Parenting is hard. Parenting during a pandemic is next-level challenging. Every decision you make feels wrong, and you’re constantly worried about the long-term impact this will have on your kids.

As parents, we’re burned out.

In a recent podcast on the topic, Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski discuss how burnout derives from not allowing our emotions to complete a full cycle.

Their new book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, is quoted:

“Emotions are tunnels. If you go all the way through them you get to the light at the end. Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in an emotion.”

The podcast then goes on to describe how to get unstuck — how to get out of the emotional tunnels. You need to invoke a physiological response to complete that emotion.

Perhaps the easiest way is to focus on your breathing.

I’m certainly no Yogi. At the bare minimum, I have however read Mindfulness in Plain English and understand the value of the practice.

Another way to complete emotions and avoid burnout is through creative expression.

So much of the podcast episode resonated with me, including that bit. When stress hits, I find myself playing with new tools or trying to create something.

My latest form of creative expression is a Kindle book, Parenting During a Pandemic.

I use the word “book” very loosely here. It is, no exaggeration, a 2-minute read. My sister better described it as a useful tool for parents.

I wrote the book before even listening to the podcast episode; however, it is very much in line with Dr. Emily and Dr. Amelia’s thinking. I believe it can help parents get out of that emotional tunnel by focusing on breathing and re-centering themselves.

Readers have described feeling “lighter” after going through the book.

The book is experimental in nature, with a lot of white space on each page meant to give you a sense of breathing room. I’ve always felt that touching through a kindle, while mono-focusing, is very therapeutic.

The hope is that the combination of the white space, positive affirmations, and repetitive touching is meditative, allowing you to focus on breathing and completing whatever difficult emotions you might currently be facing.

***

Download the book for $0.99 on Amazon.

I wrote this nearly a year ago and never published it. My daughter is creeping toward two and is as healthy as can be.

***

My daughter is exactly nine months old today.

My chest feels tight today, and I’m having a difficult time focusing on work. It’s not due to the love that I feel for her – which does make my heart swell. Instead, I’m feeling anxious because today she woke up with a fever and it has since climbed to 103 degrees.

My anxiety rises and falls with her temperature because we had a difficult first few weeks together. We almost lost her, twice. And in between her near-death experiences, my then two-year-old son, was also hospitalized more than once.

It began one day while working from home.

“Mike,” my wife nervously calls up the stairs. I immediately know something is wrong and run down. She had just woken up from a nap, and blood had soaked through her jeans and onto the bedsheets. Our daughter wasn’t due for another five weeks.   

A quiet calm came over us. I quickly fed our son and packed a few things while my wife put on clean clothes. We said little to one another, both fearing the same but not wanting to say it out loud. 

On the drive to the hospital, my wife drank juice and soon after felt a kick. A huge weight was lifted, despite the fact that she was still bleeding. 

She was diagnosed with a partial placental abruption and was deemed too at-risk to leave the hospital. We stayed there together for the next three weeks until our daughter was induced at 38 weeks. The delivery was perfect, albeit extremely painful for my wife, as medicine-free natural birth is.

We stayed at the hospital for an extra day dealing with jaundice, which our son also had, so we’d seen that before. Though within a day or two of being discharged, my wife had to bring our daughter back for another overnight at the hospital as her jaundice was rebounding.

After being discharged again, we hoped we were in the clear.

We were very wrong.

A few days later, I’m in bed and am awoken by the sound of my then 2.5 year old son mumbling. I go and check on him – he’s burning up. The thermometer beeps and then reads 106 degrees. He’s panting like a dog. Soon thereafter, I’m about to pull out of our garage into a snowstorm when I look in the rearview mirror and his eyes roll to the back of his head. He has a febrile seizure and I have to call 911.

No sooner are we discharged from the emergency room, do we find ourselves back at the hospital with him. This time, he’s working too hard to breathe and his oxygen is low. My wife stays at home with our newborn daughter, and I spend a few nights at the hospital with our toddler son. 

One night he is yelling and crying and has to be restrained in order to get his antibiotics down. The nurses get firm, and I have to yell “PLEASE STOP!” I immediately begin crying. I apologize to the nurses and to my son. We both just want to be home.

We’re discharged the next day. On the phone, my wife mentions our newborn daughter is now working to breathe. 

I get home and I see what she is talking about. She’s stuffed up, and she’s using her belly to breathe. We call the doctor and explain that our son was just in the hospital with a respiratory illness. She said to go get our daughter checked out now. It had been less than two hours since returning home with our son.

My wife brings our daughter to the ER, and they are admitted almost immediately. My inlaws come to help with our son, and I head to the hospital.

A few days pass, and she’s only getting worse. “There’s nothing else we can do for her here,” says the doctor. We cry. I apologize to my daughter. We were beginning the mourning process.

We end up at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at our local Children’s hospital, where she ended up on pressurized oxygen and a feeding tube. Day by day she got better, and within a week, we were finally home.

In total, my family spent 43 virtually consecutive days and nights between three different hospitals. Each of the events and resultant hospital stays was scarring on their own, but together they’ve amassed to one deep wound that will take time to heal.

I haven’t yet talked to a doctor or therapist about it, but I believe I may have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to research, somewhere between 8 and 33% of fathers (and higher rates for mothers) that end up in the NICU end up with PTSD.

And fevers, I think, are my trigger.

The rational part of my brain understands that my daughter’s fever tonight is her body’s natural defense system kicking in. It’s working as it should and she’s fighting just one of the many bugs she’ll face through her childhood years.

But the rational part of my brain turns off when she or my son gets a fever.

When my son’s temperature rises, I now find myself dragging a small mattress into his room to sleep beside his bed. It’s not likely that he’ll have another febrile seizure, but having experienced the first one, I have trouble shaking the thought.

When my daughter begins to get a fever, my wife and I obsessively chart her temperature throughout the day as it fluctuates. We breathe a sigh of relief when it falls by a degree, and we start getting heart palpitations when it rises by a degree.

One of the ways doctors and therapists suggest coping with PTSD is writing about one’s experience.

Putting words to the anxieties as they creep up is helping to dispel the downward spirals I’ve been sucked into so many times this year.

So tonight I’m at home with my son writing out my worries, while my wife is at the doctor’s office getting our 9-month-old daughter checked out.  

The rational part of my brain knows she’s going to be fine. That same part of my brain is telling me that my wife and I will be OK too.

One of my resolutions this year is to see a therapist and learn some additional skills to cope with this.

***

The pandemic hit not too long after I wrote this, causing a whole new wave of anxieties and fears. Fortunately, we are all healthy and doing well.

52 weeks ago, I married ‘the love of my life’, ‘my better half, ‘the woman of my dreams’, my ‘soulmate’ or whatever trope you think best fits. Mary Louise Will Munsell is all of that to me and more.

Our wedding was hands-down the best day of my life. My mom gave me an invaluable piece of advice that day:

‘Take time to look around at all of the faces in the room. They are all here to celebrate you and Mary, and they are so happy to be here for you both.’

The love and warmth from our families and friends was palpable. We saw it and felt it with every person we looked at, spoke with, laughed with, danced with, and hugged.

It was the perfect way to kick off the first day of the rest of our lives.

On the second day, we opened an envelope that guided our first year of marriage.

It’s the most Pinteresty idea I’ve ever had. Using Post-it notes, we each wrote 26 activities that we could do together. We then folded them up and put them in a jar. Every Sunday during our first year of marriage, we’d pull a new activity that we would try to accomplish that week. They can be as simple as “Write a letter and mail it” to more involved like “Plan a weekend getaway”.

The activities can be generic like the examples above, but it’s more fun when it is unique to your own relationship.

Here’s a small sample of how Mary and I spent our first year as Mr. & Mrs. Munsell.

Story & Beer

A couple years ago, Mary and I drove by a building with the sign, Beers & Story. For a minute, I thought it was some sort of bar where instead of a band — they had people on stage to read stories. Turned out, it was a funeral home. Regardless, I loved the idea so much that I added it as one of our 52 activities for the year.

Make a homemade pizza

Thanks to my years of experience at Sweet Tomatoes, we’ve perfected this.

See a Sunrise or Sunset

Sunrise in Revere.

Wine and Cheese Experts

We gorged ourselves on Wine and Cheese while teaching one another about what we were consuming (like true experts, we had to learn it on the fly).

Charcoal Drawings

I’m a hack. Mary is an artist.

Make Homemade Mac & Cheese

Mac and Cheese is one of Mary’s favorite foods. Zack (our best man) lived with us for a week, so we put him to work.

Today we begin year-two of our marriage. We’ve got another set of Post-it notes, and we’re excited to see what this year brings for us together!

***

Huge, huge, huge thanks to Sarah Will for making the wedding possible. Wedding photos by Zac Wolf Photography.

I’ve reached peak nerd.

Today, in conjunction with a group of friends, I’m excited to launch Riddle Earth— a newsletter and website dedicated to original riddles. It’s in beta now, but it will continue to evolve over the coming weeks.

The origin of Riddle Earth can be traced back to the depths of Arizona’s Lava River Cave. After hiking the Grand Canyon last year, Kyle, Kevin and I ended up exploring Arizona’s longest cave.

Then this happened.

A week later, Kevin followed up with this.

(I was right)

Like Bilbo and Gollum, we began creating our own riddles and challenging one another.

Sporadic riddle threads emerged over the course of a year. One day, I decided to pitch one of my riddles to colleagues over our weekly bagel breakfast:

I go bump in the night and also in the day.
I’m not necessarily broken, but if I appear, I need to be fixed.
Despite my name, you’ll never find me in the kitchen.

Stumped, my colleagues asked that I email them the riddle. I look around, and everyone has their day’s work on their laptops and my riddle on their auxiliary monitors.

After a couple hours, no one guessed the correct answer. So I added a new line upon request.

I can be shallow, but you really want to avoid me when I’m deep.

Within minutes, two correct answers were excitedly emailed to me. One came in all caps; it was the definitive answer.

This was the spark. I wanted to replicate what happened at work and create an email newsletter that would provide a riddle in the morning, allow people to guess the answer, and provide the solution in an afternoon email.

With a working concept, we now needed a name. Ideas we kicked around include Malcolm in the Riddle, Riddler’s List, Riddle House on the Prairie, and BetteRiddler.net.

Kyle then sent a text: Riddle Earth.

It has a tie-in to our origin story, and more importantly I imagine there is a 95% overlap of people that enjoy both riddles and The Hobbit. As a name for the site, it was perfect.

I did a bit of research, and the few riddle websites in existence today were either created in the 1990’s or rely on Microsoft clip art from the same era. There’s an opportunity for a modern riddle website, and that’s the goal of Riddle Earth.

Our riddles have three major tenets:

• Original — You can’t Google the answer. There is no instant gratification — you have to use your brain.
• 3-point shots — They aren’t layups. You’re not going to make every shot, but it’s more rewarding when you do hit it.
• Definitive — When you get it, you know you got it.

In addition to Kyle and Kevin, my brother Zack helps craft and refine riddles, and my friend Christine is developing the website and tool.

We’ll send out new riddles by email every Monday and Friday. Check out today’s riddle here and be sure to sign up to receive our emails!

Over time we’ll include score tracking, a leaderboard, archives, an overhaul of the design, and more!

Welcome to Riddle Earth.

***

(As we’re in beta, please provide us with any and all feedback! You won’t hurt my feelings )

Last week my cat Beau became internet-famous, for a day at least. With the help of Reddit and Imgur, he was seen by 1.4 million bored internet people.

During the recent Juno Blizzard, my wedding photographer and friend Zac Wolf had a call to action. He asked Facebook friends to take photos of their dogs playing in the snow. Half jokingly, he suggested a cat photo would be even better.

I took the bait.

Mary and I brought Beau, an indoor cat, outside for his first experience in snow. It also happened to be in the middle of the blizzard. He did not enjoy it, so I snapped a picture and promptly brought him back inside.

I posted the photo on Reddit where it took on a life of its own and spawned all sorts of photoshop jobs.

Even more can be found here. If you would like to get involved and have photoshop skills, I would love to see Beau’s head as the Cave of Wonder.

I was honored to have the privilege of being my brother Dave’s best man last month. Below is transcript-turned-blog post of the toast.

Dave

To understand my brother Dave, or big Davey as I like to call him, or David James, as most of my family calls him — to understand David James, I’d like to tell you something about our grandfathers, David and James. Beyond his namesake, Dave derived a great deal from his grandfathers.

Last year Mary and I were at Papa’s house (James Griffin). He was tinkering with his grandfather clock, trying to get it started again. Mary asked, “How do you know how to do that?”

Papa said, and I’ll never forget this, “If a man built it, I can fix it.”

It’s an incredible, confident motto he lives by. He’s built an entire business around it, fixing airplane parts.

My other grandfather, Gramps, (David Munsell) also has a mantra he lives by. On a number of occasions he’s told me, “You’re a Munsell, you can do anything.” It’s a phrase that was actually passed down by his father, our great grandfather (GG, as we knew him).

At the confluence of the two ideologies of these two great men is Dave. No one in my immediate family embodies the confidence, self-assurance, and know-how as much as Dave does.

And he’ll be the first one to tell you that. He’ll say, “I’m awesome!’

And you know what? He is.

So, I’d like to share a few highlights and milestones from his life that he’s been able to obtain with that confidence and know-how he acquired from his grandfathers.

Exhibit A

Dave and I started playing lacrosse in early middle school. During his first year, Dave decided he wanted to play defense.

The role of the defender is to push guys around and protect the goalie from being shot on. It’s a position for the biggest, strongest players on the field. The Goliaths, if you will. Not the Davids.

But Dave defied the odds. He used his quick hands, agility, and what strength he had to keep attackers at bay. He ended up being a starting varsity defender. He’s a Munsell, he can do anything.

David, number 3, being towered over by offensive players

One of the few things Dave is actually modest in about life is his artistic talent. But I can assure you,  he’s an artist.

Dave was actually invited to the Pentagon to see one of his pieces of modern art hung one one of its five long walls. While there, he shook the hand of the President of the United States. True story.

His work of art was a landscape of Washington D.C., with the Washington Monument standing prominently in the center. Overhead, an F-16 flys….chasing an alien space ship set on destroying the capital.

It was an awesome drawing — especially for 12 year old Dave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M

Exhibit C

Dave went on to graduate from Syracuse and joined the Peace Corps, where he volunteered in Mali. While there, he learned a language that not a single one of Dave’s friends or family would have heard of, had he not gone to Mali. He became fluent in Fulfude.

For my best man’s speech, I reached out to one of his Peace Corps friends to help translate a wedding blessing. It goes like this:

Ada nyama nyebbe
Jackie ana nyama nyebbe

But perhaps something was lost in translation, as Dave was in hysterics when he heard it at the ceremony. Or maybe it was that instead of providing a blessing I had the entire wedding reception repeat the classic Malian fart joke.

Exhibit D

Perhaps Dave’s biggest accomplishment to date is actually what brought everyone together on June 21st, 2014.

Four years ago, almost to this date, Dave told me about Jackie, “I’m going to marry this girl.” They had only been seeing each other a couple months at this point. I don’t think Jackie even liked Dave at the time.

At the time they were coworkers with shared desk space in Liberty Mutual’s Human Resources department. And if you know anything about HR — you would know that this is where they make rules against interoffice romance. But, Dave defied the odds and courted Jackie anyways.

Dave used his awesomeness to marry the woman of his dreams, and my new sister-in-law, Jackie.

Jackie

Jackie actually shares a lot of the same characteristics as Dave. She too is ambitious, driven, and confident.

For instance, earlier this year Dave, Jackie, Kyle and I met up for some post-work beverages at the Sail Loft. Kyle and I were telling them about our recent trip to the Grand Canyon. We had hiked it from top to bottom to top in a single day. That’s 16 miles over 10,000 vertical feet. We hiked over 10 hours in arid Arizona.

Without skipping a beat, the always confident Jackie declared, “I could do that. Dave, when are we going to hike the Grand Canyon?”

To which Dave replied, “Jackie, you don’t even like hiking.”

“I know!” she exclaimed. “But, I could do it.”

And I’m sure she could! She probably will. And that’s Jackie. She’s awesome too.

Dave & Jackie (or Jave)

And as incredible as they both are individually, together they are even better. In emails written one another, read aloud at the wedding, they both wrote almost word for word, “you make me a better person.”

They push one another to be better people. To be happier, healthier, and more fun. And, the more time they spend together, the closer they become.

And they spend a lot of time together.

I imagine most mornings they wake up, ensure their matching Fitbits are still functioning, then head to the basement where they keep their two treadmills, side by side. They run for 30 minutes, and give each other high fives at the end, “We’re awesome!”. After their team workout, they commute to Liberty Mutual together where they both still work in HR, though in different departments nowadays. At 5:00, they hop back on the southbound MBTA train and head home for a delicious gluten-free dinner. Then on Tuesday, they wake up and do it all again.

I’m excited to spend the coming decades with them together, as a couple, and watch them grow even closer.

So, to the awesome Dave and Jackie Munsell, together you can do anything.

Cheers!

What can I accomplish in 30 minutes? Run 3-4 miles. Read 20 pages of a novel. Find some inner peace. Write a blog post.

Finding that out is my goal this year. I’m giving myself 30 minutes* every day to do one of those four activities: exercise, reading, meditating, and writing. In the current state of mult-screen multi-tasking, my attention span has reached record lows. Forcing myself to focus on a single non-work related activity for thirty minutes every day will hopefully slow down my ever-bouncing brain.

It’s been nearly three months, and I’ve been able to give myself 30 minutes almost every day. Looking at my blog posts published this year, it’s clear that I have not spent many days writing. I can also say that I have not found any zen in 2014.

What have I spent all of these 30-minute sessions doing? Mostly reading. I’m nearing the end of my fourth book this year and have a few more lined up. I also run from time to time, but with the warmer weather and my Grand Canyon hike approaching, I expect more time devoted to fitness.

Giving myself annual quantifiable goals has really helped me in my constant quest for self-betterment.

Perhaps next year I will up it to 60 minutes.

***

*The 30 minutes has to be on my own time, away from work and commuting.