You might call it a "guilty pleasure" when you change what you eat, drink, and do when a partner is out of town, but what if that wasn't just one night? What if that was what your life suddenly became?
It's harder to shift form as you get older. You're tired. Things feel safe. Which is probably a good argument to actually shift forms!
In two recent cases, both Rob and Patrick have shifted forms.
Patrick: My kids had Monday and Tuesday off school because something something teacher institute day or something something. Either way, they were scheduled to hang out with and stay overnight at my mom’s house because this year, our daycare (or, really, after school care) happens through the school, which means if the school is closed, so is our route to care.
This is all to say that while my wife and I go out of our way to hemorrhage cash to arrange nights to ourselves, those usually happen on a weekend. I cannot remember the last time the kids were gone on a weeknight. At her insistence, we still ventured out to dinner, before returning home to watch a horror movie. (If you’re curious, it was It Ends, a great riff on the liminal space fear so popular amongst younger generations. A better movie than Backrooms!)
On paper, the evening was really straightforward. Two hours at dinner. A movie. And then bed.
The morning was what proved revelatory. I woke up on my own and without an alarm as my wife was finishing getting ready and out the door. Ordinarily, this would be when I’m shuffling the kids in and out of the bathroom, double checking backpacks, and triple checking my watch to make sure we’re getting to school before the first bell rings. (They like to walk into school with friends.)
Instead, I just…stayed in bed for a little bit and sipped coffee. I read an article. I put on my workout gear and went for a three-mile run. I took a shower. And when that was all done, it wasn’t even 9:30 am yet, which meant I’d done all of this before when I’m usually starting work.
Typically, I’m sneaking in a moment to doomscroll/enlighten when I notice the house has, for a moment, gone quiet. (Or they’re on their tablets.) I’m trying to zip around a community college track before my daughter’s swim team practice is over. I had entered my own backrooms: another life! Or, at least, one that would exist in a world where I did not have two children.
I do not, obviously, have regrets about the life I’ve made for myself. But hot damn, having this moment where I had 24 hours as part of another one was genuinely revelatory and really fun.
Anything like that happened to you recently? A moment where you get to travel worlds? That happens a bit when one travels, but it’s more impactful when it’s in your normal routine, I think.
Rob: Funny you should ask. In the last couple months, I've gone to two different defensive driving courses at race tracks here in New England. Now I live in the Boston suburbs, so as you can imagine, you're a significant distance from race tracks, and these programs tend to maximize daylight so they start early. "Report to the track by 7:15 AM, safety inspections begin at 7:30, and training begins promptly at 8, no one will be admitted late."
All of that adds up to waking up at 4:30 so you can have coffee and some kind of breakfast before you need to be in your car heading to the highway at 5:15. It's stuff that I did pretty routinely when I was a student athlete or debater traveling away for tournaments and events, but is pretty far outside my wheelhouse these days. It's not like getting up early for a flight, where once you get through security you can just passively rest for the next stages of your trip. Here, you are waking up early to go do something physically and mentally demanding at the end of the trip.
I don't think I ever could have been an accomplished athlete and I certainly never had the resources to pursue something like racing, but on my most recent drive into New Hampshire it hit me how much I had missed that particular combination of "wired-on-coffee, up-too-early" energy", anxiety for all the administrative checkpoints you're going to have to pass through, and nervous excitement for the event itself. Watching the mist swirling off the rooftops and the sun starting to peer through red-and-gold tree canopy, there was nowhere I'd rather have been and nothing else I'd rather have been doing.
Then you get to the thing, meet a bunch of people you don't know but have some odd things in common with, and work together closely in this collaborative instructional environment for hours, and then you go home nursing a fresh set of intense aches and pains. Over the coming days you'll hurt worse and in unexpected places, and you'll feel better than you ever do at the end of a workday and you'll wonder what it would be like if that was your life. Up before the sun, rolling through speedway gates at dawn, standing in the cold as inspectors go over your car, chatting with your new temporary peers, and then spending a day being thrown against harnesses and bolsters while inhaling a nothing-else-like it combination of rubber, heated metal, brake dust, and car exhaust.
Maybe it'd get old. Maybe in that other life you'd be dreaming of being able to sleep in and spend the day at your desk. But in this life it hits like a drug and you wonder if some part of you isn't always half-asleep, dreaming of that other life and waiting to be summoned to the front of your consciousness.
Patrick: There have been two moments over the past 10 years where an opportunity to write a book seriously tempted me. One would have been an elaborate coffee table project about the development history of an all-time favorite game of mine. Another would have been a parent’s guide to, like, Roblox, Twitch, and other scary things that lots of parents are anxious about. In both instances, I got as far as having a serious conversation about the scope of the book, talking about pitching it around, and then I backed out of both of them once it neared “real.”
The “real” part was when my wife and I would sit down and discuss the “how” part of writing a book. If we were still at VICE, there’s a world where I could have taken a book leave, but nothing like that is really feasible in my current setup. The only open windows, then, are weekends, aka the time when I spend the most time with my family without work obligations.
Fuck that, I’m not giving that up. I’d love to add “book author” to my resume someday, but that life is not compatible with the one I have—at least not currently. I suspect a book is the cards someday down the road, when my kids are older and I have to find ways to fill my free time.
The version of me that I wish could slot into the world you’re talking about—up early, meeting new people—is turning exercise from a health obligation to a hobby. Whenever I have managed to sneak in a three-mile run before the kids are awake, it’s the best fucking feeling in the world.
And I think it would be so incredibly cool to find a way to be at the gym, even if it’s just to run during the colder months, alongside other people at an early hour. But, instead, I must sleep, because I’m already pushing things by going to bed just after midnight and waking up at seven.
My desk walking pad? It’s fine. It helps. The treadmill? Dreadful. Hate it. Count the minutes until it’s over. But I do wonder if one thing that tethers the two ideas together is the notion of social engagement, however tenuous or semi-anonymous. We’re both work from home people. I think work from home is transformational. But I’m not gonna pretend it isn’t often profoundly lonely.
Rob: I've worked with the same therapist since 2020. We started up in the fall or winter before COVID-19 was really a thing being discussed as something poised to become a global pandemic. I don't think I've seen him in person since those early sessions. The thing about therapy is sometimes you outgrow a therapist or you just need a fresh angle on your life, so you change therapists for the same reasons coaches sometimes get fired.
"We reviewed all aspects of our operation. We believe the pieces are in place, but the results just have not been what we wished, or what our fans deserve. We're committed to bringing a mental health championship trophy to Rob's Living Room, so we're making a change at the therapist position."
My therapist has survived that dynamic, because while there are weeks or months where mostly I'm giving updates on my life, those fallow periods are often part of the process that lead to the more meaningful work and analysis. But during those phases? There are times I find myself asking, "Am I still in therapy mostly so I can sit and talk with someone I'm not married to or podcasting with?"
Patrick, if you aren't still shaken up by that crash that fucked up your shoulder (or was it just collarbone?) I feel like I can see cycling in your future. Easy thing to share with your kids, also easy to find groups to go on group rides with on the regular. In the spring and fall, the coffee shop down the street is swarmed by groups of (mostly) men and their kids decked out in cycling bodysuits. It seems like fully half of the hobby is about finding a place to stop and chat over hot drinks and pastries.