time

[Image description: An adult and a child holding hands walking toward a sun setting over a lake. Image obtained from Pixabay.]

Hi everyone. After last week’s post on the shameful state of nonprofit board diversity, a colleague, noting my increasing grumpiness, emailed me to suggest that maybe I should do some more self-care, take a few days off from work to go on a hike or listen to music or something. I thought, Whoa, maybe I should lay off writing about serious stuff for a while and focus on humor and the goodness and joy that exist in the world. So I’m going to try to do that, at least for a few weeks. There are so many things lately that make us lose our faith in humanity. But there are also so many wonderful things, moments of quiet and profound beauty that we all take for granted in our quest to save the world.

Last week, for example, I walked with my four-year-old son and his maternal grandmother to the light rail station. He was heading north to preschool, and I was going South to the airport for a three-day work trip to keynote in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, so we had to separate and be on opposite sides of the track. I stooped down and hugged him tight as we separated. “I love you, Baby,” I whispered to him. Continue reading →

[Image description: A black-and-white photograph of two hourglasses standing side-by-side within a black box frame overlooking an indecipherable background (it might be a city, out of focus). The hourglass on the left has white sand, and the one on the right has black sand. Both seems almost full and are trickling sand, culminating in small sand piles in their respective bottom chambers. But the black-sand hourglass seems to have less sand in the top chamber.]

People have been asking me, “Vu, how do you manage to write a blog each week while running a nonprofit and parenting a toddler and a baby, and yet still retain your youthful good looks?” The secret is simple: I don’t sleep, and also, personal hygiene and nutrition standards have been lowered. Having a second kid, especially, has sapped our time so much that we tend to eat over the sink in five-minute increments; I don’t mind, because it allows me to rinse pureed peas and quinoa from out of my hair.

I can’t blame the baby for flinging food at us though. We haven’t been paying nearly as much attention to him as we did with his brother. He just turned one, and I think half the people we know aren’t even aware that we have a second baby, so little have we mentioned him. One person seemed irritated; he cornered me one day and said, “Hey, I heard you have a new baby? Why didn’t you tell me?” I felt terrible. All I could reply was, “Sorry, Dad…”Continue reading →

On love, parenthood, and the passage of time

Time inequity: What it is and why it’s no-good, very-bad