Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

by John Hodgman

Because as much as I wanted credit for making myself into such a fascinating fake-adult, on some level even I knew I was a pretentious weirdo and she would be better off not talking to me.

If your children are not in physical danger, if something is just unpleasant, you can’t give them permission to quit. First of all, not everything in life is unpleasant, but most of it is, and certainly all of the things that lead to real and lasting pleasure are. Second, if you give your child permission to quit, then later they will give themselves permission to quit. And we all know those people.

the carpenter told the story with the sort of calm of someone who has processed deep loss.