Alan, Continuous Improvement of Dad

With the prime friendship forming years of school behind us, making new friends in adulthood is hard. But “school” is exactly where I found myself this past May and, to my pleasant surprise, I made a friend: Alan McIntyre Smith. I was already acquainted with Alan, but on that day, sitting side-by-side in a mostly-empty school auditorium of seats not made for dad bods, we were two grown men talking like young boys with nothing to do while waiting for the teacher’s next instruction.

One of the many topics we covered that day was career and side hustles. Our careers are polar opposites - broadly speaking, mine is in business whereas Alan’s is in art. I remember telling my parents when I was five that I wanted to be an artist. I don’t blame them for shutting that down immediately, and yet at 44 years old with a cup that overfloweth with middle-aged blessings, I still want to make art. You may laugh but that’s what The Dad Bod is for me - my attempt to create something that points to truth and beauty.

And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my brief side hustle as an artist, it’s this: it’s hard. It took me five months to complete an essay I loved but very few people read. You don’t need to go to business school to understand that’s a bad ROI, but I wanted to know what Alan thinks after 30 years of being in business as an artist. It’s the kind of conversation that happens when two dads get to talk like boys again.