 Good morning, John. For the Project for Awesome Last year, Travis McElroy and I did a one-off podcast called The Dad Cast. A podcast in which two brand new dads answered questions about being new dads, and the most common question we got was how do you decide? How do you make this tremendous, tremendous decision? So I'm gonna start this video off by answering the question. You don't know. It's like deciding to buy 378 bottles of olives if you've never had an olive. You just won't know what a terrible, awful poison is turd fruit they are until you put one in your mouth. Or, alternately, your child could be the finest piece of tree flesh you've ever consumed. This metaphor fell apart. Either way, you got 378 jars of these things, except they're human being. I was never really opposed or enthusiastic about the idea of having a kid. Here's the crazy thing, though. After six months, I can tell you that my pros and cons list was wrong. Here's some stuff that I should have had on my cons list, like the worst parts of parenthood. It's not the puking and the pooping and the getting up in the middle of the night and never sleeping a normal amount again. All those things actually are surprisingly easy. Sometimes I even like being excessively needed by this adorable biscuit man. What I don't like, one, the stress of knowing that my child could get ill at any moment, seriously, or just generally something terrible might happen and while you can minimize risk, you cannot eliminate it. Two, feeling like I'm doing it wrong. Three, feeling like I can't do it at all. And when you have a human being who's depending on you for everything, feeling like you can't do it is a feeling of tremendous failure. Even when it's fleeting, even when you know it's not true. I think everybody experiences this and it's just one of those it gets better situations. Four, and this is kind of wrapped up in all of these, caring so much that it hurts. I was also wrong about the reasons that I would like having a kid. Like, I knew I was gonna like having like a little Catherine Hank hybrid person. And that's nice, but here are the bigger and unexpected ones. One, embarking on a really big new interesting project with my wife who is my favorite person. Two, I get to sing wherever I want to as long as he's with. Many people will think it's cute and not weird. Three, I think I have a much better understanding of my parents' relationship with me, which is maybe hard to have unless you experience parenthood yourself. Four, I have a much better understanding of and am very impressed by the capabilities of both me and Catherine. Five, I really like doing a thing that is super normal. Like, lots of people do this, but it's also magnificently important and I know that. Like, every piece of me unquestionably knows that being a dad is vitally important. Six, I love to look at him, which I didn't really expect. I love it so much that I like show him to other people and I'm like, I'm so sorry that you don't get to stare at this all the time like I do. And finally, seven, caring so much it hurts. Again, this video doesn't have any answers. It is just the perspective of one of billions of parents on earth. It is hard. I will tell you that, but also the hard things are the ones that are the most worth doing and that's not an endorsement of having a kid. It's an endorsement of doing hard things. You are the only person who can decide whether you're ready to create a human. But final thing, if you are like me and you assume that all the people who are talking about how great parenthood is, we're just making it up so that they would feel less bad about the terrible decision they made, it's not made up. It's actually really great, John. I'll see you on Tuesday. End screen, two things. First, the Kedah Chisdom shirts and stuff will only be available for another couple of days, including we made a laptop decal because people were talking in the comments button, how much they wanted a laptop decal. And two, John, you and I are going to be in Seattle December 9th and 10th for PodCon, a convention for people who love and make podcasts. We're doing it in partnership with the Night Vale Presents team and those good, good McElroy boys of my brother, my brother and me. PodCon.com. We're doing a crowdfunding campaign right now to try and raise more money to get more cool guests. We just announced that criminal is going to be there. If you want more information, PodCon.com. There's also a bunch of social medias you can follow in the description. It's going to be a good time.