The Journey Dad

Kids all over the world are growing up without dads. Some out of obvious circumstances… divorce, separation, death… but there’s another trend that is different from all those. The invisible dad.

The invisible dad isn’t going through a divorce. He’s not sick or in jail. The invisible dad isn’t having an affair or traveling 7 days out of the week. In many cases it’s quite the opposite. He’s around all the time. His work schedule is by no means light, but he regularly pulls in a 40 hour week just like the majority of his friends and colleagues, gets home at a decent hour, and doesn’t have a ton to do around the house when he’s there.

The problem with the invisible dad isn’t that he’s gone, it’s that he’s gone.

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For all the Lego lovers out there, this one’s pretty sweet.

Read more to watch the video…

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(Source: crackajack.de)

Every kindergartener needs to use a hand saw every once and a while.

Julie Scelfo from The New York Times writes about woodworking classes that are geared toward a younger set of children, some even as young as five years old. From Brian Cohen, co-founder of Beam Camp:

“My partner and I saw that kids were spending too much time interacting with perfect interfaces,” said Mr. Cohen, 45. “We felt that we needed to provide an experience by which they could understand how perfection is achieved — and, more specifically, how that perfection is achieved by working through problems with your hands.”

Read more to check out the video.

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My good friend Nate just launched his new non-profit org… The Safe Place.

I don’t do much advertising mid-blog, but the stuff that Nate does has played a huge part in my life personally over the last year or so.

Using his TImES method, we were able to tap into some of the areas of my past experiences that had altered the way I had thought about myself. - I know, that may sound very weird, but here’s the deal: Who we are today is a result of all the experiences and choices that we’ve made throughout our lives, and some of those past experiences can severely screw with our daily thinking, actions, you name it.

Many times we can go for huge spans of our lives without ever dealing with those past events (because we may have forgotten them for one). By mentally going back and confronting those past negative events, we can hack at the root of some of our big issues that we face in the now (that we may have no idea how to deal with otherwise).

But I’m rambling… I can go on forever on this stuff (because it really is life changing, and also very interesting), but it’s much easier to just send you on over to his site.

So check it out, www.inthesafeplace.com, and make sure to become a fan on facebook www.facebook.com/inthesafeplace (for post updates, etc.)

Thanks!

Wash your wife’s feet. It’s something that’s insanely easy simple to do, costs nothing, and will transform your marriage.

Being one of the most humbling acts I can think of (especially in our culture), it’s a really great way to show meekness and appreciation to your wife (who deserves it by the way).

To be honest, I don’t foresee this as something the majority of guys will bust down the doors to do today, but for the select few men out there who are REAL MEN, I dare you to do it this week. Not as a thank you, or as a way to get something out of it, but just to show your wife that a real man isn’t some loud, puffed up a-hole (sorry, but appropriate) that talks the talk, but a guy who can lower himself to honor his greatest prize.

I guarantee you it will be awkward, and you’ll probably laugh all the way through it (we did), but just doing it is what matters.

(In attempting to keep this post/idea short and sweet, I didn’t want to get overly spiritual about it and go into all the details on the symbolism of feet washing, but you can google it or go to this wiki link for some more info on it that’s pretty interesting. - I’d love to hear the stories from any of you guys that actually have the balls to do it, so feel free to leave comments, etc.)

{pic Meister des Hausbuches}

…read some more DO-IT-FOR posts.

There’s not much more to say. It’s segway jousting, and it’s awesome.

Read more to watch the epic battle unfold

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I feel that my son should probably go here at some point in his lifetime.

Tempest Freerunning Academy is California’s first indoor training facility solely dedicated to the growth and spread of freerunning and parkour. This amazing promo video shows all of the awesomeness.

There’s even a Mario Bros. area in there - always a nice addition.

Read more to watch this insane parkour/freerunning/gym/awesome video.

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I love reading. And when I say reading, more specifically I mean listening.

Without fail, I listen to audiobooks to and from work every day of the week. For a long while (the better part of a year) I stuck strictly to one type of book: If it was fiction and had pirates, dinosaurs, threats of plagues, time travel, murder mystery, FBI agents, medieval knights, museums, lost archeological cities, mutating diseases, or a mix of 3 or more of any of those (which most did), I have listened to it, and loved every second of it.

(picture via Walden book cover)

In the last few months however my library has changed dramatically. Although I would never wish to turn back the clocks to spend my time with more “educational” literature (as I felt strongly that in that season of my life there was something very refreshing about “getting away from it all” that I believe improved me overall as a person), there was a shift in my thinking (which was one of the promptings that started this Journey Dad Blog Project in the first place) on what the next season of my life would bring me.

As I write this, I find myself in the middle of a book by Henry David Thoreau called Walden.

In a nutshell (this does the book absolutely no justice by the way, but it gives you a basic picture of what the heck I’ll be talking about in a moment), Thoreau was

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A short film about the nation’s only blind movie critic, Jay Forry. Love stories like this.

Read more to watch the video.

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