mere inches away when he gives up and turns around. The other man, it is theorized, will keep digging and find his fortune. That is my hope.

I am 48 years old. I have been on this road in varying forms for 30 years. Sometimes I stray and get lost in the woods for a bit, but eventually I am back on the road. Heading for what? I don’t know. I have hope.

Later this summer, I am producing my first feature film. It is called The Cabin and is a short story I wrote back in 2008. It is this project that I feel is the full-circle moment. This is where teenage dream and middle-aged reality finally meet.

Back to the digging for diamonds meme I just mentioned. In my life, I crossed a series of imaginary lines that could have been crossroads. I couldn’t play guitar the way I’d hoped. I had no way of making any money writing poetry. I made pennies on each of the ebooks I spent countless hours writing, editing, and self-publishing. I got a book deal and sold a fair amount, but got little in royalties from any of them.

Over the course of fifteen years, I had several exit signs on that road of life. I doubt anyone would have even noticed that I’d silently gotten off the highway to find whatever rundown shack I could and settle in to waste away my remaining decades. But I kept going.

I'd rather explore a rundown shack than live in one.

If music, poetry, my ebooks, or even my traditionally published books didn’t change my life, there had to be something else on the horizon. It is a mix of hope and stubbornness that kept me digging for those diamonds.

The Cabin doesn’t arrive as an opportunity if I leave my dreams behind. Sure, my creative work has only given me modest financial gains, but it has given me something just as important: visibility. All of my work leaves a mighty imprint online. I am easy to find.

The work I did over the years allowed producer Frank Durant to find me. He was looking for someone to write the companion book for his upcoming Lady of the Dunes documentary in 2021. I could have turned it down, but my senses told me it was going to be an important project. It was. In some small way, we helped spur on law enforcement to solve the nearly fifty-year-old cold case of a murdered woman found in the dunes of Provincetown.

That project led to me getting a small role in an indie horror film, Cape Cod Cthulhu, directed by Mark Polonia. That project and meeting gave me an opening. Frank was the one who had initially been interested in The Cabin. We had spoken about it a few times over the course of maybe two years. He mentioned it to Mark as a potential film, and the rest is history.

Again, I believe everything in my life that has happened, or not happened, has led me to this moment. Having a wife and kids, while it would have been a blessing, would have left me unable to just up and go off on an adventure to film this movie later this summer.

If I had looked at my lack of financial gains through my creative endeavors over the years and given up at any point, The Cabin wouldn’t have happened. Hell, I could have given up early and never have even written The Cabin in the first place.

I want to do right by that teenage boy who was dealing with so much shit, but never let it break him. I want to do right by my mother, who always supported me. I want to do right by my family and friends who have proven time and again that they truly believe that I am on the right path, even during the times when I doubt myself.

When I was younger, I had hope. Now I have support. One is you just trying to survive another day. The other is people you care about telling you that you are worth the time. One is solitary. It is teenage angst, telling others I’ll do this on my own, whether you like it or not. The other is a village. It is the cheering crowd during the last mile of a grueling marathon.

At the end of my one marathon I ran.

Of course, hope and support don’t matter if you don’t put the work in. That isn’t a problem. For five years, I have worked a full-time job while also spending 15-20 hours weekly working on various creative projects. Work for your dreams, and they will work for you. I’m all for wishing and manifesting, but I’d rather climb the tree to get an apple rather than stand underneath it hoping one falls.

This summer in 2026 feels like the time when my teenage dream and my midlife reality have hit a perfect intersection. I have built up enough equity through years of hard work with little more than that dream to carry me forward.

Perhaps if I had been offered the chance to produce a feature film when I was fresh out of college, I wouldn’t have appreciated it. I’d have probably been smug and felt like it was all too easy. The fall would have likely been epic after that.

I think I had to go through the grind. I had to go through years of being the proverbial starving artist to fully appreciate a big opportunity when it arose. I won’t lie, there is also a little twinge of desperation. That little belief that I’d better go all out because it might be the only opportunity that I’ve got.

Nothing is for certain. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. In my mind, The Cabin is a major milestone, but also the beginning of a new road. I foresee a streaming deal, DVD/Blu-ray sales, maybe a small theatrical release on Cape Cod. I don’t see making millions off a low-budget, indie, psychological, suspenseful horror film.

What I do see is that tunnel leading to the diamonds. Maybe The Cabin is the peak of my film career. If I believe that, then it will be no matter what. I have several other stories I’ve written that could easily be made into films. Maybe the screenplay gets me noticed. You’ve got to make the most of every chance you get.

Even if I go no higher than a producer of a small indie horror film, I will still forever be able to say I am a film producer. It’s just like when I ran my only marathon. I can forever say I am a marathon runner.

I want more than that, though. I have hustled way too long to be satisfied with ‘good enough.’ That begs the question. How will I know if I have truly succeeded in chasing that teenage dream? It’s actually very simple.

The day that I wake up and am fully financially supported by my creative endeavors, I will know I made it. I don’t need a 5,000 square foot house on the water. I don’t need a luxury sports car. I don’t need the latest and greatest of everything. I just want to wake up knowing my success has come from my creative mind and does not rely on a person or company that could literally destroy my life in a moment by terminating me.

I don’t need to be rich. I need to feel fulfilled. I don’t need to be better than everyone. I need to feel as good as anyone. Teenage me wouldn’t get it. Middle-aged me does.

Don’t ever give up chasing your dream, whatever it is. That’s the best way I can sum up all of what I have written. I could have thrown my hands up and said 'oh well’ when I failed at 23 with guitar, or failed at 26 with poetry, or failed at 32 with ebooks. By failure, I just mean I didn’t become financially stable.

Maybe I fail at 48 with film producing. Who knows? But I never went into any venture believing I’d fail. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. The Cabin is a culmination, but also a new beginning. It is the moment when a teenage dream meets middle-aged reality. I am ready for the ride, wherever it takes me.

In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 250: Listener's Choice - Bad Acting In A Kmart Training Video, 1980s Soap Opera Fails, Worst Actors Ever(6-24-2026)

 

Donate to the GoFundMe for my feature-length film, The Cabin!

We're celebrating 250 episodes of the podcast with a special Listener's Choice show. Everything on this show was voted on by you, the listeners!

It begins with a look at some soap opera fails from the 1980s. Daytime and primetime had their share of terrible shows. Cheap imitations, forced intrigue, boring show topics, all of that and more are here.

Attention Kmart shoppers! This week, we are looking at a hilariously poorly acted Kmart employee training video from 1992. It beats you over the head with their 'smart sales plan,' but remember it's not an extended warranty.

This week's Top 5 features the worst of the worst when it comes to acting. Poor box office performance, terrible critic reviews, loads of Razzie nominations. Some of these are obvious, maybe a few are surprising, but all make the list of worst actors ever. 

And of course, there is a new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking back at the delicious invention of the ring donut.

Thank you so much to everyone who has listened over the years and helped me make it to 250 episodes of the podcast. Here's to the next 250!

To support me and the show, become a member on Patreon. 

Or you can support my work and Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

• Buy My New Book, In Their Footsteps!
• Searching For the Lady of the Dunes True Crime Book
• Hooked By Kiwi - Etsy.com
• DJ Williams Music
• KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen
• MSFTS Community
• Kingfisher Hotels Cape Cod
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• Cape Cod Living - Zazzle Store
• Subscribe on YouTube!
• Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog
• CJSetterlundPhotos on Etsy
• Attention Kmart Shoppers - Archive.org

Listen to Episode 249 here

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #126: YouTube Stupid, Cat Food Breakfast, Kmart Music, etc.

1. Do real people work for YouTube? I ask this because I had a video get pulled from my channel this week. The reason? Underage kids drinking. Were there kids drinking? Yes. Was it alcohol? Of course not. This video is from Christmas 1995, and in a few scenes, we kids are sharing a bottle of sparkling cider. I know scandalous. I would hope that if it’s a human reviewing this private video, oh yeah, it’s private, so nobody can see it without the link. Anyway, I would hope that if it were a human, they would see or hear us mentioning sparkling cider. I am guessing it’s some sort of AI bot programmed to find things it thinks violate the site. Oh, but even better when the video, or any video, gets removed, there is no option to chat or email anyone to plead your case. Absolutely ridiculous. I chose the option of appealing the decision. Knowing this site, it won’t matter. I’ll end up having to cut out the scene they highlighted. Whatever. It was a family celebrating a holiday in the 90s and jokingly drinking sparkling cider. With some of the stuff I see on YouTube, shockingly, this video got pulled, but we’ll see what happens.


2. Luckily, when dealing with stress like the garbage I just mentioned with YouTube, I have something I can do. At work, we have something called Truvaga. It is a vagus nerve stimulator. For those who don’t know, the vagus nerve controls the ‘fight or flight’ part of your body. Truvaga is a two-minute session, is totally safe, and has me feeling like sunshine and rainbows inside of 40 minutes. The only problem with that time frame comes when I do a session and then stop to run an errand. If my stress level drops into ‘everything is wonderful’ territory while out somewhere, it changes things. For example, a few months ago, I stopped at the supermarket on my way home from work after using Truvaga. While I was inside, the overwhelming peace and calm took over. Do you want to know how I realized that? My Fitbit buzzed and asked if I was out for a walk, and if I wanted it to start tracking it as exercise. That means I was wandering the store in such a euphoric state for so long that my Fitbit thought I was on a walk. Foolishness like that aside, I love the Truvaga, but it also costs nearly $500. That means I will use it when I can at work, but when it comes to buying my own, I’d probably need a separate Truvaga to help me after I saw the bill for it.


3. Most days, I don’t feel my age. There are some though where it becomes painfully clear that I was a teenager 30 years ago. This week, I was driving home from work and stopped at the supermarket for something quick. I pulled into the parking lot with Prodigy’s Firestarter blasting. A nice pounding techno gem from the 1990s. I parked next to a 70-something guy who was loading his bags into his trunk. He looked at me with annoyance. In an instant, I was 18 again and felt that sense of GenX rebellion I used to feel all the time. I wanted to sit there and let the song blast until he drove away, but I had my fun. I almost wanted to thank him for looking so upset with my music and then tell him the 60s called and were looking for his unnecessary moral outrage toward the youth.




4. If you haven’t seen the show Dark on Netflix, I cannot recommend it enough. It is 3 seasons and a total of 26 episodes. The show was on originally from 2017 to 2020, and in the simplest terms is about time-travel. It is so much more, though. It has such a layered and interesting plotline with loads of detailed characters. The show rewards you for paying attention. It’s not a show to watch in the background while scrolling your phone. You will probably become lost if you do that. I’m trying not to spoil anything. You get great acting, great characters, and great music. With the time-travel, there are a lot of classic 1980s songs. The highest compliment I can give this show is that I actually binged a lot of it over a weekend. Usually, I try to watch one episode of a show per night to fully digest it. Dark was so good that I needed to keep going to follow the story. If you can, definitely add Dark to your future watch list on Netflix.

5. Speaking of Netflix, I have had my subscription back for just over 6 months. I got it to watch the final season of Stranger Things. In that time, I have watched so many excellent shows. Having just finished Dark, it’s time for a new show, and Netflix seems to know my tastes now. I feel like I’ll find another winner. In the last 6 months, these are the shows I’ve watched: Stranger Things, Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, Cobra Kai, 11.22.63, Yellowjackets, His & Hers, Untamed, The Burroughs, The Beast In Me, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, Castle Rock, and Dark. Every one of them I found engaging and entertaining. I am sure that at some point I’ll start a show that I’ll not like as much and probably give up on, but as of right now, I’m on a hot streak, at least when it comes to my own entertainment.


6. Every now and then, the old me comes back out. I was spending a day recording podcasts and doing other content when I had a sudden urge to go to the gym. In the time before COVID, that was not unusual. I’d be at the gym 5 or more days a week. COVID got me used to sitting around, and it has been tough snapping out of it. It also doesn’t help that I am now in my late 40s. People’s energy levels naturally begin dropping with age. You have to work harder to do the same things. The fact that I had a desire to hit the gym was a great sign. I went and had maybe the best workout of the year. Nearly an hour, and my body was like pudding when I got home. I am not sure how often I can pull that off, but I think if I just get back to being consistent, those killer workouts won’t seem so out of the ordinary anymore.


7. One day this week, a coworker and I entered the office. We began smelling something off. We both looked at each other, confused, trying to figure out what it was. I said it smelled a bit like cat food. It turned out to be my boss’s breakfast burrito. No, it didn’t have cat food in it. I now forget what he said was in it, but I was a mix of feeling bad and wanting to laugh hysterically. I didn’t bring it up again. I mean, who wants to hear that their breakfast smells like cat food? Unless it actually is cat food, then you’ve got bigger issues.

A new flavor of burrito?

8. This week, I recorded the 250th episode of my podcast. One of the GenX nostalgia topics that I covered was a hilariously poorly acted Kmart employee training video from 1992. I linked to it. An unexpected find when researching Kmart in general, though, was a series of their old muzak tapes that you’d hear when walking through the stores. I found an entire playlist at Archive.org with dozens of such tapes. It’s a lot of the soft rock music you’d expect, along with the voice-over person explaining current Kmart deals and thanking you for coming into the store. Each tape is between one and two hours long. I don’t suggest spending an entire night listening to them, but click the playlist and spend a few minutes listening. Maybe you will be transported back to the blue light special days of yore when Kmart ruled retail.


9. I am lucky enough to live fairly close to the Cape Cod Rail Trail. Unless the weather is terrible, I try to find a way to be on that trail for a walk at least once a week. You get to be close to nature. You get to see loads of people enjoying themselves and the scenery. Typically, you see solo people, maybe a few in a group. This week, while on the trail, I got to see two different huge groups in two different areas. One was a group of runners doing what I believe was a fun-run 5K on the trail. They were coming at me early in my walk. It was quite a crowd, probably around 50 runners. There were a lot of waves as I went by. Then on the way back, now probably more than 4 miles into my walk, I spotted one of the largest gatherings of bicycles I’ve seen. There had to be between 30 and 40 coming down a street. One by one, they entered the bike trail. I think some of the vehicles were losing their minds over the wait, but oh well, it is summer. I got ahead of the crowd as they all gathered, probably to go over the riding plans. I think they were from a nearby summer camp because there were a few adults and a lot of kids. When the line of bikes started passing me on the bike trail, I felt like it took a full 2 minutes for them to all go by.


10. The Summer Solstice happened this weekend. It is the longest day of the year in terms of actual light. On Cape Cod, we had 15 hours and 12 minutes of daylight. I tend to have delusions of grandeur on the longest day of the year. It’s as if I am going to spend an inordinate amount of time outside doing something simply because it’s the longest day of the year. That never ends up happening. The best was the year that I wanted to run one mile in each of the 15 towns on mainland Cape Cod. I figured I had plenty of time since the sunrise was a little after 5am and the sunset would be close to 8:30pm. I did run, but not in every town. I did a nice long run that, by coincidence, took me from one town to another. Once reality set in, I was toast. I would have run at least 15 miles, plus driving everywhere from Falmouth to Provincetown. On a good day, it takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes to go from Falmouth to Provincetown, so at the beginning of summer, it would be longer. In the end, it was an ‘eyes bigger than your stomach’ type of thing. This year, I sat around and didn’t do much, and loved every second of it.


11. Summer arrived, and all was calm to start. The weather was perfect, and because many schools don’t get out until early next week, the traffic wasn’t bad either. On Cape Cod, it is a condensed mad dash of a summer annually. From Memorial Day through Independence Day, the weekends grow gradually busier while the weekdays are pretty normal. Then Fourth of July hits, and it’s 6 weeks of insanity. Don’t even think about making a left turn until Labor Day. Sometime in July, the weather flips. The lower humidity of late spring vanishes and is replaced by sweltering temperatures routinely in the mid and upper 80s, and humidity that makes you feel like you took a shower in your clothes. Stock up on bug spray, too, as mosquitoes, ticks, and later greenhead flies dominate the landscape. It must sound like I don’t enjoy summer, and that’s not totally untrue. Summer is my 3rd favorite season, behind fall and spring. So yeah, the heat, humidity, and crowds don’t paint my ideal picture. I do enjoy everything being open. Winter on Cape Cod can be pretty solitary, so seeing everything busy is good. As I do every year, though, I will be counting down the days until the end of August when the crowds begin to disperse, and then we locals get our season to enjoy Cape Cod .

A sunset during last summer in Dennis, MA

12. Father’s Day was this weekend. It is always a bittersweet day. I have trouble celebrating because my father was and still is a bad person. He is lazy, selfish, a professional victim, someone who only cares about his kids when they can give him money. I learned so much about what not to be as a man from my biological father. I come back to the good men that I have had in my life who picked up the slack of a bum. It makes the bitterness a little easier to swallow when I think of so many second fathers who helped me grow into a functioning adult. I feel bad because I see some good fathers, yes, but I also see way more terrible ones. Not being a father myself, I cannot say for sure if I’d be a good one. I’d like to think that common sense and common decency would make me an average father at least. The anger and resentment toward my biological father, I think, would inspire me to simply be better than him. I envy family and friends who have good fathers. I’d love to have had a dad who took me fishing, taught me how to fix cars, and gave me general life tips. I’d be grateful for the older I get. I didn’t get that. I got a guy who stood me up when making plans, constantly begged for money, quit jobs to avoid paying child support, and treated alcohol better than his children. So Happy Father’s Day to the good dads out there. To my biological father, you are the sum total of the terrible choices you made in life, and karma is showing you that now.

The Life of an Uncle

I am not a father. I am, however, writing this on Father’s Day.

It’s fitting because it is a bittersweet day for me due to the lack of a good father in my own life. I am blessed to have had several second fathers, though. Positive role models that showed me that although many men are awful, it is not all of them.

Although I have no children of my own, I have had experience in putting the lessons my second fathers taught me to use. For despite not being a father, I am a proud uncle.

I have six nieces and nephews. Kaleigh, Emma, Liam, Landon, Lucas, and Sylvie. Three boys, three girls. I have been an uncle for more than half of my life and cherished every moment.

I was there the day that most of them were born. I was there for many birthdays, holidays, and other important moments in their lives. I did my best to be a fun and positive presence any time I was around them. That deep emotional connection with them as children is a double-edged sword, though.

As I said, I am not a father. This means I am none of their fathers. I am an uncle. Sure, it’s an important role, but it’s not THE important role. Only time will tell if any of the three men who are the fathers of the six nieces and nephews turn out to be positive or negative. It doesn’t look great, but there is still time.

I don’t know the pressures or the life changes that come from parenthood. I do know that no child asks to be born. It is the responsibility of the parents to care for and nurture their children. You don’t have to be the greatest parent ever to be a net positive in your child’s life. You just have to start by showing up and showing you care.

As an uncle and the child of a terrible father, it hit me on two fronts. I wanted to show that I was a positive role model. I also wanted to show that I was a better uncle than my biological father was a parent.

The double-edged sword I mentioned a moment ago comes from attachment and remembering your role. For as much as I loved spending time with my nieces and nephews, it was always a bit superficial. Not like I was pretending to love being around them, but more that things were meant to stay fun and light.

I am not their fathers. I am their uncle. Growing up, my uncles were fun distractions from daily life. They didn’t tackle anything serious. Those problems were for parents to help with. An uncle needs to know his role and be a fun distraction, but in the end, that’s where their role typically ends.

When I was a kid, I remember fun times with my uncles, Bob, Eric, Steve, and John. As I grew up, though, I started seeing them less and less. Not because of anything bad, I just wasn’t their kid. They would be at holidays or other random occasions, but in my teens and early 20s, I was focused on getting my own life started. My uncles and aunts were seen far less than when I was little. That’s just the way it goes.

I was lucky that my oldest nieces, Kaleigh and Emma, lived in close proximity to me when they were growing up. They were either right down the street or right down the hallway. I was able to share probably hundreds of memories with them.

Walking the mall with little Kaleigh in her stroller. People would stop and mention how cute she was and what proud parents my sister Kate and I must be. I would laugh, Kate would be grossed out.

Sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my laptop open. Little Emma sitting beside me as I showed her classic McDonald’s commercials from the 1980s. In the days when she was hesitant to get close to anyone besides her parents, I took it as a major badge of honor that she liked spending time with me.

My nephews Liam and Landon were born at different times in my life. Liam lived further away. Landon was born as I was moving into a new place. Thus, I was more disconnected from them. This always made me feel bad. I wanted to be the fun uncle, the favorite uncle, to all of the kids. Feeling more connected to some than others was never something I intended. Life just happens that way.

When Lucas was born, I made it a point to set things right. I was there when he was born. I did my best to visit him and Liam at my sister Lindsay’s house, even though it was a bit of a hike to get there.

Time was ticking away. I was 33 when Lucas was born, and I had my doubts as to whether I’d ever have kids of my own. I tried to be the fun uncle. Always looking to make the kids laugh, do stupid voices, and tell funny jokes. These were the things I had learned from my Uncle Bob. He was and still is the gold standard of the fun uncle.

I always had to remind myself that I was the uncle, not the father. If I disagreed with something one of the fathers did, it wasn’t my place to say anything. I never wanted to hear someone tell me to mind my business because I wasn’t their father.

That reality led to my having less of a role in the lives of my nieces and nephews as they got older. Much in the same way that it happened with my uncles, and probably a lot of your uncles. You don’t lean on an uncle for answers to difficult situations as a teen and young adult. That is what parents are for.

I’d watch, so close, but so far away, as the kids grew up. They started and finished high school and college. They got their first jobs, cars, and relationships. As proud as I was, and still am, it comes back to that bittersweet feeling. I am not as important to them as they are to me.

That’s not unusual. It’s just something that uncles and aunts have to cope with as the kids get older. They stay closer to their parents because that’s how it should be. Being an uncle means your seat gets further from the stage, the older the kids get.

My youngest niece, Sylvie, was born when I was 41. She is almost 8 years younger than Lucas. It was like starting the clock over again.

Having children in your life can make you feel young and old, all at the same time. You feel young because you watch them learn and discover, and start to become who they will be. You feel old because, as they grow up, you feel your own clock ticking.

I try to be the best uncle I can be to Sylvie, who is 7. She’s my final excuse to be a foolish man-child for a little longer. I know that eventually she will drift away, not from anything bad, just because all kids grow up and develop their own lives. It might not be tomorrow or the next day, but it will come someday. I just have to enjoy each moment as they come.

It happened with Kaleigh, Emma, and Liam. It’s happening with Landon, who just graduated from high school. It’s like I want more time with them all, but I’m lower on the ladder of importance. Parents, grandparents, friends, partners, they all occupy more important real estate in the lives of my older nieces and nephews. That’s how it should be, and I have done my best to accept that.

Despite being an uncle for more than half of my life, I still don’t have a clue what it means or what I should be doing. I never went off on adventures with my uncles, except for rare times when my Uncle John took me to Friendly’s. I don’t know if I should have done more as the kids grew up, or less. I don’t even know if I was or am good at whatever an uncle’s role is.

What exactly is an uncle anyway? The brother of your parent. They are adjacent to the important stuff in your life. Maybe they were there a lot more than you remembered as a kid. Maybe they were more like a guest star who showed up every now and then.

Maybe it’s not about the quantity but the quality? I don’t remember meeting my Uncle Eric until I was 12 and my cousin Patrick was born. He went on to be someone whom I told I wished had been my father.

My uncles Eric and Bob have each attended more of my author events than my biological father. My uncle Steve was by my side for several grueling road races. These men showed up. Sometimes, as a human, no matter your age, you just want someone you care about to show up. They did, my father didn’t. I try to do the same for my nieces and nephews and hope that I have succeeded more times than I’ve failed.

I am not a father. I am, however, a proud and grateful uncle to six wonderful people. They are all different, unique, and special. They are all at different points in their lives, but all have blue skies filled with hope and opportunity ahead of them.

As an uncle, you have to know your role. It’s to be a positive presence above all else. You want the kids to be glad you were there and waiting in anticipation of when you’ll be back. That’s a big reason why I tended to rile them all up and then leave. Fun uncles gotta fun.

Decades from now, when I am old and worn out, I hope that my nieces and nephews reach out every now and then to make sure I am still alive. I hope they do a better job than I do at keeping in touch. Uncle Bob I hear from a few times a month. I haven’t seen my Uncle Steve in many months. My Uncle Eric sadly passed 3 years ago, before I could say goodbye.

You only get one life. I’d much rather be the fun uncle who gets steely-eyed glares from parents and grandparents because I let the kids do whatever they want. It beats being the lame, boring, or worse, absentee uncle that doesn’t know the kids' middle names.

I hope that my nieces and nephews know that even as my role in their lives gets smaller, I am still cheering as loudly from the nosebleed seats as I was on the sidelines. I think it is important to make that known rather than just hoping that it is.

I have been an uncle for more than half of my life. I will be one for the rest of it as well. Being a positive male presence in their lives is very important. If they need me, I am there. If they don’t, I will be first in line to hear all about how their lives are going when they do.

Kaleigh, Emma, Liam, Landon, Lucas, and Sylvie. I am so proud and blessed to be your uncle and to call you family. Just know that I am never far if you need me, and your fun, some might say crazy, uncle loves you very much.