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Dear Jack: You are Now Self-Identifying as Linus from Peanuts

7 years, 4 months.

Dear Jack,

Being the son of a daddy blogger/social media influencer, you’re just used to us getting free stuff. Sometimes, we sort of forget about some of the things we are sent from companies. For example, you have enjoyed recently rediscovering the Peanuts Emmy Honored Collection DVD set we got a couple of years ago.

It’s over 4 hours of Charlie Brown and all his friends. It’s something you can get away with watching upstairs in the bonus room while your sister casually plays with her toys; as she occasionally will look up and say, “Puppy?”

This past week as you were hanging out after school one day, you proclaimed to me:

“Daddy, who do you think I am out of all the characters on this show?”

“Charlie Brown, right?”

“No, look: Linus. See? He always carries around his blue blanket- and look, I’m even wearing a red shirt like him too.”

It’s true that you’ve always carried around that blue blanket. Looking back even here on my blog, I wrote about it nearly 6 years ago on April 23, 2012, in “My Son’s Linus Van Pelt Stage: Carrying Around His Blanket”.

In fact, your blue blanket serves as an subconscious symbol of contention for me. You tend to leave it in the middle of the floor, which is a feng shui issue.

So much so, that during one of Nonna’s recent visits to our home, she discreetly taught you to have your blanket put away by the time I got back home, explaining to you, “Have you noticed how your blanket serves as a trigger for your Daddy, when he sees it on the floor or the kitchen table? Make sure you get it out of his sight before he walks in the door.”

Yeah, I guess you’re right: You are Linus.

And perhaps this isn’t a stage, as I thought it was nearly 6 years ago.

Instead, this blanket is simply a part of you and ultimately; an extension of your identity. You self-identity as Linus.

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Holly: You Now Love Mac and Cheese!

1 year, 11 months.

Dear Holly,

It was just a few weeks ago when Nonna came up for a week to take care of you while I was on my Toyota trip in Atlanta, that you began eating Ramen noodles.

Well, it’s no surprise to me that you now eat mac and cheese too.

Last week you overheard your brother tell Mommy that’s what he wanted for dinner.

You repeated, “Chee?”

(Each week, we’ve kept a little snack-size block of cheese for you in the fridge; as you occasionally ask for it. You’ve treated it more like a teething toy more than food, though.)

I then asked you, “Holly, cheese noodles?”

“Yeah, chee!”

So Mommy brought you your own dish of mac and cheese, along with your brother’s. You went to work right away.

Though you had never eaten it before, you instantly loved it.

My favorite part about this story is that you took it upon yourself to request mac and cheese and try it for the first time.

As you are now less than a month away from your 2nd birthday, I am starting to see you naturally transition into your upcoming age.

You’ve mainly been eating snack-type foods until recently. Now that you’re actually asking for and eating pasta, it shows me that you are growing up.

And while I am very particular about letting my kids have “screen time” before their 2nd birthday, I have been letting you watch Elmo a little bit most days.

So yes, you love mac and cheese. You ask for it. Granted, they are currently being referred to as “cheese noodles” for now, but that’s okay.

I just love being able to see you eating something besides fruit-&-veggie pouches and Cheerios.

My little girl is starting to eat real food now!

Love,

Daddy

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Behind the Music: My New Original Song about Emotional Intelligence, “Maybe It’s a Dream” by Nick Shell

It might be easy to forget at this point in my life, but when I moved to Nashville back on September 11th, 2005, it was because I wanted to build a career in music; as I have been singing, writing songs, and playing the guitar for over two decades.

However, my focus changed about a year and a half after I moved to Nashville, when I met my wife. Two kids and a decade later, the music thing has been on hiatus.

But this week, I decided to finally record a song I’ve been working on for four years.

It’s called “Maybe It’s a Dream”. The song is about the journey of emotionally intelligence; what it’s like living in the paradox of now understanding how it’s a conscious decision to realize that other people only affect my emotions if I give them permission; and that once I began taking control over that part of my life and I unplugged from that master of puppets system, it made me feel both more alive, yet more isolated from the world.

When I started writing the song, I was 32 years old; I just beginning to learn about emotional intelligence. Now, less than a month away from turning 37, I feel like I am becoming on expert on focusing on what I can control, not on what I can not: including other people.

The opening line of the song, “I am a skeleton with meat on my bones”, is my way of acknowledging the ability to separate others’ perception of who they think I am, versus my own perception of who I think I am. In reality, my identity is somewhere in between.

Later on in the song, I admit, “My perspective of reality will die with me.”

We live in somewhat of an illusion of who we think we are, and we struggle to not worry about what other people think about us; yet in reality, how others collectively perceive us ultimately is part of who we actually are.

So it’s even more groundbreaking of a concept when a person chooses to control their own emotions exclusively; not giving permission to others to “hurt” their feelings or offend them.

This leads to a sense of a confused state of being for a guy like me: “Maybe it’s a dream. Is this even real?”

In other words, if I can control so much of my life now that I understand only I control the breaker switch of my own emotions, life starts to feel a little bit like I’m part of some grand scheme of a social experiment. Maybe this is my version of The Truman Show.

I hope you enjoy my song and I hope you can personally relate to it in some way. It is truly an extension of my identity. To understand who I am (or at least who I think I am) is to understand this song.

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Dear Holly: Your 1st Harmonica Lesson

1 year, 10 months.

Dear Holly,

Now that I am basically building my own side business by writing articles with accompanying videos for companies to promote them in social media, you have seen me pull out my guitar a little bit more, as I craft and create unique music each for the videos.

As you were sitting at my feet while I played guitar a few days ago, you wandered over to my guitar case and found my harmonica. I actually had forgotten I left it there. So you did me a favor when you found it.

I immediately thanked you, “Oh Holly, good job! Now I can play my harmonica again!”

It had been several months since you saw me play it, but the moment I put the harmonica to my lips, your eyes lit up, knowing what you were about to hear.

Once you heard the first note, you were already reaching for the harmonica. I was caught off guard by eagerness to play the instrument.

So I let you have it.

This resulted in you basically biting the harmonica, but I can tell you were attempting to actually blow air into it, or breathe in; either of which would have resulted in musical sound.

Your first harmonica lesson was mainly just about you becoming familiar with holding the instrument and attempting to make any sound at all. I figure that’s typical for the first music lesson for most musical instruments.

We’ll see where this thing goes.

In my mind, it’s a given that I’ll be teaching your brother to play guitar.

But I admit, I would be equally honored to teach you the guitar as well. I can already imagine you as a teenager girl wearing a dress with cowboy boots, playing the guitar and singing; thanks to Daddy’s lessons.

Love,

Daddy

 

P.S. To see me playing harmonica, check out this video I made before you were born…

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My Photograph is Being Used Without My Permission and Unpaid, In an Ad Featured on ESPN.com (Or, “My Face is Clickbait for the Lotto, Even Though I Don’t Believe in Playing the Lotto”)

Apparently, I have the face an everyday Joe who happens to be smart enough to figure out how to win the Lotto 7 times.

This morning a friend from college sent me a screen shot of an article on ESPN, asking me this question:

“Hey – I took this screen shot at the bottom of an ESPN article. Is this you? And if it is, did you know your likeness is being used?”

The answer is yes, that’s my picture; and no, I did not know my photo was being used to promote a story about the Lotto.

It’s very easy to prove that’s a picture of me above the clickbait article, “A 7-Time Lotto Winner Reveals the Big Mistake You Make When Playing the Lotto”.

They simply cropped the title card from my 6th most popular YouTube video, “What a #1 Guard Buzz Cut Looks Like With a Receding Hairline”.

I published that video back on December 20th, 2015, and since then, it has received over 49K views.

So I laboriously scrolled ESPN.com until I found the article. When I clicked on it, the actual article does not feature my picture; and title of the article changes to simply, “How to Increase Your Chances of Winning the Lotto”.

However, I was unable to share the article from my phone: lottodaily.lifestyleguide.pro/lotto/

It comes up as an invalid website when you search that or any of the content from the article.

So it’s as if the click-bait article was deliberately coded in a way that it can not be Googled; the only way to get to it is to click on the ad from a 3rd party.

Some major irony in me being forced against my knowledge or permission to be the face of click-bait, is that I fundamentally do not believe in playing the lottery.

For me, it’s not a moral issue. Instead, it’s common sense one. I see the lottery as “a tax for people who are bad at math.” This concept is only reinforced in movies like Casino and The Godfather, Part II.

While I quickly admit I am definitely bad at math, which is why I’m naturally more skilled in writing and communication, I am a follower of Dave Ramsey. Therefore, it goes against my identity to play the Lotto.

I definitely do not endorse the lottery, nor did I win the lottery 7 times.

However, I do own the rights to the photo, and when you click on my YouTube video, you’ll see that I published it on December 20th, 2015; nearly 2 and a half years ago. It’s time stamped.

This reminds me of an article I read back in November 2017, where a photographer’s photo of VHS cassettes were stolen, to be used as part of Netflix’s Stranger Things boxed set.

It also reminds me of another article I read yesterday about how SnapChat’s value dropped $577 million in value when Rihanna’s picture was used without her permission in a tasteless ad.

Here’s a convenient side by side comparison proving that’s my picture; the ESPN ad on the left, and my YouTube channel on the right:

So what do I do now? Does ESPN have any responsibility in this? Now that I have tweeted this story to them, they are officially aware that one of their sponsors is using my image against my will; and even worse; not crediting me or paying me for my image, which is part of the reason people are clicking on the lotto story.

Or is it left to me to go on a wild goose chase, in an attempt to find the 3rd party of a 3 party who is recycling this lotto story, yet not making it possible to directly find their website.

After all, TopLifestyleTips, the website named below my photo in the ad, is not an existing website. Here’s what happens when you Google TopLifestyleTips along with A 7-Time Lotto Winner Reveals the Big Mistake You Make When Playing the Lotto.

Under normal circumstances, that would bring up the existing article right away. The company responsible for using my photo without my permission, or at least any compensation, is doing a great job of hiding within plain sight.

Until then, I feel trapped in a Black Mirror episode, where my image is perpetually used to promote an idea I am fundamentally against, and am not even paying paid to participate in.