Writer, dad, person with feelings. Providing parenting updates from the field.
Michigan
Joined March 2014
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Every Christmas Eve, I think about George Bailey.
He dreamed of escaping Bedford Falls—of shaking off the dust of a small town, building skyscrapers, exploring the world. Instead, he stayed. He ran the Building & Loan his father left behind. He sacrificed his college money, his honeymoon savings, his chance to see the world, over and over, because people needed him.
By the time the crisis hits, George feels like a failure. His life looks like one long series of missed opportunities, thwarted ambitions, and quiet resentments. He stands on the bridge, convinced the world would be better without him.
Then Clarence shows him the truth: a Bedford Falls without George Bailey is a darker, meaner, hollowed-out place. The people he quietly helped, the small acts of integrity he performed without recognition, the risks he took to protect others—those weren’t detours. They were the substance of his life.
The film’s deepest insight isn’t just that “no man is a failure who has friends.” It’s that real impact is almost always invisible in the moment. The lives you steady, the small kindnesses you extend, the responsibilities you shoulder when no one else will—these things ripple outward in ways you may never see.
A strong sense of purpose doesn’t erase pain; it transforms it. It doesn’t merely explain why hard things happened. It asks: What are you now responsible for because they happened?
Faith, at its best, does the same. It doesn’t promise that everything was “meant to be” in order to make suffering palatable. It invites you to look at what has been entrusted to you in light of what you’ve endured.
George’s story reminds us that meaning is rarely found in the grand escape, but in the faithful presence. The dreams we surrender don’t always vanish—they often become the raw material for something more enduring than we imagined.
If you’re carrying the weight of roads not taken, of dreams deferred, of a life that feels smaller than you once hoped—watch It’s a Wonderful Life again tonight. Not as nostalgia, but as revelation.
You may not see the full difference you’ve made yet.
But it’s there.
And it matters more than you know.
Merry Christmas, friends.
🎄🇨🇽🎅🦌☃️⛪️✝️❤️
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You know how two people far away can look up at the same moon and feel close?
My family does that every Thanksgiving except we're watching the Lions lose.
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Having children will not make your life cleaner, easier, or simpler.
But it will make it better, though not in the simple ways that are easy to categorize, but in the deeper ways that are hard to explain. Having kids will, in some sense, blow up your little single life, and it will be the best thing that happens to you.
But, you don't know that beforehand and this is why there is a fascinating selection happening right now. If you are wanting to have the easiest life possible, you will not have kids. This is also why trying to increase the birthrate by way of money or houses or increased ease will fail. It misses human nature in abundance.
Once people have a perfectly clean little house they don't want to fill it with grubby hands. They want to protect it. So they decide not to fill it with children and instead something different.
If you choose to have kids you are choosing a less clean, less easy, less simple life in favor of something "else." Some kind of inner urge pushes you toward it and it is worth more than the perfection. What that something else is is hard to categorize, but it's basically the most vital thing you can do in 2025.
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Did you know the wife’s Rolex in Die Hard is the most important symbol in the film?
She receives the Rolex as recognition for her corporate work away from her husband. Her cocaine boss tells her to flaunt the Rolex to her husband the cop. She won’t because she’s embarrassed by it (she’s redeemable).
At the end, Hans Gruber is holding on to her wrist by means of her new Rolex. He’s pulling her to her death and pointing a gun at her. The husband sees this and unlatches the Rolex causing Hans to fall to his death. Watch carefully: BOTH the Rolex and Hans fall.
John McClane literally saves his wife’s life by unshackling her wrist from her corporate slave wage job and restores her as his wife.
Very based. A family is reunited on Christmas. So yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
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Most people take themselves too seriously. You aren’t important. Your job is almost certainly not important. However, being a parent is very important. It’s by far the most significant responsibility the vast majority of us will ever have.
Treat it that way.
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I hate to break this to you SportsCenter but Coco Gauff was not “soaking it all in” at this moment. She was praying. She has been very open about her Christian faith in the past. It seems pretty obvious what she is doing here.
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my number one priority with my kid(s) is to teach them that trying is cool
i will not let them be psyopped into nihilism – at Wyoming, USA
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Bitcoin Beers w/@Dadpression
- Lameness of Bitcoin Twitter
- Bear market mood
- Sovereignty
open.spotify.com/episode/13W…
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In the last interview of his life (1996), astronomer Carl Sagan gave an uncannily prescient warning of the dangers that arise when you cannot ask skeptical scientific questions of those in authority. Watch and ask yourself: was he right?
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Check out my chat with @Dadpression
open.spotify.com/episode/2mf…
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Thinking you know a thing is a sure way to blind yourself. Cultivate a sense of both, sophistication and naïveté about all things.
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A lot of ranchers are doing this very same thing, this just happens to be my tough husband, chopping ice in -44 degree weather and even colder so their cattle have water. 🙏🏻 for all the ranchers, oilfield workers, travelers, and anyone who has to be out in this brutal weather.
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During the Cold War, we studied censorship. Was a core part of history class. My theory on why we're relearning the danger now is that they stopped teaching this stuff when the Soviet Union fell. Not a coincidence that lots of 20/30-somethings don't see what the fuss is about.
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Wow, so well said. We specifically try and limit adult talk in front of my 12 year old for this reason. THEY DONT NEED TO KNOW THAT ALL RIGHT NOW. Go to cheer practice, hang out with your friends, relax and recharge.Hell, she still believes in Santa and the elf. Let them be kids