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The Coffee Chat (#51)
My conversation with Mike Julianelle - Creator behind the widely popular IG account - dadandburied, published author and dad to 2!
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Hi there 👋🏽
The other day Little T heard Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” and started dancing to it. Watching her dance to it made me travel back in time to late fall 1998 when thanks to a few older cousins I heard the song for the first time on MTV. The moment felt like yesterday. Only catch, it has been about 26 years.
Time flies. The older you get the faster days turn into weeks, months and years.
One way to slow it down is to see the world again from the eyes of our children and experience newness and novelty in what now seems the mundane and boring.
That is my only new year resolution.
My hope for you is that each one of you is in the midst of a rejuvenating year-end break and you enter 2024 with renewed energy. Wishing you and your loved ones a very happy and healthy 2024.
☕ Now, on to today’s coffee chat…
Meet Mike Julianelle
Mike is a Brooklyn-based dad of two boys and a digital content creator who shares his experiences as a father on social media. His work has been published all over the internet and he aims to “lower the bar for parents everywhere” with videos, jokes, and rants on his hugely popular Instagram account (@dadandburied) which has 300K+ followers!!
Below is my conversation with Mike…
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your family
My name is Mike and I live in Brooklyn with my wife and two boys, who are 13 and almost 8. I have a day job managing and writing digital communications for a major corporation. I have an IG account and a newsletter (both as Dad and Buried) and a book coming out in April that, like all of my stuff, features me being honest and “real” about the pitfalls of parenting, as funnily as I can manage.
I love music and movies and pop culture and beer and bourbon and the Miami Dolphins, God help me.
I also think:
if you’re going to do both you should see the movie before you read the book
that mustard goes better on a BLT than mayo
and that clapping back at online trolls is about as fun as life gets
A book coming out next year must be pretty exciting…
Yup! It’s called Dad Truths, and you can pre-order it on Amazon right now! Here’s the synopsis:
*Drumrolls please*
Dad Truths is your anti-dote to the aspirational parenting craze; this collection of laugh-out-loud stories and non-advice provides much needed real talk and commiseration for parents everywhere. You’ve read every other parenting guide, and you still don’t know whether you’re a good parent. Mike Julianelle, the Brooklyn-based dad and founder of Dad and Buried, is here to tell you exactly what you want to hear—that you’re already great and the kids are the problem!!
Love it! So you run a very popular blog called - "Dad and Buried" - what is the backstory there? What led to the creation of this blog?
First things first, my “blog” at DadandBuried.com is dormant; as of January 2023, all my new writing can be found on my Substack. My blog is still online but if you want to read my rants about parenthood in real time you’ve gotta subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on IG (and Threads)!
As for the backstory, Dad and Buried began a few months before my first kid was born. I’ve been writing my whole life – school papers, some real papers, websites. I wrote humor columns, movie and music reviews, pop culture coverage, but the subject matter has never mattered as much as my voice--informal, slightly caustic, ranty--and that seemed easily adaptable to the topic that was about to dominate my life: parenthood. And it was!
From the get-go, back in 2010, when there weren’t many dad bloggers at all, or many bloggers of either gender who focused on the shitty (literally!) parts of parenthood, I stood out a bit. Most parents online tended to promote a rose-colored version of things, and that never rang true to me. Plus, I tend towards the negative anyway (it’s funnier!), so it’s been easy for me to rant and rave about the trials and tribulations of modern parenting. Turns out people enjoy that.
I always make it clear that I’m no parenting expert – there’s no such thing! And I don’t pretend to be a perfect parent – there’s no such thing! I’m just myself, a generic dad who isn’t afraid to make fun of fatherhood, or his kids, or himself. And I never fake anything on social media. Sure, I try not to let the truth get in the way of a good joke, but for the most part what you see is what you get.
There is this notion that dads struggle to find a community and humor is one of the only acceptable means where men can openly talk about fatherhood including its struggles. On the surface it seems like your blog is all about humor and the idea that being a dad "ruined" your life, when one digs in it feels to me your parenting approach rejects toxic masculinity and emphasizes empathy, mental health, and self-care for fathers while challenging cultural expectations and gender roles. Are these correct observations?
I appreciate that. Like I said, my two primary goals were honesty and humor, but when you become a parent, every topic becomes reframed through the impact it has on your kids, and not all of those topics lend themselves to jokes. So when the topic or situation warrants a more sober take, I’m willing to get serious. Sometimes that means talking about things that a lot of people who follow “humor” or “parenting” pages don’t necessarily want to hear about (i.e., gun control or politics or feminism or vaccines), but I feel pretty strongly about lot of those topics, for good reason.
I’m raising two boys and I want to make sure I teach them that people are people and that everyone deserves to live their life in safety, with respect and equal opportunity and love. Speaking out against the dangers that the proliferation of guns, the insidiousness of toxic masculinity, the increasing erosion of women’s rights, the climate change crisis, systemic racism, rampant ignorance and misinformation, and countless other issues is literally the least I can do.
Every one of those things—really, every aspect of everything—has an impact on parenting and on the present and future lives of our children. We’re supposed to raise them right and leave them with a better world, or prepare them to make a better world for themselves, and to me that means making my values clear to my kids. And I happen to have a platform that a fair amount of people like to check out, and I feel that it would be irresponsible of me to not use it for the things I believe in and think are important. So I do, for better or worse.
I feel a responsibility to post about that stuff, even if it alienates people who see things differently, or who just want me to be funny. But I promise those posts are far less frequent than my jokes about how bad I am at all of this.
As you very well know, being a parent is hard - you have limited time and energy for yourself. How have you managed this? What are you doing to manage your energy?
What energy?! It helps that I enjoy writing and cracking jokes online. Also I neglect my kids. #LifeHack
I guess that is one approach! So what have you learnt about yourself after becoming a dad?
Mostly bad things. I’m impatient. I yell too much. It’s easy to preach values to your kids than it is to truly live and reflect them. I have trouble being consistent, and it doesn’t help that my kids are polar opposites. And I’ve learned that having a sense of humor, and not taking anything too seriously, is crucial to keeping your sanity (that goes for both parenthood and just being alive in general). I joke that my social presence is “lowering the bar for parents everywhere,” and it’s true. I’ve learned that I’m not particularly good at being a parent, but I keep trying, and that’s half, if not most of, the battle.
Any words of wisdom for others who are on the cusp of becoming parents or are parents?
There is no guidebook. Every kid, every family, every situation is different. Just do what’s best for you and yours and don’t worry about all the unsolicited advice and fake perfect parents on social media. And remember, as hard as it seems, we’ve been doing this for thousands of years. You turned out okay. I turned out “okay.” Your kids will (probably) be fine.
Quick-fire questions:
What’s the best thing you have watched recently?
We’re firmly in Christmas movie territory right now, but outside of that stuff, and I’ve got a bunch of big movies to catch up on in the new year. But I’m currently enjoying The Curse on Showtime/Paramount Plus
What’s the best thing you have read recently?
I’ve been slacking on the book front. Just read Joanna Robinson’s comprehensive look at the MCU’s rise (and fall). And earlier this year I finished Fredrik Backman’s excellent Bear Town trilogy, which is like Friday Night Lights but hockey.
What’s the best thing you have listened to recently?
I like to comb through year-end best-of lists, and I’ve discovered a few new artists I’m really digging: Bully, Blondshell, Militarie Gun. And for the past few years I’ve been an avid listener to Rob Harvilla’s “60 Songs That Explain the 90s” podcast, which I can’t recommend enough to music fans, especially ones my age.
🤓 Open tabs…
(I have modeled this section after those “open tabs” that we all have with a few (okay 30-40) interesting links that we promise we will eventually get to one day. These are the links that I had open for sometime that I finally got to …)
⭐What They Don't Tell You About Having Kids And A Career
Deb Liu is a mother to three children, she’s currently CEO at Ancestry and previously had a successful career as a product leader at Meta. In this post, she asserts that motherhood will most likely slow down your career……70% of male top-earners have stay-at-home spouses, but only 22% of women top-earners do, according to a study published by the American Sociological Association (ref). Think about that disparity: a vast majority of men who reach the top of companies have someone to take care of things outside work, but far fewer women do. What does that mean for women in the workplace?
⭐Model minority myth - They Called Us Exceptional (🎧)
Prachi Gupta, a journalist and author, joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why she was grounded for reading fiction, how she views the institution of arranged marriages, and what the American Dream meant to her parents. Prachi and Dax talk about why she wanted to tell her brother’s story, how she feels about happiness being correlated to success, and why being emasculated can affect how men treat one another
⭐The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness
Culture matters a great deal to understanding why countries like Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden score high on indicator of happiness. But the relevant cultural characteristic is neither hygge nor, unfortunately, kalsarikännit. If I had to pick a Scandinavian word to capture the correct cultural ingredient in Nordic happiness, it would probably be the Swedish and Norwegian term lagom, which can be translated as “just the right amount,” i.e., neither too much nor too little. Similar to hygge in Denmark, lagom is frequently thought to capture the essence of Swedish culture—its embracement of modesty and rejection of excess—but, in reality, these values characterize the entire Nordic region, and most certainly Finland. In terms of expectations for a good life, lagom encourages contentment with life’s bare necessities. If you already have those, you have nothing to complain about
📖 My private thoughts from my very public diary…
(My X (Twitter) use has drastically gone down, I am now more active on Threads)
I would love to hear from you, feedback is always welcome!
And if you happen to know an inspiring working parent who should be featured in a future edition (or if you yourself are one) - please do get in touch
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Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer