Preface
My blog and YouTube channel Salty Family, like so many others, is simply a drop in the bucket, or should I say, pool or ocean of what we know as the Internet.
I can quickly become overwhelmed and even feel defeated at the thought of making a difference through this medium. Perhaps I have to begin by accepting the notion that all that I will do through this blog and YouTube channel, as successful as they may become (whatever that means), will be forgotten with time and will lose its significance over the years. I have to see it as a temporal tool to attain temporal goals.
No one will really care that I started and operated a blog and YouTube channel 50 years from now. No one will hardly take the time to look at what I’ve done and to glean whatever wisdom he can from it. And that is true for every single piece of work, every video made, every blog post written, every single creative act by man.
How many of us, for instance, have gone back to read newsletters from the 1970s or 80s? Merely at a glance, they all seem so outdated and obsolete, don’t they, even if perhaps they contain sage advice we’d do well to heed instead of watching the latest Rogan podcast or Jordan Peterson interview?
But the reality is that all these blogs and YouTube videos serve us for the moment when we need them, and it is the person who’s able to maximize his opportunities in this medium who will see the most gains, all of which are, again, temporary.
They will rarely outlive a person’s life, which is why legacies are so hard to come by. People come and go. They might make a splash that their contemporaries will notice, but will be all but forgotten in a generation, if that.
That is why we don’t notice the names of buildings and the statues that stand before us nor do we care when we find out. They all become trivial tidbits of times past that serve mostly as distractions in our quest to experience the novel and unknown. Only in much smaller circles will the greatest works of the past be discussed and appreciated (thus my preference for a classical christian education for my kids). The rest of us will go on not knowing and not caring. Such is the condition of men.
So I begin with that knowledge.
It should serve me well by coloring my expectations, keeping me from unrealistic and unhelpful visions. It can also be freeing to remember that I don’t have to work under the pressure of trying to create something enduring. Although that is my hope, as it is with most people and their efforts, it’s not something that I can control for one, and two, if that’s what’s keeping me from trying, a sort of paralysis by analysis, then it’s better to forget about legacy, and simply remember that all things on earth are fleeting in the end.
A Little Backstory
Education and schooling have been a part of my profession since I began working. I’ve been tutoring the SAT and ACT for over 20 years. I got into standardized test prep as a junior in college when I was hired to teach it to students not much younger than I was. Little did I know back then that it would lead to a career in education, although I wouldn’t quite call it a “career.”
For the most part, I’ve been on my own in this endeavor. I’ve run my own tutoring business Justus Prep since 2009. At times, it’s been a brick-and-mortar after-school academy with tutors I’ve hired, and at other times, like now, it’s been just me, focused on one-on-one private tutoring. Initially, I turned to it as a way to make a living because it was easy and paid well. Had I been more prepared for entrepreneurship or running my own small business, I would have seen larger growth, more money, and perhaps more success with it at this stage of life.
But for many years I was content to be self-employed, getting paid by the hour, taking vacations with my family when we could, but largely choosing to do this because it afforded me lots of time with my kids, more than most dads get. I probably worked 20-30 hours per week, mostly after 3 P.M. and into the evening. So I spent my mornings and early afternoons with the kids. We’d do school, run errands, go to IKEA, go the park. Looking back, I realize that it was a simple life, although I would not have seen it that way at the time.
2016-2018 were great years for private tutoring. I was able to secure clientele who appreciated my work and paid well for it. That allowed me to spend even less time working, although there were seasons when I did have to work more than I would have liked, closer to 30 hours, maybe even 35 hours during some weeks. But those weeks were the exception. More times than not, I worked around 20 hours per week. And although being self-employed as a tutor meant that I didn’t get paid if I didn’t work, I was able to take a week here and a week there to go on vacation with the family. Being able to teach online also helped. It made it possible for me to take the family out of town and remain working remotely.
I could have continued this way indefinitely, but at the height of my “success” I wanted something more, something different. I was in my mid thirties, and I couldn’t see myself teaching standardized test prep for the rest of my life. If I wanted to do something else, I knew I’d have to make a change. Years before, I had wanted to pursue ministry, but had kept that on hold to put my family first, a decision I will never regret.
But now it seemed that our finances were in a decent place and perhaps we could make it work for me to begin studying in seminary. That’s a long story that I won’t get into right now, but long story very short, that didn’t pan out, which I’m glad about, and now we’re in a totally different situation, one I could have never imagined or predicted, most of which will be presented to you on this here blog and YouTube channel.
In any case, I’ve tried to put my family first. When given the choice between more Money and more Time, I’ve almost always chosen more Time. I’ve made decisions in my life to put my wife and kids first, giving them most of my time for no other reason than that I really wanted to. These are the precious children God has given me and my wife to raise, and ever since they were born, I’ve truly been interested in getting to know them and helping them develop, teaching them everything I want them to learn, and enjoying every minute of it along the way.
I have never wanted to delegate that to anyone else. I’ve never had a desire to have my children taught mainly by someone other than me or my wife. We’ve always had that conviction.
That’s also the reason why I haven’t been much on social media for at least a decade.
I’ve been busy parenting.
The Time Has Come
All of that said, why do I want to begin a blog and YouTube channel?
Like many others, I think I have something to say. I believe I have a perspective to offer. I haven’t met many dads like me, honestly, which isn’t a good thing.
I also have a desire to help others (mainly dads) with what I’ve learned, especially in the realm of parenting and teaching my children, something I’ve taken very seriously. We’ve made very difficult decisions as a family so that we could always stay together, and I think others can benefit from seeing it.
But still, you might ask, “Why now? Your kids are still young (14, 12, and 10 as of September 2023). They still need parenting. Why are you starting now? Isn’t this going to interfere with your parenting?”
Great question. In many ways, I don’t have any desire to give up what I have with my kids. And I don’t plan on giving it up. There is a purpose in getting involved again with social media, and I do so with caution, safeguarding my time with my kids as much as I can, because I know the potential time suck that this kind of endeavor can be. I don’t approach it lightly. I am counting the costs and the dangers, and I am proceeding with as much vigilance as I can muster.
My desire for this blog and YouTube channel is certainly not for it to take all or most of my time. So although I am a stickler for proper punctuation and such, and my writing could certainly benefit from more edits and revisions, and my perfectionism makes it hard for me to live by “done is better than perfect,” I won’t allow it to compromise time with family, and you’ll have to forgive the errors you see on this site and the lack of polish.
In addition, I don’t want to be constantly thinking about it, looking at my analytics, and making adjustments that will get me before the eyes of more and more people. Although that would be nice, since I think I have a message that can be helpful to many dads, I also know that the pursuit of such “success” comes with a heavy cost in time and brain power, something that I know I cannot give to this blog or YouTube or any other endeavor in a way that threatens my time with my family.
And that, I believe, will actually be the strength of this channel.
It would be highly counterproductive and thus make no sense for me to expend so much energy and time to help other dads spend more time with their families that I neglect my own, similar to the warning Apostle Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” As an aside, I believe this is major a problem amongst pastors, but that’s a topic for another time.
This may be obvious, but I don’t think it’s said enough. I’m sure there are many well-meaning bloggers and YouTubers who work hard to improve their channels and succeed at doing so, but aren’t truthful about the toll its taking on other areas of their lives. And it’s not just internet content creators. Many out there hustling and making moves and working themselves to the bone and finding some success, are doing so at a great cost to other more important areas of their lives, namely their families.
With that in mind, and given that I shall be giving my best hours each day to my family, especially my children, I believe that the things I will say through this channel will be helpful to parents whose children are the same age as my children and even younger. I think it’s helpful to see someone doing what you’re doing in real time, not just someone who’s already done it, whose parenting work is done for the most part, and who are now seeing the fruit of their many years of labor.
To know that we are all struggling together to do it well in the here and now is valuable. Plus, I don’t presume to know everything, and I will surely benefit from the wise advice of others who are also in the thick of it. So I think it’s a good time to start, not when the kids are so young and I am so inexperienced that I can’t really offer any good advice from personal experience, but also not when I am so old that I can’t relate with parents who are parenting now. That said, I think it’s the right time.
What’s Salty Family All About, Really?
Another blog post will explain Salty Family in greater depth, but basically it’s our family’s way of living all of life as a family.
Up to this point, I’ve written from my (JP) perspective as a husband and father. But this site is called Salty Family, not Salty Dad. This is, in the end, a family blog and family YouTube channel. So even the concern I shared above about this endeavor perhaps becoming an obstacle to our own family’s wellbeing is mitigated even more by the fact that we’ll be doing much of this together.
The term “Salty” is an obvious reference to Jesus’s teachings on being “salt” and not losing our “saltiness” in the world, but we’ve added an acronym to the word “salt” to reflect our belief that we are best used as salt when we live out our lives in a family, for the family is the context in which God designed for every person to live and grow.
Salt, for us, means Savoring All of Life Together (I hope you appreciate the wordplay). This is how we as a family strive to live, and this blog is our way of displaying it to you.
More specifically, Salty Family is about the following topics:
- Fathers leading their homes well
- Homeschooling or Home Education
- Health
- Homesteading
- Community
- Family Business
All of this, of course, is informed by our desire to live as followers of Jesus Christ.
Additionally, savoring all of life together includes the task of writing these blog posts. So each of us (JP, Jen, Jayden, Allie, and Josiah) will contribute to this blog. It’s really a family endeavor, and we hope that all members of your family can enjoy it.
Join Us and Share This Blog with Others
This blog, in the end, will be most useful to you and not to families decades or centuries from now. Temporary means and temporary ends, remember.
Nevertheless, if this is something that interests you, we would be honored and excited if you joined us.
Please sign up for our email list. You’ll receive notice in your email when new blog posts are published. We also have plans to make a weekly newsletter.
Please share it with others as you see fit.
Here’s to savoring the best of what is ultimately fleeting: family.
Here’s also and more importantly to savoring that which will never end: eternal life with Christ.
God bless you all.
