Being A Father And Founder In The Same Season
TL;DR:
Smoking gave me five minutes to escape emotions I had never learned to release, especially while moving between business pressure and fatherhood. Quitting meant replacing that escape with a deliberate pause that helps me leave work behind and return to my family emotionally available.
Emotional misfires
It takes between five and ten minutes to smoke a cigarette, half of that time when your emotions are firing on all cylinders after a prolonged meeting that could have been an email. How do I know? I smoked for fifteen years and quit seven times at least. Every time I picked it up again was due to my inability to deal with an emotional misfire, you know, like a break-up, missed promotion, or someone's death.
The last slip happened when I became a father. Now that moment – despite being exhausting – was euphoric, so the push toward smoking wasn't immediate. I was rigorous about passive smoking when it came to my child's health, driving all my smoking friends mad as I wouldn't even let them step out when they visited and asked them not to burn through one within the last thirty minutes before coming over. Yeah, I was that kind of control freak when it came to providing a healthy environment for my child.
This naturally meant that I didn't smoke for months around that time either; I was happily free from smoking. My seven-week-long paternity leave went by fine, although sleep deprivation can make a grown man weep after he tries to find the solution to a relentless cry in the encyclopedia at 3AM.
The change happened when I got back to my high-pressure environment, emotionally dry on the surface, where adults tried their best to hide their frustration, anger, sadness, and all that jazz but couldn't, so they acted passive-aggressively day in, day out.
On a sunny day after another sleepless night, when all the waves clashed at once, a hidden jab disguised as "constructive feedback" hit my inability to let my emotions flow, and I picked up smoking again. Not in a smoke-a-pack-a-day way, but in the silent way, where I secretly sneaked out to the balcony to slowly enjoy the smelly smoke entering my lungs in those sacred five minutes. It became my emotional escape: a chance to finally exhale all the stress I'd withheld throughout the day.
I thought I'd found the solution by holding my breath, exposing myself emotionally at only the bare minimum despite all the responsibility I had, but that was a lie I couldn't see. As I didn't see it, I picked up even more responsibility to find a way out of the hamster wheel and started my coaching business on the side.
Instead of one normative crisis, I ended up with at least four.
Not the smartest of my life choices, but I always thrived under pressure. The problem I didn't see was that when I did enjoy pressure, I was a teenager and could outsource my emotional struggles to adults around me. As I became the adult others relied on, I became the ground for the emotional misfires, and I had to learn how to regulate feelings healthily, instead of destroying my lungs.
Hiding behind titles
Interestingly, the toughest challenge was not the different worlds themselves, parenting and business building. When you get into rhythm, you deal with whatever is in front of you. It became tricky when I started to work remotely 100% while my child was also in their stay-at-home-all-day phase. And no, not because of how loud a child can get when they experience happiness and frustration within five seconds of each other. Thank you, innovation, for noise-cancelling headphones. No, it was when those two worlds intersected after I put down the headphones and stepped out of my home office room and had to transition from business building to being an emotionally available father.
Those don't mix well enough.
I tried, oh I tried to "just be present and leave the other world behind." Accumulated tension and held breath didn't care about my mantra, and I started to pick up on signs that I wasn't as emotionally available as I used to be. My body was in the living room with them, but my mind and emotional state were hovering between the office and the patio. I was longing for the smoke I believed I deserved, a break from holding my breath.
Back when my child was still in the fourth trimester, I was afraid I would be late for my therapist after a meeting dragged on too long, so I lit up a cigarette while I was jogging. With earbuds in, I was listening to a podcast completely unrelated to smoking, but I heard a thought I've never forgotten. I'm sorry if I butcher this; I couldn't find the exact quote:
"Do you want to witness your child walking down the aisle? Then why are you still smoking?"
At the time, my child was sleeping more than my wife and me combined. I had bigger fish to fry than my child's wedding in an unseeable future; I felt like I was fighting for survival. But the thought lingered, and I couldn't chase it away. It wasn't an active, in-my-face thought but a subtle, recurring one that lived rent-free in my head, ready to switch on the light when I stepped out for my five minutes.
As the light shone brightly, I saw that I was no longer in control, neither emotionally nor habitually. I felt stuck in a pattern that was not designed to make me emotionally stable or available. It was a coping mechanism that actively destroyed my health, even if there were no immediate signs. Besides, I reeked like a tavern when I reentered the house.
I'd eventually find another five minutes, just not one that came in a pack, when I quit for the last time back in January. Nobody asked me, and everybody accepted me as a smoker. It was part of my identity, one that started way back in high school. I smoked the last cigarette in that pack and haven't bought another since, nor have I asked for one during any of those long nights out with friends who all happen to be smokers themselves. Quite the challenge that is.
The act of quitting left me with another challenge. I had no "reward" after a long day. There was no set moment to exhale all the feelings I'd collected and couldn't let go of any other way. It created the uncomfortable demand that I recalibrate my ways of regulating emotions. Not just regulating them but letting them fly again without remaining attached to them.
You see, I have quite a number of titles myself, ones I can identify with in the past, present, and future. Underneath all those titles, I'm a human with deep feelings, just like you. When somebody crosses me, I can get angry. If somebody breaks a promise, I can feel lonely too. I believe we tend to hide behind tidy titles so as not to expose an identity that might be fragile. Those identities respond to experience universally: by feeling emotions, if we let them. For us to remain emotionally available, we have to practice the act of noticing and letting go of attachment to our emotions.
Doctor’s coat
If you've followed me for a while, you know I don't believe in frameworks; I believe in responsible actions. So, I won't give you one for quitting smoking, or for switching emotional states between business and parenting. I quit smoking seven times, and every time I put it down, I simply stopped buying another pack or asking for a cigarette from my friends.
For the emotional switch, though, I do have a habit you can try. I first heard about this idea when the first lockdowns hit during Covid, and we all started getting familiar with permanent home-office days.
Before I leave my office after a long day, I never just walk out; I delay the exit by around five minutes. In those five minutes between switching off my PC and opening the door, I sit in stillness, often closing my eyes. I imagine myself in a doctor's coat: a long white coat that ends around my knees and has four pockets in front, all empty. I imagine this coat to be almost tailor-made in comfort, as I've worn it for ages by now; it's started to follow the shape of my entire body.
With this coat still on me, I imagine myself pirouetting. Just one turn, that's enough. The important part is that I notice the ends of this coat lifting away from my legs as air starts to move them like sails. As the motion stops and the coat starts to settle, I start to take it off and hang it on a nearby hanger. With the coat, I imagine my unfinished tasks staying attached to it, so I can put it back on later, when I can pay real attention to them.
Then I leave the room to meet my child again, who tends to wait for me at the door with open arms and the brightest smile I've ever seen.
It's okay to ask for support. You don't have to carry everything on your own. While I believe each person is the best expert on their own life, I also know that meaningful change often happens in connection with others. Having someone alongside us during periods of transition can make the path feel a little clearer and less lonely. If you're feeling ready to step beyond what's familiar and curious about how I might support that journey, I'd be glad to talk.
A child doesn't need a parent with all the answers — just one who isn't figuring it out entirely alone. Online parenting coaching is that second set of hands.
