When a Moment Doesn't Land
A small house, a song I wanted to share, and the point when I lost the plot
There was a moment the other night I really wanted to happen.
Not in a big, performative way. Just something connected and real with friends—sitting around a table, good food, a conversation that goes a layer deeper than the usual surface stuff.
My brother Andrew and our friend Henry came over and visited me and the boys for dinner. Henry lives in California now, so we don’t see him often.
They brought Chinese takeout from a place in Nampa, about twenty miles west of Boise. I’ve lived here almost eight years. I should know where the good Chinese food is by now, but most of the places I used to like have been replaced by something more polished. Trendier. Glass-covered buildings. Less dirty and questionable.
So they handled it.
Way too much food—easily enough to feed twice as many people. Sweet and sour chicken, noodles, two different fried rice options. It filled the counter in the kitchen.
The house is small, but it’s mine.
I remodeled the inside, opened things up, kept the original mid-century windows that run almost floor to ceiling. When I bought it, the ones that face the street were covered in that frosted film that lets light in but hides everything inside.
I took it off.
I liked the idea of inside and outside just running straight through. I painted the frames black and left the rest alone.
Outside, it’s still a mess. Dirt yard. Sprinkler pipes sticking up out of the ground like cobra heads from a redesign I haven’t finished yet.
Inside feels intentional. Outside looks like I’m in the middle of something.
We sat down at the table—an old cherry one I found on Marketplace. I’d just put the leaf in for the first time. The middle section is darker, glossier, like it’s been hidden somewhere for years.
We only have four real chairs, so Noah, my youngest, pulled in the office chair. I swapped the wheels for those smooth rollerblade ones—quiet most of the time, but they still click over the cracks in the tile.
The front left side of the house is basically one room. Living, dining, entry, kitchen—all tied together. The fireplace chimney sits in the middle like the donut hole.
My boys had slipped around the other side of it a few minutes earlier, once the conversation turned more toward me, my brother, and our friend.
They ended up at the computer desk built into the opposite side of the chimney.
I couldn’t see them anymore.
But I could hear them.
The three of us adults started talking. Work at first, then it drifted into something deeper—what we actually care about, what we want to be doing with our lives.
It felt good.
At one point I started talking about music. It’s been coming back for me in a real way. I’ve been writing a lot.
Andrew used to play bass and sing in the band we built in our 20’s. Henry studied music at one point. These are guys who get it—and me. Which made it feel like it might actually land.
The song’s called The Script. It’s something I rewrote from an earlier version that doesn’t really fit who I am anymore.
I’ve shared my music before.
If I’m honest, a lot of that used to be about getting some kind of confirmation—an attaboy, a “that’s good,” something to tell me it mattered.
I feel a little embarrassed about that now.
Lately it’s been different.
These songs are more personal. They’re how I make sense of things—how I see the world, what I’ve been going through.
When I share them now, it’s less about being told they’re good… and more about seeing if something real can open up between people.
And underneath that, there’s still this quiet thought:
Here we go again… Dan needs affirmation.
I don’t think I need that anymore.
But I can still feel the fear of it.
And right in the middle of the song, the noise rose up to meet it.
Laughter getting louder. Movement. The wheels of the chair rattling over the tile.
Not crazy. Just enough.
Enough that I couldn’t quite hear the song the way I wanted to—
and couldn’t quite feel the moment landing.
I tried to stay with it.
But I could feel it slipping.
And somewhere in there, the moment stopped being something I was in… and became something I was trying to manage.
I’d been managing kids all week.
Homework has been a constant tension between me and their mom. She thinks I’m not staying on top of it. I feel like my son’s been avoiding it.
Everything’s online now—Infinite Campus, assignments, tracking. It all feels like infinite micromanaging.
So that part of me was already running.
Already looking for something to tighten up.
And then I snapped.
“Hey—turn that off. Go do your homework.”
Sharp. Too fast.
Not really about homework.
The sound dropped out almost immediately.
The room went tight.
Andrew looked back down at the table. Henry half-smiled, like he didn’t know where to go with it. My boys went quiet in that way where you can feel they’re still there… just not themselves anymore.
And just like that, the moment was gone.
Not ruined. Just… gone.
What was lost wasn’t the song.
It was that thread of connection with Andrew and Henry.
It was thin, but it was there—something starting to open up around music and life.
And to that part of me, once it slipped, it felt like it was gone for good.
So it tried to protect it.
And what it actually did was take the air out of the room.
The kind where people start looking for a reason to leave.
At the time, I didn’t really sit with it.
Bedtime came quick, and I was too tired to make anything of it.
It wasn’t until the next morning that it came back to me.
I was talking to my oldest son, trying to explain something I’ve been learning.
That we all have different parts of us.
Some of them manage things. Try to keep life on track. Keep us safe. Make sure things don’t fall apart.
And some of them don’t care about any of that. They just want relief. Fun. A break from the pressure.
And as I was explaining it to him, I could see what had happened the night before.
There was a softer part of me in that moment.
The part that wanted to connect.
To share something that mattered.
To feel that sense of being understood by people who know me.
And it felt a little exposed.
When the noise picked up—when the room started to slip out of my control—something else stepped in.
Not softer.
More certain.
The part that knows what’s right.
The part that tightens things up.
The part that says, “this needs to go a certain way.”
It moved fast.
It told itself it was protecting the moment… protecting me.
But what it actually did was shut the whole thing down.
I didn’t get the connection.
And I didn’t really get control either.
It told a familiar story—just not the one I would have named at the time.
If this moment doesn’t land, it doesn’t matter.
If I lose this, the whole thing falls flat.
And the only way it knew how to hold onto it…
was to shut everything else down.
The noise wasn’t just noise anymore.
It was something in the way of what I needed to happen.
And in that moment, control felt like the only move left.
And on their side, I imagine it’s just as simple.
They went to school.
They did what was asked of them.
They got home and wanted to relax.
Play. Laugh. Be kids.
Two different systems.
Two different stories.
Colliding in one small room.
From the outside, it probably looked like I was just being a parent.
Setting a boundary. Keeping things on track.
But inside, it didn’t feel grounded.
It felt like I was managing everything. Trying to force the moment back into what I wanted it to be.
I think what’s harder to admit is how much I wanted that moment.
Not the song itself.
The connection.
The feeling that something real was happening between us.
Because if I’m honest…
I don’t just want to be a good dad.
I don’t just want to have meaningful conversations.
I want moments to land.
And I’m starting to see how quickly that desire turns into control.
And how often that control is the very thing that takes me out of the moment I was trying to hold onto.