On friendship and advice and children

A won­der­ful week­end in New York and Con­necti­cut. There’s a lot about the East Coast that I miss, most­ly peo­ple. I’m hav­ing to remind myself that there are peo­ple and places back in Cal­i­for­nia that I would miss if I moved away, too.

One of the best parts of the trip was get­ting to talk with Xris about our careers. By that I mean both our jobs and our cre­ative endeav­ors as well as the endeav­ors we haven’t got­ten very far with. He and I share a his­to­ry of stray­ing from tra­dion­al­ly cre­ative starts (paint­ing, film­mak­ing, draw­ing) into devel­op­ment jobs. We have shared his­to­ry and many goals in com­mon, and we have a lot of the same issues.

I’m usu­al­ly afraid to get too per­son­al when giv­ing advice about some­one’s cre­ative work, but with Xris, after see­ing his video that was shown at a fes­ti­val a cou­ple months ago, I felt felt free to offer advice. It might have been off-base; ulti­mate­ly only Xris can know that. Usu­al­ly I’m afraid of pre­sump­tion and of tak­ing on a lec­tur­ing, supe­ri­or tone. Here, how­ev­er, I just jumped in.

The point here is just that I’ve missed the sorts of rela­tion­ships with peo­ple that are close enough and trust­ed enough to be thor­ough­ly and con­struc­tive­ly hon­est. Even with my clos­er friends, I tend to be on guard and very, very cau­tious about giv­ing any in-depth cri­tique. It’s due, I think, to the fact that most peo­ple I deal with reg­u­lar­ly I have not known for very long. I have trust in most of my friends; I just had for­got­ten what real depth of rela­tion­ship means.

In oth­er news, holy cow! Xris’s daugh­ters are adorable. I’d seen pho­tos of them both before, but nev­er got­ten a chance to meet or spend time with them.

I’m afraid of chil­dren, hon­est­ly. I usu­al­ly keep my dis­tance. I’m afraid that I’ll do some­thing wrong, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to relate to them, I’m afraid that I might hurt them. Even when I’ve been told that I’m good with kids, I’ve been a lit­tle sus­pi­cious that my friends who are par­ents have been just try­ing to encour­age me because they could tell I was afraid.

Well, I got over it.

Wow. What amaz­ing lit­tle cre­ations. I don’t know how Xris can stand to ever leave for work and be away from those two. It tore me up to leave them and I only got to know them for a cou­ple days.

Xris’s wife Marge said the sweet­est thing, too. She said I’d make a good dad. I don’t think I let on, but that real­ly choked me up. I’d like to be a good dad some­day. I had a lot of fun with Katie and Chloe.