You ever work so hard for so long that you forget what it’s like to relax? Well, hi! We’re the Paleo Parents and we have essentially been working 17 hour days since our last vacation in June! Between Stacy’s crazy career, my crazy boys, the website, the book, the social media, we’ve not stopped to breathe in quite a while. We’ve barely had time to reflect upon the accomplishments we’ve made. Holy soap on a rope, Batman, we wrote a book! And some people even read it! (And, oh my goodness! We owe people a signed copy of it! Better get on that tomorrow!)
So the first thanks of this post goes to Jimmy Moore, the Livin’ La Vida Low Carb man himself, for creating an event so compelling that it made my lovely wife put down her keyboards for a week.
Of course, at the time we decided that we were going to go, Robb Wolf was going too. But, you know, making babies kept him home (Congratulations to Robb and Nikki!).
But ultimately we got to listen to lots of other awesome speakers so it was totally fine! We have many interesting thoughts coming out of the conference and we’ll get to all of them soon. The most important of which is to realize that Stacy has taken on far too much. If you remember our interview with Sean Croxton at Underground Wellness, the last question was the most important.
Sean asked, What’s next for you guys? There was a really long pause before Stacy answered “Relax.” In that pause was so much unspoken. We had discussed beforehand how we might answer that sort of question. Do we see a podcast in our future? Seminars? Speaking engagements? A forum? Another book?
We’ve been given so many wonderful opportunities and we love to help people. But between what our ambitions might be and what we are truly able to do while still living the life we want for ourselves lies a vast chasm.
Between her job (that she enjoys) needing her for 12+hours per day and the site requiring much the same, Stacy has stretched herself to the snapping point. Rather than increase the tension, she’s decided to release much of it. With that in mind, unfortunately Paleo Parents will mostly be a one man operation for a while.
Not that Stacy will disappear entirely, but you won’t be seeing as much of her. We’ve previously been 100% available on social media pretty much 24/7. Frankly, that’s not giving our kids and our lives the attention they deserve.
We apologies for any inconvenience, but we really believe in placing our family first, and punishing Stacy’s adrenals with too much work won’t help anyone. Telling the kids to play by themselves so we can answer e-mail and respond to facebook questions isn’t practicing what we preach.
And if it weren’t for the cruise and a week off, away from the internet, Stacy would never have seen that the world wasn’t doomed to come to an end without her. The cruise, this vacation, helped us realize our priorities. And for that, it was priceless.
So, the cruise. How about we start today with the awesome people we got to meet and hang out with? Coming soon will be Stacy’s camera-work and my reflections on what life on a boat says about America.
- Jack Kruse – We got a chance to meet Jack the night before the cruise before the whole Krusegate incident (upon which we have little comment). Jack is a colorful and interesting guy and we enjoyed his company. He was also incredibly nice, sincere and flattering to us; can’t complain about that! I only wish I knew one-twenty-fifth of what he does.
- Jimmy Moore – While Stacy got to meet Jimmy at PaleoFX in Austin, I first talked to Jimmy for our interview with him. Jimmy is one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met and tons of fun. Apparently, he’s also an accomplished poker player as he and Stacy played well into the night but only one of them walked away with a fat bank roll. And it wasn’t us.
- Jude from Smart, Sexy, Paleo – You all know me. I have very few friends and find meeting people very difficult. However, the second I met Jude, I made a lifelong friend and one of the most fantastic people I’ve ever met. We kind of adopted the adorable, funny, and witty Aussie for the week and showed her that not all of America belongs on People of WalMart. Not only that, but she makes for a fantastic Gloria Gaynor impersonator (proof coming soon)!
- Dr. William Davis – We actually met and chatted with the mind behind the bestselling Wheat Belly book! Not only is Dr. Davis incredibly nice and generous with his time, but, believe it or not, he’s pretty smart as well. I’ve been convinced that even my small indulgences in wheat consumption (like a tortilla at Chipotle when Stacy’s not looking) ought to end immediately. More on that at another time.
- Diane Sanfillipo – We dropped in on a Balanced Bites seminar (featuring Liz Wolf!) the day before we left and I finally got to meet Diane. She’s just as fascinating and nice as Stacy had said. We had a lot of great times with her, including the night she developed psychic powers and started correctly predicting roulette numbers!
- Tom Naughton – We got to meet and talk with the hilarious Fat Head filmaker towards the end of the cruise and traded cash money (he bought Eat Like a Dinosaur, we bought his t-shirt.) Very personable and easy to talk to! You ought to stay tuned to him for some kid related Fat Head style goodness in the future!
- Fred Hahn – Despite looking exactly like Chuck Norris, Fred Hahn is actually not intimidating at all and is a truly good guy. He’s a very engaging speaker and he, apparently, loved our book so much he carries it at his gym! Who’d of thought? We made a surprising friend in Fred and are hopeful we can convince him to do a guest blog in the future about kids & fitness!
- Tom and Vanessa – We participated in the Amazing Cozumel Race together and had a blast! We could not have had better partners to race through streets and weave through cars with! Our team destroyed the competition, proving definitively the superiority of low carb/paleo! Read Tom’s recap here… we’ll definitely blog about it and post photos soon!
- Jayson and Mira Calton – Before we decided to go on the trip, we were unfamiliar with the Caltons (other than from the Balanced Bites Podcast and hilarious Dr. Oz video, of course). Now, we found them to be interesting and delightful companions and we’re pretty interested in what they have to say on micronutrients. They’ve got more books up their sleeves, so keep an eye out!
- Denise Minger and Chris Masterjohn – Denise is even more nice and sweet than she is smart or pretty. Can’t wait for her book, Death by Food Pyramid! And Chris is a genius. That’s saying a LOT.
We met many other people, of course, and can’t name them all. Thanks to all of you who said hi and made our vacation enjoyable!
You know what’s strange? On the boat, I was inspired to actually be social. I talked to people, strangers even. People I was intimidated by (except for Sally Krumdiack; the irony is that I was the only person who had heard of her before, and I was afraid to come off as an MMA dork). But I found myself doing it anyway. On the last day I was able to give a 10 minute talk on how we came to do what we do with only minimal shaking. Perhaps I’ve turned a corner on my social anxiety. Maybe not, but I’m hopeful.
