A Practical Routine for a Creative Life while Parenting
September 19th, 2025
If last week was me discussing my thoughts on niche and my general vision for what I’m trying to do here, this week will be more about how I’m going to do it.
For starters, it’s essential to lay out a framework that encompasses or defines my goals. Not just for this platform, but to assist in laying out my day-to-day and how I look at the future. It also helps determine what success looks like. It has to be something quantifiable, like write 500 words per day or read 26 books a year.
What I realized as I meditated on what I wanted to do was that my goals fell into four main categories. And that I can work on each one each day. Those buckets are exercise, reading, writing, and spending time with my kids.
What I’ll do is outline those four pillars below. And save the details of each one for a later post.
Exercise
Exercise should be self-explanatory–healthy body, healthy mind, that sort of thing. It’s something I regrettably ignored in my late 20s and through most of my 30s. Here again, I was fortunate to have the right kind of DNA, which prevented it from catching up with me in the same ways it did for my friends. Or maybe I was just active enough to cause a sort of uneasy balance. But as I’ve eased into my 40s, exercise has become an essential part of my day. And winging it just doesn’t work anymore.
Here’s what my best-case scenario looks like for each week: 1-hour daily morning walks; weekday kettlebell circuits (Mon/ Wed/ Fri EMOMs; Tue/Thu AMRAPs focusing on arms); weekend 10k step & mobility routines.
For the uninitiated, EMOMs are Every Minute On the Minute, and AMRAPs are As Many Reps As Possible.
Goals: My measures for success for this one are minimal. I want to hit five of seven days, with a stretch goal of all seven.
I’ll break this down in a future post.
Reading
As a writer, besides getting your body moving, you gotta spend time reading. And I realized that I was neglecting that too. So, setting aside time each day to read was a must. At the moment, I’m reading The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. My thought is that reading these sorts of books will help me better frame how I write my own about our time in Beijing. Of course, I’ll read actual memoirs too.
It’s not just books, either. I read the Economist Espresso most mornings. They’re one of the few places that give an objective daily round-up of the news and provide summaries of the previous day's events. Clearly, I read articles on Substack. I’ll read some pieces on The Athletic. I’ll open up the Guardian, read daily briefs from Foreign Policy Magazine, and the daily round-up from 1440. But I don’t always get to all of it, and I think that’s okay too.
Goals: My target is to read 26 books a year. I’m at 22. And I want to read the Economist’s daily round-up each morning. As far as Substack goes, there are some publications I try to read every week. Three of which are
by , by , and by . Unironically, they’re all expat blogs detailing the authors’ lives abroad. But I would recommend giving each one a read.Send me your recommendations, memoirs, books, or publications–something you’re enjoying and want to share.
I’ll try to post something about how I choose what I’m reading and what sort of guilty pleasures I have at a later date, too.
Writing
If I’m ever going to publish something, well, I need to write, right? So, carving out time each day to either type away on the keyboard or edit something I wrote the previous day is also imperative. This is probably where I need the most work. I’ve finished my novel and I’m working through edits and beta reader feedback, while waiting for my editorial assessment to be completed. Now, I have started on a memoir. And I told myself I could run two publications–this one and Around the World in Matches.
That was clearly unsustainable. While I will publish one dispatch per week, sometimes it’ll be a cross-posting from AWM. And working on my memoir each week is laudable, but expecting 3000 words per week, while also reading through/editing the novel, isn’t sustainable. So, just the idea of working on it is sufficient. Making progress, even if incremental, is the goal at this point.
But I can’t lose sight of the overarching objective, which is to shepherd the novel across the finish line. So, balancing the novel, the memoir, and publishing here will be a delicate dance, at least for the time being.
Goals: My aims here are 1) send out query letters by early December, 2) publish on Substack weekly, and 3) have 100 pages of the memoir by the end of the year.
The Kids
That balancing act is essential not just for my writing, but also because I’m doing this as a father of two and trailing spouse to a State Department Shrink. I have to be flexible, which means those three things above are on the chopping block if shit hits the fan and I have to solo-parent as my wife deals with a crisis.
In the meantime, I’m trying to teach my kids how to read. My daughter was in the process at her day care in Beijing, but a long summer without class time likely set her back a bit. And now that her new school is in a second language, it’s up to us to guide her in learning to read in English. Our son, well, he’s barely 3 years old, so this is more of an introduction to letters for him, but the end game is the same. Get them both to read as quickly as possible, so that we can facilitate lifelong learning.
Using Toddlers Can Read, we do brief daily phonics sessions; I’m learning techniques as we go and adjusting when things don’t click. So far, the kids seem excited and happy to spend a few minutes after school each day with me as I try to introduce the sounds letters make. Wish me luck.
But my oldest is on to blend words, which I know she can say and repeat, but may have difficulty reading. So, whatever success we’ve had this far, well, it may all come tumbling down. Especially considering I’m learning as we go, too.
Goals: We’ve set an ambitious target for ourselves, at least with my daughter. She wants to read to my in-laws when they visit for Christmas. And I think she can get there. Our son, well, I think we can probably get there too. So stay tuned.
What this all means is that I’m going to spend less time on social media, which I already indicated last week. But that includes here, too. I mean, I’ll still post weekly and make periodic notes. I won’t have the time these platforms require for growth, and that's even as I roll back engagement to a single platform.
I already feel much better about things. Exercising, reading more deeply each day, writing, and teaching my kids to read.
So, as I leave you all to go about your day, send over your memoir recommendations, advice you have for quick workouts for busy parents, and any insights you have for teaching kids to read. Reply in the comments here or to this email.
And even if you don’t, I’d love to hear from you. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?
A little housekeeping before I go for good:
From researching the details of my Beijing memoir to carving out dedicated writing time for both of my publications here, there are many costs associated with bringing these stories to you. If you appreciate the work I do here and want to help me continue creating, please consider supporting me through my "Buy Me a Coffee" page. Your contribution, no matter the size, directly impacts my ability to dedicate time and resources to my craft.
Thanks for the shout-out! I enjoyed reading your routines.