Rethinking Validation
Big Thoughts from a Big Daddy.
When our son was on his way, I joked with people that becoming a parent was like being a robot, building your own replacement in real time. As the baby’s arrival date nears, the closer you creep to becoming outdated and irrelevant.
And I have to say — it’s the most liberating feeling. That singular combination of perspective and mortality.
I had spent so much of my life until then obsessing over my output, as a means of marking my time on this Earth.
Since high school, when I first started to write, I felt this need to maximize my creative efforts. First, it was through poems and prose that are increasingly (thankfully) hard to find online.
After that, I wrote for my college newspaper at a breakneck clip, often multiple articles — for multiple sections — every week. I would hole myself up in the library with a Monster Energy drink and an Adderall and write as if time was running out.
I had so many means of self-expression, then.
I hosted a college radio show. I wrote a zine and handed it out on the streets of New York. I did spoken word. I made short films with friends. I took pictures. And produced concerts. And DJ’d. And made songs (also increasingly hard to find online). Not to mention my actual jobs, where I worked on creative campaigns, and produced documentary series’, and directed commercials, and lots of other things.
I look back at myself in my twenties as this rabid, insatiable creative, who was trying to find every possible way to speak to the world. Some of it was thrilling, and freeing, and absolutely fulfilling. Some of it led me to the most important friendships and relationships in my life.
But I also reflect on that version of myself with a bit of sadness.
I felt so uncomfortable, so often. I felt misunderstood, even to myself, constantly wondering if I was living up to my own expectations. Deep down, I was always thinking… if I’m not around much longer, at least people will be able to read and watch and remember the work I did. The things I produced.
To be clear, I never felt like I didn’t want to be here. But I obsessed over my legacy. At the tender age of 25. So cute. And so goddamn silly.
Even as I told people that a creative life was a long and winding road, in anxious moments I wondered if it actually had a shelf life. So, out of fear of phasing out, I stayed busy.
At times, I prioritized being busy over my relationships. My family. My physical health. More often, my mental health. I spent two years having anxiety attacks, at odds with the many jobs I was doing, and ignoring the pain I was feeling in other parts of my life.
In my longing for productivity, I wrapped up my identity in my output, and I got absolutely lost in the process. This was especially dangerous when my output was to be judged — or decided upon — by outside forces.
When projects didn’t go my way, or my work got a seemingly unfair edit, or I didn’t win a pitch… it really felt like the world was crashing down on me. I could almost see the sky falling toward the Earth’s surface.
It was as if society had rendered its judgement on my personhood and I was deemed unworthy of the thing I wanted — the thing I felt I deserved.
And that thing was validation. To be told that I was worthy. Or that I was good. Or smart. Or that I had good ideas. Or that my “take” was an interesting one.
Or, really, that I mattered.
It is a risky game… connecting your personhood to validation beyond your control.
But if you can never get enough of the kind of approval you’re after — if no amount of attaboys can give you the self-love you’re looking for — you may just have to look inward.
Having a baby is certainly not a way to find self-love.
It is a way to find exhaustion, and stress, and frustration, and tension, and fear. It’s also a way to find explosive adoration and joy, in ways you never thought possible.
The simple pleasures — watching your child smile when you pick him up from his nap — are so soul-enriching as to render every other interaction you’ve ever had vacuous and empty.
As that old cliche goes, your heart expands. Your capacity — for every possible emotion — expands, as well. I recently told someone that every day with a newborn feels like New Year’s Eve.
But one of the other byproducts is that it forces you to face your demons. Rather than making you whole, becoming a parent beckons you look a little closer at your shortcomings, and demands you address them before the due date.
In my case, I reflected on the things I’d long felt uneasy about… the issues I’d had with my parents… my brothers… my upbringing… my anxiety… my cynicism… my self-image.
Most crucially, I reflected on the things that had seemed so important to me for so long. I had to look a little closer at those things and decide if they would continue to play a relevant role in my future. With a little human depending on you, and with increasingly less bandwidth, some things simply have to go.
Maybe some relationships are not as sturdy as you thought, and they’ll fall by the wayside. Maybe a hobby you picked up becomes increasingly untenable. And maybe your need for validation from creative efforts starts to feel a bit too … ridiculous … to continue to govern your life in any real way.
The truth is, somewhere in my creative journey, and especially as I started to get paid for my ideas, I began to equate expressing myself with financial reward. A good idea meant making a living, and as the saying goes, “the reward for good work is more work.”
But on the flip side of that coin, the further I moved into my career, the harder it became for me to express myself without financial reward. My worth came not only from approval but also from an exchange of funds.
Trust me when I say the only thing more dangerous in connecting your personhood to external approval is connecting it to monetary value. Every creative I know has learned this the hard way, and then needed a hard reset to find what mattered to them most. For some, they gave up the game entirely. For others, they had versions of a breakdown before they reframed creativity on their own terms.
And then there’s the mortality piece.
That Dan in his twenties… spinning in circles, creating, he really felt like time was running out. But he didn’t know for sure. Now, I do know for sure, because I see the robot who’ll soon take my place — he’s right there in my arms.
He’s beautiful, and I hope he’s better, smarter, more capable, more skilled, and more impactful than me in every way. As he should be. Yet as I think about raising him, I cannot deny the reality of my own — eventual — transition. The time will come. Whether I think it will or not.
And so… perspective.
I’ve been wondering, how much of my identity is now wrapped up in being a parent? How much is left to be a creative? And if my identity could be so absolutely rocked by validation — or missing out on it — how could I expect to be sturdy and reliable in the way I need to be, as a parent?
It seems I can no longer be as needy as I once was. Thank God for that.
Somehow, though… I feel more inspired than ever. I’m as energized as that twenty-something, bursting out of his eyes with ideas and ways of realizing them. Only instead of being driven by neediness, I’m driven by a kind of purity. As if my son’s birth was my own baptism.
***
Around the time of his arrival, I took a break from everything. For the first time in my adult life, there was no work, no outreach, no writing, no self-expression. I was a blank slate, changing diapers and sleeping strange hours, a warm body designed to help sustain another life.
And as I re-entered the world after paternity leave, I noticed a marked difference in my presence. When I had the energy… conversations were flowing a little more smoothly. Words were pouring out a little more effortlessly. Ideas were manifesting in ways that didn’t feel so forced, or stilted, or weighed down by legacy. I didn’t feel like I needed to create in order to prove I was really here, after all. Because I am here. I am more here than I ever was.
The desire to create is now coming from a healthier place. From a place of wanting to connect with others. To tell a story. To be a part of a cultural conversation. I want to ideate, and be a thinker, and get it wrong, and take it on the chin and try again. There was a time that I knew that, and felt that, and I think I lost that along the way. I’m really excited to have found it again.
It’d be too on-the-nose to say it’s about killing the ego. But babies have a knack for stripping you down to the studs. I’m grateful for the realignment.
I’m living for him, now. He’s my present, and my future, and my legacy. Way more than any of the things I’ve put out into the world. And I no longer need someone to tell me that I’m worthy. I’m his father, and that makes me worthy.
And yet, I want to keep living a creative life. Because I believe it’s a meaningful way to live. And it’s given me so much. As I slowly become a less relevant robot, I hope I can continue to carve out my own space. As always, right now, it comes back to my first love — writing. Right here.
If you’re interested, you can follow along. Sometimes, I’ll write about culture. Or news. Or family, or something else entirely. It’s open, really, as my best creative moments have been. It might be once a month, or more often. Sign up and see what happens.
Oh, and the name. Easy As.
That was a phrase I kept hearing when I was in New Zealand. We were shooting a short film, and every time I asked someone for something, the reply would inevitably be, “Oh yeah, easy as.” It was simple, but so open in its possibilities. Easy as … what? Just easy as.
An incomplete thought, yet enough said. That’s exactly what this’ll be.