If My Kids Were Watching

What's on my mind?

I came to the office today and had the self-awareness to notice that I was angry.

That may not sound like much, but for me it felt important. Instead of letting the feeling run the day, I got curious about it. I wanted to find the source.

I’ve come to believe that we operate from one of two places: love or fear.

Anger, at least for me, is often a version of fear.

So I asked myself a harder question: What am I afraid of?

The answer surprised me and encouraged me at the same time.

I’m afraid that I’m complacent in parts of my own life. Complacent in some of the very things I say I want to change.

Could that be true?

Yes.

And strangely, that felt like good news.

Why? Because I could see it.

Awareness is a gift. Once you see something clearly, you have more power than you did a moment before. You may not fix it all at once. You may not even know exactly what to do next. But you’re no longer asleep to it.

You’re awake.

That matters.

I can think of plenty of places in my life where I fall short of the standards I say I value. I can also feel the temptation to turn that into shame or frustration. But I don’t think that’s the lesson.

The lesson is simpler than that.

See it.
Accept it.
Correct what you can.
Keep moving.

Be a part of the change you want to see.

I’ve said many times in my adult life, “If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

That still feels true.

It’s easy to criticize.
It’s easy to point at what’s broken.
It’s easy to talk about what other people should do.

It’s much harder to ask, What do I want?
And harder still to live in alignment with the answer.

What do I want?

I want to reduce waste by repurposing it.

That is one of the clearest parts of Iowa Worm Farm for me. It gives shape to the work. It gives purpose to the effort. Every gallon of worm castings sold is one small step in the direction I want to go. It’s a way of taking something that would otherwise be wasted and giving it another life.

That matters to me.

It’s hard work.
It’s imperfect work.
It’s work I love.

And maybe that’s the point of today’s message.

I don’t need to solve everything today.
I don’t need to fix every system I disagree with.
I don’t need to spend my energy criticizing all the ways the world falls short.

I can focus on the change I know how to make right now.

For me, that means continuing to build a business around a principle I believe in.

Reduce landfill.
Repurpose waste.
Create something useful.
Stay open.
Keep learning.

Even in small things, I feel pulled to align more closely with that mindset. I’ve been thinking about changing my pricing. Not because it’s some grand moral stand, but because I want it to reflect what the business actually needs to function and grow, not just what some old marketing rule says I’m supposed to do.

That may seem minor, but I don’t think it is.

The older I get, the more I want my decisions to be grounded in what I actually believe.

Not tradition for the sake of tradition.
Not optics.
Not “because that’s how it’s always been done.”

Just honesty.

What does this business need?
What do I believe?
What am I trying to build?
What kind of example do I want to set?

That last question matters a lot to me.

If my kids were watching, what would I want them to learn from me today?

Not that I never get angry.
Not that I always have the answers.
Not that I move through life without contradiction.

I’d want them to learn that awareness matters.

That seeing where you’re falling short is not failure. It’s the beginning of change.

That you can be honest with yourself without tearing yourself apart.

That you can stay open to the possibility that you’re wrong about almost everything and still move forward with confidence.

That each time you learn a better way, you can do better.

That is something I can control.

I can stay aware.
I can stay humble.
I can stay teachable.
I can keep trying.
I can keep building in the direction of what I believe is good.

And if my kids were watching (because they always are), that’s what I’d want them to see.