Last Day of Summer 2021

Since I have only submitted one post per year since 2017, I have looked at the “Last Day of Summer” series as an opportunity for a bit of reflection. I used to consider the last day of summer to essentially be the last day before classes began in the fall but I have been neither student nor instructor for quite a while and so I’m reduced to looking up “autumnal equinox” each year. 

Now for something completely different: way back in the days when I was still an officially enrolled student of an institution of higher education, it was fashionable for young men of a particular strain of evangelical Protestantism to read the book Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. Longtime readers of This Blog and You may possibly recall that I wrote briefly about my experience of reading that book and that even way back then I still felt as though I ought to poke gentle fun at it as a means of obfuscating my endorsement in the eyes of those who may not like it. What I did not mention in that post was that I also read Captivating, the corollary written by John’s wife Stasi Eldredge which was aimed at female readers. Having read Captivating was fairly mockable in and of itself and my motivation for doing so would certainly not have done anything to help me save face with my peers at the time: I read it to impress a girl. 

As I recall, the girl in question was insufficiently impressed to justify the effort and all I was left with was the shameful memory of having unsuccessfully attempted literary espionage. Mostly what I recall about Captivating was that the author seemed to associate any undesirable development or character flaw in a woman’s life with a corresponding failure on the part of her father to have been a good dad. While it’s difficult to imagine that you could find many serious thinkers who would object to the notion that a bad father will often have deleterious effects on his children, the idea that all shortcomings in a woman’s life are the reverberations of parental missteps by her father is, at best, an oversimplification. It’s important for me to keep reminding myself of this because my wife and I learned recently that come this February, we will be blessed with the arrival of a little girl. We’re over the moon of course and I’m especially pleased that we have a representative from both chromosomal configurations just as we hit replacement-level fertility but as someone who makes missteps both parental and otherwise, I am hanging onto the hope that despite the blunders my children will no doubt have to endure, they’ll emerge not too much worse for the experience. 

In other news, I am changing jobs next month. I have seen several headlines that suggest professional churn is at an all-time high right now and I have never felt more apart of the zeitgeist. A chief complaint featured in many of these resignations is that the employee desires more flexibility in his or her work life. In this aspect I suppose I am somewhat distinctive because I am unquestionably headed from an environment which features greater flexibility to one that will feature less. 

Somewhat related: I have never used an email signature. You know that little block of text that features your name, company, and job title that’s appended to the end of most professional emails? I’ve never, ever had one. I think I’m going to use one at this new job to see if my life gets observably better. 

Have a happy last day of summer. 

-Ryan