Thread by @Conaw

My Dad is notorious for giving homemade gifts, often only tangentially related to the holiday

My sense is he mostly gives 🎁s he knows he'd enjoy making, to people he enjoys thinking about while he makes them

Today is his birthday
I like writing 🧵
So this will be one about him

I do not think I have met a man who was more successful by his own standards than my Father.

It's the standard I've used for guiding my life and choosing my goals, but I've not seen much written about before.

Follow it, and you too may live to become a mascot for frozen fish.

The most important lessons aren't the ones you say with your words, they are the ones you live out, the example you set for others.

The implicit lesson I learned from my Father is that only two things really matter - one is living a life that will lead to interesting stories.

Now, the beer commercials were a bit over the top, but it is true that he was "The Most Interesting Man in the World"

A good example - in his late 20s he rode his bicycle around Ireland, drawing pictures of castles.

When he ran out of money, those sketches got him a job.

I've probably heard and told the story of how he got that job dozens of times - because it really shaped my model of how to assess risk, how to spot opportunities, and why luck favors the prepared mind.

See, Ireland in the 80s was booming, but not exactly economically.

Now a notebook filled with old ruins from a draftsman without a diploma is not much

But one night, walking the streets of Cork after pubs closed, my Dad noticed a light on in an Architect's office

A 💡 that late means on thing. Probably. They have work

The next day he applied.

A few days later, he was in a pub again, debating whether to spend his last pound on another drink, or on the payphone to find out if he got the job.

He choose to make the call, thinking there was some chance that if he got the job, the bartender might buy him a 🍻 to celebrate

Anyway, he got the job, the guy who hired him was my Mom's brother.

They jump into things quick, but job is not one that is going to last, and America beckons him home.

Fortunately, he was a something of a writer, and was able to tempt her to the US of A

Anyway - I had grand plans to include actual life advice here, but I'm out of iconic images we would put around the house to harass my dad with growing up

and given example he set of waking up at 4am for his 2nd job to provide for us as kids, should probably get to work now.

So Happy Birthday Dad.

Since other point of thread was homage to this scene in Ned Devine, and since it's still so far from done, seems you'll have to live quite a bit longer.

I don't make the rules

Truth