2011 October | Kelsey Timmerman

Are parents less awesome?

By Kelsey

“He’s newly married without any kids. He still can be awesome.”

A buddy with four young kids said this to me the other day. It wasn’t said in a bitter way, but laughing. After saying this there was a bit of a pause in our conversation as we imagined (or at least I did) how much we would get done – how awesome we’d be – if we didn’t have kids.

When I get up early to work (I’m writing this at 6AM) there would be no chance an early riser would demand breakfast. (+4 hours/week).

Instead of a two-hour “bed time” routine followed by an hour of exhaustion, my bed-time routine would consist of a 15-minute shower. (+14 hours/week).

That’s 18 hours per week (10% of a week!) right there that I could spend writing, reading, working, and being “awesome.”

Are parents less productive?

Employers seem to think that mothers are. Researchers conducted a study in which they sent out 638 fake resumes that were identical except one was a mother and the other woman wasn’t. The childless woman got 2.1 times more callbacks. But for men, which is where I come in, there was no difference. In fact, a study of lawyers in Canada showed that men with school-aged children are more productive.

The study reported in the Wall Street Journal found that…

• Mothers with school-aged children are less productive than non-mothers, whereas fathers with preschool-aged children are more productive than non-fathers.

• Fathers, on the other hand, seem to benefit more: family resources are positively related to their productivity and family-friendly benefits allow them more time for leisure.

That said, my buddy wasn’t talking about hours worked, he was talking about being awesome. Yes, parents have less free time to spend and/or waste. We have to (try) to be more efficient with our time. Unlike Google, maybe we can’t give ourselves 20% free time to follow our passions and pursue something that may or may not be worth pursuing.

It’s tough to find the time to be awesome to the world when you’re a parent, but awesome happens to us everyday. When I’m away, I miss bed time. I miss morning cartoons. I miss being read to by someone who can’t read.

I have less working hours in my week than I did a few years ago, but I have more awesome.

I was going to make a few more points in this post, but my 2-year-old daughter is hollering for me from her bed room. We’ve got a busy week of bed time, chalk drawing, Halloween. Harper is going to be a cowgirl..

This Writer’s Life

Moving the Mountain of Poverty

By Kelsey

I volunteer with the Circles Campaign and the organization was recently featured on the CBS Evening News. Basically the program creates an intentional friendship between people living in poverty with people who aren’t.

I’d love if you watched the CBS report below and considered being a part of a Circle.

Glocal

Two thousand words: Our Little Pumpkin

By Kelsey

(Photo by Kira Childers)

A Thousand Words

If my book were self-published

By Kelsey

If my book were self-published, I wouldn’t have been reviewed in TIME.

If my book were self-published, it wouldn’t have found its way onto the shelf of an airport bookstore and into the hands of the sociology professor at Wingate University who was the first to champion it as a common reader text.

If my book were self-published, I’d still have a “real” job.

If my book were self-published, universities wouldn’t purchase a thousand copies at a time for their entire freshman class to read.

If my book were self-published, my wife would’ve had to find a new job instead of deciding to stay at home.

I have nothing against self-publishing. In fact, I foresee a future in which I’ll traditionally publish and self-publish (eBooks). I think all authors moving forward need to diversify. I also think that self-publishing is the right path for some people. That said, the thing that has led to what success I’ve had as an author and allowed me to support my family is the authority that comes along with having a traditionally published book.

If my book were self-published, I wouldn’t be typing this from my home on a Wednesday afternoon. I would be in an office working on someone else’s dream.

This Writer’s Life

“I can’t help everyone, but I can help some.”

By Kelsey

As much as I love meeting students at universities when I visit to speak, meeting the faculty is pretty cool too.

After a recent talk at West Texas A&M I had a chance to talk travel with a few faculty. One of the professors was a horse trainer who told a hilarious story about being invited to Saudi Arabia to judge racing camels. Another was Dr. James Hallmark, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs. James (we’re Facebook friends, so I’ll drop the formalities) told a rip-roaring tale about traveling in Turkey and how he thought he had been abducted by al Qaeda.

Following my visit, James wrote an editorial for the Amarillo Globe News about my visit. In Consider Where Our Clothes Are Made James writes this:

We have been blessed with much and much is expected of us. Is it too much to ask for us to consider how our clothes are made or to feed a hungry child?

Jesus’ statement “the poor you will have with you always” is an indictment of our selfishness more than a statement about the poor. We will always have the poor because those of us with means abdicate our responsibility to feed, clothe, shelter and educate the poor. We will always have the poor because governments like those in Somalia will prevent us from feeding the hungry in their own country.

I can’t help everyone, but I can help some.

My visit inspired James to write this and now his words have inspired me.

James message is one that I hope all the students I talked with walked away with. And it’s one to which we sing our baby boy Griffin to sleep every night.

Giving Back, Glocal, Mad World, This Writer’s Life

Go Occupy Yourself!

By Kelsey

It’s official. Muncie has been occupied.

This past Wednesday 104 protestors marched from Ball State to downtown Muncie where they chanted the same things as the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

“We are the 99-percent!”

I understand the outrage. I’m surprised that it’s taken so long for people to stand up. I’m like the farthest thing from a Tea Party activist, but I understood when they took to the streets a few years ago, too. I can’t believe it’s taken this long to get people fired up.

FALSE PROMISES

Our lives have been built on false promises. Graduate high school. Get a loan for your college education, which will yield a decent job that will allow you to pay those loans off. Work hard and invest what money you’re able to save in the stock market. Retire. Watch your kids do the same.

I look at my retired neighbors and think: that’ll never be me.

People got all in a tizzy when Rick Perry called social security a Ponzi scheme. Do I pay into social security? Yep. Am I promised that social security will pay me back someday? Yep. Will it? Probably not.

So, I get it. I do. The occupy movement has produced productive dialog about the increasing inequality seen in these four charts. But will it produce anything else?

THE EASY PART

While Occupy Muncie was spending their first night out in the cold in Muncie, I was at a meeting with the Leadershipboard.org trying to figure out ways to end the list of boys waiting for mentors with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Delaware County.

Over the past few years I’ve become much more engaged in my community and I’ve learned that there’s a gap between anger and action, between pointing out what’s wrong and being a part of the solution. Holding a sign and shouting is the easy part. Complaining is the easy part. I’m not saying it’s not necessary. I’m just saying that listening and enacting real change is the tough part.

Lobbyists, campaign reform, corporate tax loopholes, and a gridlocked government: these are all things to be upset about and to rail against. These things have created protesters that are occupying communities across the country. But there’s a difference between protesting and action.

THE APATHY BUBBLE

We have a financial crisis caused by a housing bubble, but the real bubble is an apathy bubble. We’ve forgotten how to be citizens. Robert Putnam in his book “Bowling Alone” documented the decline in engagement. We read fewer newspapers, attend less gatherings whether it be Kiwanis, church, or school board meetings than our grandparents did in the 50s. We vote less.

We just don’t care as much.

Maybe what we’re seeing with the Occupy movement is the bursting of the apathy bubble. Let’s hope so.

Standing in the streets has led to dialog, but real change comes from looking within ourselves to see what we have to offer and having the patience and passion and courage to offer it year after year.

Glocal

The Decision to be a stay-at-home family

By Kelsey

Our co-workers / bosses

—

I’m upstairs in my office and Annie, my ninja warrior stay-at-home-mom wife, is downstairs juggling our two kids.

Someone once told me that being a parent is one of the hardest and best jobs you’ll ever have. I believe it. I’ve had Harper (2), and Griffin (4-months) on my own for a few sweaty, poop-filled, patience-trying days. It was great, but exhausting.

In 1970, 70% of mothers stayed at home with their children. Today only 25% of mothers are stay-at-home moms (SAHM). Obviously what has changed is that mothers love their kids less than they did in 1970, right?

I’m kidding.

Back in the Mad Men days a man could work and earn enough to support his family (and keep them encircled in a cloud of cigarette smoke). Today we live in Mad Days in which the cost of living has gone up and income hasn’t, necessitating that the average household have two incomes.

As much as I’d like to say that our decision to have Annie stay at home with the kids was one we made, it was one her employer made for us. No, she didn’t get fired. But when you work for a doctor, as Annie did, and that doctor decides to provide $0, nada, not a penny toward health insurance, the decision is kind of made for you. That’s right, a doctor who earns a living offering treatments that no individual without health insurance can afford, doesn’t offer his employees health insurance. Kinda makes the Hippocratic Oath look more like the Hypocritic Oath, doesn’t it?

With my nontraditional job, if Annie is going to work, then her job needs to have health insurance because the benefits of my job as a vagabonding, writer/speaker, freelance troublemaker dude don’t go much beyond the luxury of being able to work in my pajamas all day. When our second child was born, we were paying a $307/month premium for insurance that had a $6,000 deductible. Anthem, our provider, didn’t send Griffin a birthday card in the mail, but instead a note saying that they were raising our premium to $450/month – that’s like a mortgage payment in Indiana! We decided to up our deductible to $11,000 to bring our premium down to a “reasonable” $330/month.

$11,000! And people are against healthcare reform!

Add in Annie’s 40-mile round-trip drive to and from work and the cost of daycare, and Annie working – at least at her previous job – just didn’t make sense. We crunched the numbers and we saw what Annie’s working gained us at the end of each month and then we had a, “Wait, you’re working and we’re paying someone else to raise our kids, why?” moment.

When people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them, they nod in interest and usually ask a few questions. Beneath that nod and in those questions is the underlying vibe: “Sure you make a living doing this, buddy.” And then the question comes up: “Does your wife work?” This can be translated as, “You have a sugar momma, right?” But now when I say that she doesn’t work, I get the “not bad, much respect” look and a pat on the back.

In their mind I go from being a mooch to the provider.

Me provider. Me kill stuff and drag it home. Ooga booga!

Annie provided me with the time and encouragement to develop a career that could support our family. She provides me with the ability to have a nontraditional career, yet enjoy all the rewards of a traditional life. I recently wrote a post about all of the things that Annie provides me. You tell me who the provider is?

We are a boss-less family. If we could afford a vacation, we wouldn’t have to ask for days off. We can’t be fired. We don’t accrue PTO; we accrue moments together each day (Harper, Griffin, and I played in a tent this morning. Now Griffin is napping and Annie and Harper are making Halloween cookies). We’ve replaced the security of a weekly paycheck with hustle and passion and a budget.

Between 2008 and 2010, the number of stay-at-home mothers fell from 5.3 million to 5 million. Some criticize the decision to stay at home and make some irrefutable reasons why a woman shouldn’t. But in a time where the trend is against staying at home, we’re bucking the trend.

We’ve decided to raise and make our own future. It’s terrifyingly awesome.

This Writer’s Life

My wife the ninja!

By Kelsey

This is why no one messes with me. Annie is a stay-at-home-mom by day and a crime-fighting ninja by night.

This Writer’s Life

Win a Kindle Touch, join the WAIW Project survey

By Kelsey

Nick Gerlich and Kris Drumheller of West Texas A&M University are conducting a study to see how consumers view made-in-America and made-in-sweatshop products and whether or not reading Where Am I Wearing? impacts that view.

TAKE THE SURVEY NOW

The survey takes 10 minutes. If you haven’t read Where Am I Wearing?, you can still take it. A drawing will be held on November 30, 2011, and one person will win an Amazon Kindle Touch.

I’m eager to see the results.

TAKE IT NOW or I will curse you with a Kindle-Touchless life and an eternity of itchy underwear tags.

You can check out Nick and Kris’s other research projects at their site Media Buffs.

Engaged Consumer

Steve Jobs: iDad

By Kelsey

Steve Jobs was the creator of the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, Pixar, computers that actually run, and a technology empire, but if you asked him what his greatest role in life was, he would answer: iDad. Here’s Jobs on fatherhood:

“It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.”

(from the New York Times)

We went to the park tonight and had another picnic just like we did the night before. That’s how we roll. There’s no better job than being a dad and there’s no greater creation than a child.

Griffin and I hope your weekend is off to as good of a start as ours. Nothing beats a picnic at a park and some quality public hand chewing.

This Writer’s Life