Once upon a time, there was a very successful man.
He made a lot of money for those around him. Year after year, hit after hit. Everyone’s happy.
Except him.
You see, fatherhood coincided with the peak of his success and long working hours. There’s a void between him and his son that money can’t fill.
“The kid doesn’t want your dime, it wants your time”
With a second boy on the way, he vows this time will be different.
He puts his career on hold for 5 years. Meetings are turned down, offers are refused, as he bakes bread and takes Junior swimming.
So did it work?
"He didn't come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish.”
After 60 months, our protagonist returns to work.
He notes this period "awakened a creative urge he hadn’t felt for a long time.”
Game on.
A good story, non?
It becomes a remarkable one when you learn our trusty protagonist is…
John Lennon.
There’s more.
He’s assassinated the year he returns from his self imposed exile. But I truly believe that at the final reckoning, he was ecstatic to have spent so much of his final years with oven mitts on.
It’s Christmas 2022 and I’m doomscrolling Youtube Shorts on the sofa when I stumble across Jimmy Carr telling the above.
“Wow. Just Wow.” I mouthed to myself.
It felt like a major plot reveal in season 5 of a TV series, the type that upends your understanding of what’s what and who’s who.
Jade and I were trying for our first child at the time. I was 47. It weighed on me that I’d be least 66 by the time they reached adulthood.
Jimmy was bringing me a message from the Universe.
Less than a week later, 50 Cent personally told me (via Shorts) how Eminem paused touring after his daughter’s birth. Even months matter when they grow so quickly.
The signal from the cosmos couldn’t be clearer. I exited the corporate world I’d lived in for nearly 3 decades and became a self-employed consultant.
We had some savings but runway was finite and way too short for comfort.
But the untrodden path was the only way.
I could always make more money
- Lyra would only grow up once.
Life was about to get seven shades of interesting.