I moved to Spain to be a better Dad (Guest Post by Jeff Hittner)

March 30th, 2024: Greetings from Austin! Today’s post is one from a fellow dad and early friend on my pathless path,

Jeff Hittner

. We first connected after I quit my job in New York and ended up doing a podcast episode more than five years ago on career myths. In that episode, Jeff talked about starting his pathless adventure after having kids, which was inspiring to me at the time. Since then, we’ve both left the US (I returned) and Jeff also had one more child. I appreciated his reflections below on how moving abroad helped him feel better about being a parent.

+ There are pathless path community-led meetups in Boston (April 13th) and in London (April 18th). To clarify, I won’t be at these events. If you are interested in hosting, you can join the Pathless Path community, which is now a pay-what-feels-right one-time fee community.

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#1 I moved to Spain to be a better dad (by Jeff Hittner)

I moved my family, in the middle of 2020 COVID, to Valencia, Spain, so I could be a better dad. 

Before we moved to Spain our days were frenetic - everything meshed together. Cooking, cleaning, zoom calls, childcare, and work deadlines. We had our second son in the middle of the worst outbreak and lockdown in NYC in early 2020. There was no balance to the day, there was just survival. I wanted to become a father since the time of Atari computers and baseball curses. Now I was, and I couldn’t keep my head above water long enough to learn how to be good at it. For me to be a good dad I needed time and space, and physical and emotional capacity. 

We decided in July of 2020 to imagine an alternative thanks to a nudge from two Spanish friends who abandoned the city after 13 years in New York to rescue their own parenting sanity. We had always talked about moving to Europe while the children were young, and in the midst of COVID we asked ourselves, “Why not now?” We found a lawyer and asked her if there was a legal path for us to move to Spain, and her answer, surprisingly, was “yes”. I spent the next 5 months accumulating mountains of precise paperwork. Our visas were approved in December and we crossed the Atlantic with our two children and large suitcases right after Christmas.  

Discovering “Double Days”

We arrived in Valencia in the middle of COVID and the center of the old city. With the first month in Spain, we felt more hopeful than we did in New York City. What was different was the feeling of peace we experienced each morning due to our work still operating on a NYC schedule. With the extra six hours each morning, it was found the time and space I had been craving. We started experiencing what felt like two-days in one - what I now call “double days”. 

By morning, I was a full-time daddy. Things could slow down and be savored. There were no urgent meetings or emails. I’d take the oldest to preschool, often 30 minutes late, and the teachers didn’t seem to mind (at least not according to my Spanish skills). I could laugh and relax without the pressure of an important 9 am meeting to return home to, nor the urge to look at my phone. Instead, I’d return home for our little one, and we’d make fresh orange juice from local Valencia oranges before heading off to the market together. I would happily spend extra euros on whimsical market treats to keep him excited and engaged with food. Afterward, we’d stop at a cafe and enjoy something yummy and Spanish - a bocadillo, a pastry, anything, and everything. Then we’d go to the beach or playground for an hour or two. It felt like a vacation.

Most days, I’d get 4-6 hours in with my youngest before starting my workday. At first, this felt a bit disconcerting, to be honest. I was wondering if I wasn’t working enough. I didn’t feel this constant pressure to be in front of my phone or laptop. I worried that I should be sending extra emails and ideas to clients. After some reflection, I realized this was a weird sort of guilt connected to an antiquated way of thinking about time and work. It was also a holdout from my 20 years living in NYC and American culture. I began to acknowledge what I already knew. More work hours didn’t make me more productive, happy or successful. I could be present. I would enjoy it. But it still took some time for this guilt to peel away.  

The space to be a better dad 

Before we moved, I was overwhelmed at the start of the day, and exhausted at the end of it. It was hard to be at my best when I had used up most of my energy by 6 pm and my children had used up all of theirs. 

For me, a new space to be a better dad emerged with the time shift, which allowed me to reorganize my calendar. In Spain, quality dad time could be during waking hours. All my clients are in the US, which means work calls and expectations sit inside a window very different from the traditional 9 to 5 (who are we kidding, 9 to 7) workday. Our family has mornings to live, play, eat, and explore before the work afternoons take over. Once I experienced the power of giving my best self to my children, and what that did for our relationship, I sought out even more ways to connect with them. Keeping them home from school for a well-thought-out adventure, and taking vacation days when school is closed to be with them, has opened up our world together. 

I’ve met dozens of dads in Spain with similar stories: work hours that are happily out of sync with a traditional day, mornings spent parenting, or hiking or biking with spouses and friends. The power of this time shift can not be emphasized enough. It helped me rethink how I prioritize everything because I can be so much more intentional about how I put my day together.

This space to breathe, these “double-days,” don’t just create physical space either. They open up emotional space, too. The type I’ve always needed to grow into fatherhood and be the curious human I love being. Within this space, I can deal with anything, including my emotional responses to my children’s development.

Before our move to Valencia, I could get to minute 5 of a meltdown before, unfortunately, having my own. But now I have the space to make mistakes, recover, do a little reflecting, and try again. I am writing a blog about this because I have the space to do so.

How My Dad Days are Evolving 

In mid-September of last year, our youngest, now 3, joined his 6-year-old brother at a bilingual school here in Valencia. It was so exciting, but also sad. I had my own mini-identity crisis for a few weeks. Going to the market alone, I had no one to force-feed a second meal to or kick the football soccer ball with. Around the same time, though, I noticed this woman lurking in my house - apparently, she’d been there for years… My wife! She reminded me that she also didn’t have to work until later in the day. Maybe we could reimagine Spain as a couples-morning followed by a workday? 

Now Spain has offered me the space to deepen my relationship with my wife, too, and enhance how we both respond to our kids. When we plan it well, my wife and I can go out for a “second breakfast,” called almuerzo, and enjoy a slow morning together. Of course, we could still try date nights after long days, balancing kids, household chores, and Zoom calls. But outside the fringes, our moments together have been more meaningful. And by helping ourselves, we have seen one another be better and more present for our kiddos.

Is it that easy?

Fu@#$ no. And hell yes. In terms of living abroad, there are a million things to frustrate a foreigner in a new land. Healthcare is free, but it’s also mind-blowingly different. Making appointments can cause an aneurysm, and having the emotional energy for follow-ups requires half-day tradeoffs. Spanish school means less connection to the material and the other parents (We’re one of only 2 families that aren’t from Spain). But like everything, life is about tradeoffs, and we’ve found, in time, that the measure of the day and the sense of adventure that comes with living in a foreign country affords us more space and time generally to reflect and turn the living organism that is our family life into something that works for us.

If you liked this post, you can check out Jeff’s writing here and learn more about his “ambitious dad project”

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#2 Rethinking Work and Learning with Matt Bateman (choose your player)

In this episode with Matt Bateman, I dive into the intersection of work, education, and personal development. Matt, an early childhood educator, philosopher, and the founder of Guidepost Montessori, shares his perspective on growing up without the traditional work scripts and how it influenced his approach to education and life. We explore the power of the internet in shaping our learning experiences, the evolution of work ethic from childhood, and Matt's journey from academia to building a Montessori school network:

Some Quotes:

• Rethinking Work Ethic: - "Things should be easy and I can do them without trying. And that is a completely false script in life."

• The Impact of the Internet: - "I just have a very positive view of the internet and what it affords children and what it has afforded me in life."

• On Educational Philosophy: - "Education is bad right now and it used to be better in certain ways, but there was never really a golden age of education in which we had it all figured out."

• Value of Montessori Education: - "The Montessori approach is very work-centric...children want real opportunities and if you set up the environment with real opportunities...they will naturally want to do things that we think we have to chastise them to do."

• Personal Development and Learning: - "The only thing that matters in K-12 education for the standard path is the last year or two of high school."

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