Writing on Raising Kids: by Buzz Bissinger, John Jeremiah Sullivan, & Eric Puchner

There's a few pieces of writing I've seen lately that are great individually and which share the connection of having fascinating insight on raising children.

The first was "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!" by John Jeremiah Sullivan for the New York Times. Sullivan is a ridiculously talented writer (who wrote the book Pulphead that I reviewed here) and this piece on going to Disney World with his family was one of five nominees for Best Feature Writing at the 2012 National Magazine Awards.

Since I brought it up... the category winner was Luke Dittrich for his amazing Esquire Magazine piece on survivors of the Joplin, MO tornado and I probably would have picked the Dittrich story as well with the subject of his exceptionally written piece having more inherent drama than that in Sullivan's exceptionally written piece.

Anyhoo, back to Disney World... the story is highly entertaining, but what really got me from it were two specific anecdotes towards the end. The first was about a huge storm that hit during Sullivan's time at the Park and it reminded me of the fascinating apocalyptic reference he made in the essay "At a Shelter (After Katrina)" from Pulphead. The other anecdote (which was the connection to the other pieces in this post) was the following...

"We don’t need to go crazy with guilt and worry about our children. We’re not responsible for them. For their upbringing, yes, but not for their existence. Destiny wants them here. It uses us to put them here."

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Tremendously interesting few sentences that I thought of after subsequently reading "Buzz Bissinger on Raising a Special Needs Child", excerpted from his forthcoming book Father’s Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son. The part from Bissinger that seemed to parallel Sullivan on kids was his ending to the excerpt...

"But whatever happens with Zach, I know I cannot think in terms of my best interests, even if I think they are also in his best interests. Zach will be where and who he will be. Because he needs to be. Because he wants to be. Because as famed physician Oliver Sacks said, all children, whatever the impairment, are propelled by the need to make themselves whole. They may not get there, and they may need massive guidance, but they must forever try."

Bissinger may or may not be making the same point as Sullivan, but in the vein of "once the words are written, readers will do with them what they may", both concepts seemed to traffic in the idea that (while parents can and should still... you know, parent), children are their own people with their own path for life.

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The final piece related to this concept was one I read a few weeks ago, but just recently saw a link to it posted online. The May issue of GQ Magazine featured "The Cooler Me" by Eric Puchner on time spent with his own doppelganger... the guy he might have become if not for taking on a life of family and associated responsibilities. It's really interesting writing with Puchner (his website here) comparing his life as a teacher, husband and father of two young kids to that of musician Kyle Field. The piece neither bemoans what Field has that he doesn't, nor props himself up in comparison to the singer, but rather takes an almost anthropological view of choices made.

Since the first two pieces had wisdom pulled out for this post, the following two quotes were first from Field in response to Puchner speaking of whether he should have taken a different path in life, and then Puchner concluding his story with an anecdote about time with his daughter...

"There's always something else you could be doing," he said. "We're wasting a life as we speak."

"If someone told me I was going to die tomorrow, I thought, I would still want to be sitting right here. Because it was going to happen someday—very soon, in fact, in cosmological time—and it mattered immensely where I was. There was no time not to waste."

Really great writing in all three pieces and definitely an interesting common thread between them.

Business Success Pieces - Evan Williams / Chris Sacca / Paul Saffo / Asana / Jordan Cooper

There's been a few interesting business pieces I've seen lately that all seem connected enough to be pulled into one (hopefully coherently written) blog post...

Starting off with the oldest (by far) was "Ten Rules for Web Startups" from Twitter founder Evan Williams on his blog in Sept 2005. Williams track record is remarkable in that he co-founded both Pyra Labs (parent company that created Blogger) and Twitter. Additionally, he's referenced by venture capitalist Chris Sacca as someone to back in a venture regardless of the idea. The rules as laid out in the blog post from Williams were all interesting, but what really stood out to me was number one... "Be Narrow", with the first few sentences why noted below:

"Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do."

With this (and since I so enjoy melding together different iterations of the same theme), it seems high time to bring in something from the excellent Ken Jennings book Maphead. I reviewed the book here and note how in it a collector was quoted saying "if you're going to specialize, specialize as much as possible." It's a tremendously interesting (and logical) concept that applies to map collecting, business creating and I'm sure many other ventures.

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Continuing with this approach of blending and connecting together in this blog post, I saw from the same Chris Sacca Twitter feed that directed me to the Williams piece a link to the recent Wired Magazine story "8 Visionaries on How They Spot the Future" by Joanna Pearlstein. It's written as a wisdom compilation story and below are the people and their insights that struck me the most (or at least insights as I took them):

Paul Saffo (Technology Forecaster) - looks for things that seem out of place as an indicator of events to come. Yea, that's a bit nebulous of a statement, but he describes the idea well is his short missive.

Chris Sacca (aforementioned Venture Capital guy) - you don't need to be a seer (prophet - soothsayer - diviner - augur - clairvoyant) to spot (and potentially invest in) the companies that could be poised for success. Barriers to entry are low enough in many technology realms that evaluation decisions can be made based on the actual product or service experience (or at least an early stage iteration of it). Tied to this idea is how many ways there (Twitter as probably the largest) to discern customer experience (as I wrote about featured in an Oct 2009 Businessweek) with a company and it's offering.

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With yet another "hopefully not a stretch" connection for the purpose of this blog post... rule number ten from Williams of "Be Balanced" reminded me of something else from Sacca in the same interview that he spoke of backing Williams regardless of the business idea. Point as I recall it was the import of working with people that he wants to spend time around as well as invest with.

This idea seems very much in evidence with two other pieces I've seen recently. Peter Delevett wrote "Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz brings new startup Asana into the marketplace" on the company started with a former colleague from Facebook, Justin Rosenstein and I also saw "In Pursuit of 'Brain Doppelgangers'" from the blog of an entrepreneur, Jordan Cooper.

I'm not familiar with Cooper at all, but his description of the power in being with like-minded people made sense and I was pretty amazed to see the title right after reading the excellent GQ piece "The Cooler Me" (haven't yet seen it posted online) by Eric Puchner about... yep, doppelgangers.