#316 In which our hero writes his annual Father's Day letter to his father (four days late)

Dear Dad,

I’m late with my Father’s Day letter this year. Part of it is that I’m just not feeling this blog any more, and part of it is that writing you dredges up all the emotion about you not being part of my life anymore.

When I get introspective, I realize that I not only miss being able to ask you questions about life and marriage and raising kids (especially about raising kids), but I’ve that also lost the ability to say, “Hey Dad, look. I made this.”

The thing is, career-wise, I am currently more successful than I’ve ever been in my life. That’s not to say that I’m burning down the world with my amazing creativity; but I’m not sitting alone in a cube just doing what I’m told any more either. I’m a Creative Director, I have a team that works for me and together we do some really good work. People look to me to help shape the future of this agency. I’ve only been here six months, but it’s still pretty amazing and humbling.

I wish I could show you some of the work I’ve done, explain the process, tell the behind-the-scenes stories about bickering with the client before finally coming to consensus.

I want you to know that the investment you made in me paid off.

Not just financially, even though I’ll never take it for granted that you and mom paid to put me through college. While friends of mine had to struggle with mountainous student loan debt, I was able to start my adult life without that crushing burden.

But more than that, I want you to know that every time you read me a comic book, or said encouraging things about my drawings or humored me when I stayed up all night making maps for my next D&D campaign, you were supporting my creativity, feeding my need to express myself through words and pictures.

And now I have a career in which I do that, all day long.

You could have pushed me into a more stable vocation, like accounting or engineering. But you understood that professions like that held no interest for me.

In fact, you never pushed me in any direction, other than to find out for myself where my passion was, what kind of thing I could do for the rest of my life and be happy doing it.

I see how rare that is now, even though I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

This Father’s Day (well, this 4-days past Father’s Day) I want to say that I am thankful that you trusted me enough to make my own way in life. And even though the path I took wasn’t the straightest or the best, I finally ended up where I was going.

Thanks, Dad. I miss you.

Love,

craig.

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