Wayfinders

Startups that pay in love are a blank
canvas that comes to life through us.

By nature, parents want to provide the means for children to go beyond their potential. Family requires immeasurable resources, but the love from our kids unlocks more hours in the day. The added productivity comes from seeing the best of ourselves in someone we care so much about. Purpose is renewed, and the heart we put into our creative work can make our presence as parents even more interesting.

Summon Stories

Children grow up fast, so we stay in the moment. Everyone tells us to cherish the simple joys of life, but it may be worth getting a little extra creative. One way to enhance your family’s ability to relive memorable moments is to use multimedia marketing skills to summon family stories.

Every moment is special. As creation becomes an acquired behavior, we can stitch together memories for our children to revisit interactively, any time, with or without us. We all have an endless collection of photos and videos on our smartphones, but scrolling around on a digital device does not translate into something a group can enjoy together. It’s easy for anything to get lost in so much noise. Spoken storytelling is always appreciated, but why not paint our most treasured stories with a few added brushes?

You can create quiet relics like photo slideshows, something that sits on the shelf, a mix of audio recordings, art on the wall, or a cinematic feature film that highlights your adventures. You’re the creator with endless ways to create.

We all do a form of this because family is our favorite, but the time required is real. A rigid cadence is not required, since any day is a good day to ship this type of art. In the early days of photos and video, recording family time was reserved for birthdays and Christmas; now, every day is a holiday. You don’t need to rush but keep producing new surprises. Everyone will love the end result, and as more come together, the growing playlist becomes a sequence of stories that follow kids growing up. With our constant collection of content, a good story is always ready to tell, but at a minimum, why not share an annual gift with your kids, partner, and other loved ones?

Along the way, attentive organization will make a growing collection of relics easier to craft. This takes an ongoing commitment, but file management is easy and helps bring life to life with shared memories.

Your future self will then thank you for organizing and producing such heartfelt content. Share this beauty in public if you want, but that can alter the art if it becomes performative. Do this for yourself and your favorite people first. Organize the massive library offline, then, if you want to play with the transitory channels of social media, that’s a personal choice.

Tracking neural activity patterns and electronic brain scans may retrieve memories without physically capturing content in the future. For now, it’s up to us to coordinate personal storytelling. Fortunately, compiling your own heritage is amusing and assembles positive emotions along the way.

This special interest becomes second nature as we enhance our own real skills to commemorate those we love. Technology can make editing content productive, but this is not your average task. This is the type of sincere storytelling you enjoy spending time with.

As kids grow up, these projects will have a low view counts but will always be your favorite. Looking ahead, imagine being a child right now, then receiving such a thoughtful collection from your parents someday!

You’ve Got Mail

Consider setting up an email for your little one. This inbox can be used as a communication channel to write to your child as they grow up. Whether you start writing before they are born or later in their life, imagine the gift this inbox will be in the future! This email address can be shared and used for online accounts, but at a minimum, this tailored inbox curates a personalized time machine full of thoughtful updates.

Along with sentimental content, your kids will appreciate an email address that can be used after childhood. First and last name with your preferred email provider should stand the test of time. This is also a good chance to register a URL using their first and last name. Your gift can personalize an email address or support a personal website someday.

Avoid Routine

“Time flies” and “They grow up so fast” are accurate, but avoiding routine may slow down time.

The freedom to be spontaneous is a privilege, and everyone will define such flexibility differently, but a proven path to explore such a reality is entrepreneurship. Boundless hard work, dedication, and resiliency are what this lifestyle takes, but suffering provides a stronger sense of purpose.

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What’s your favorite parenting tip?

As this purpose is layered in later stages of life, experiential wisdom can be channeled into more treasured time doing things that make us happy. While hardship is part of the deal, children make their parents happy. Perhaps a reward for parents who lead by example is the opportunity to share everything with those who matter most.

Brewed From Within
#118 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Grandpa Dale

🎄 Holiday Special 🎄

Grandpa Dale visits the studio! At age 92, open this gift of a chat between a grandpa and his grandson. Recorded September 2024 and released on Christmas morning, EP70 is a love story to family, memories of riding a horse over a mile to school, peaceful gratitude, and so much more.

Ben had a number of ideas for narrating the break, so tune through to enjoy Santa is Real, then we keep the nestaglia brewing. Ben’s dad sat in on the fun and twas cool to record this neat family relic. Thanks to all who make Christmas special. Enjoy the holidays and this holiday special.

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http://Grandpa-Dale.YouDontNeedThisPodcast.com

Roasted Reflections Break: Santa is Real

https://BenMcDougal.com/tag/family

By Ben McDougal, ago

Santa is Real

Humans tell stories.

Storytelling is the way we communicate and a key to humanity’s evolution. The stories we share come in all genres, but each one builds a different type of connection.

Stories often exist for a moment, but some are passed for generations. The most successful stories humans have told may be those about science, mathematics, religion, or money, but holidays may also land on this list of extraordinary, generational storytelling.

In the United States, 11 federal holidays are all observed in their own way, but Christmas (and comparable year-end celebrations around the world) creates a special atmosphere. In fact, the entire calendar and our fundamental sense of time seem to revolve around this cozy time of year.  

Christmas is when we pause to remember the year that was and look forward to what’s next. With such a shared inflection point, the year-end holiday season has created many recognizable symbols. Many traditions revolve around religion and just as many do not, but the legend of Santa seems synonymous with the holiday spirit.

Whether you believe in Santa or not, it’s hard to argue with how well this jolly character embodies the essence of treasured time, cute mystic, generosity, and joy.

Think of the generational stories, decorations, letters to Santa, gifts, music, events, movies, more gifts, and all that is integral to the holiday season. Such a story told within culture can spark an undeniable, personal truth.

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Watching little ones lean into the holiday spirit makes us grateful and fills us with pure wonder. Children may be our favorite stories of all, so have fun telling them!

Great stories bring us together. If the result is anything close to the beautiful innocence of a child’s sparkle around the holiday seasons, I’m a believer and thankful that Santa is real.

Brewed From Within
#103 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago