Chickens, Code, and Chaos
A Day in the Life of a Dad, Digital Manager, Chicken Care Taker, and Accidental Media Empire Builder
Let me paint you a picture.
It is 6am. I have been asleep for maybe four hours. The marsh is quiet outside my window — beautiful, peaceful, and completely indifferent to the chaos that is about to unfold inside this house.
I have sleep apnea and rhinitis. Both are being worked on. But until then — four hours it is. Four hours of what I am told is less sleeping and more a combination of chainsaw sounds and small earthquakes emanating from my side of the bed.
My family sleeps with this every night.
They are heroes. Every single one of them. 😄
You learn to function on four hours. You drink tea. You carry on. You apologize to your family.
This is a day in my life.
The Morning Battle
First things first — kids.
I have three of them. A 17 year old son who is homeschooled, takes two classes at the local high school, participates in what feels like every sport known to the human race, and is currently working on getting his drivers license. Freedom is coming for all of us on that one. 😄
Two daughters — 13 and 10 — both in summer school, both with opinions, and both completely committed to making my wife question every life decision she has ever made before 8am.
My wife is a warrior. Every single morning she stands in the eye of that hurricane and tries to get two daughters out the door while maintaining what remains of her sanity. Some days it is a battle. Some days it is a war. Either way she wins — because she has to. 💙
My job in the morning is slightly more manageable. I take my son to his weightlifting class. If I am heading into the office I drop him off and keep going. If I am working from home I drop him off and come back to try and help my warrior wife get the girls out the door. Then it’s just me and the empty house.
Well. Almost empty.
The Real Owners of This House
We have four cats.
I say WE have four cats but that is not entirely accurate. The four cats HAVE us. They are the real owners of this house and everyone in it knows it. They do whatever they want, whenever they want, and look at you with complete disdain if you suggest otherwise.
We also have Simba. 🦁
Simba is our dog — a mix of various breeds — and he is named after the Lion King which feels appropriate because he absolutely believes he is royalty. He lives on a marsh surrounded by 23 chickens, 4 cats, and somehow maintains his dignity throughout (most of the time).
Four cats. One lion dog. Twenty three chickens.
And me. Trying to work from home (some days) in the middle of all of it.
The Chickens
Oh. The chickens.
We have 23 of them. We had 24 recently. We do not talk about that. 😢
They live in an 8×10 coop with a run that stretches 10 feet across and 36 feet long. Which sounds like plenty of space until you realize that 23 chickens have opinions about EVERYTHING and are not shy about expressing them.
During the day they like to wandering far and wide around our 2 acres of grass and trees.
They also they need feeding, watering, and their coop and run needs to be tended to. We don’t want hungry thirsty chickens on our hands! No telling what they might do!
And I will just say this — 23 chickens produce a LOT of eggs (who wants some…no serious, I will send them to you!)
And a LOT of other things I will not mention in polite company. 😄
But they are ours and we love them. Even when we are ankle deep in the evidence of their existence.
The Day Job
Somewhere between the morning chaos and the chicken duties I am also the Manager of Web and Digital Experience at a university in Milwaukee.
I know. I know.
Here is the thing though — I majored in Criminal Justice. I was a Military Police officer in the United States Air Force. Nobody looked at my career path and said “yes, this man will one day manage web and digital experience for a university.” 😄
I did not plan this. Nobody plans this. But fifteen years of figuring things out, learning on the fly, and saying yes to opportunities I was not entirely sure I was ready for somehow led me here.
And here is pretty great.
I log in, check my emails, review my tasks, build pages with code I know and love, and spend about eight hours doing work I genuinely enjoy. Building and managing digital experiences that connect people to what matters. At a university where I feel — every single day — like I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
Even when the cats are sitting on my keyboard. Or taking over my morning meetings. I just hope they don’t get me fired! 😄
The Afternoon Run
Around midday I go pick up my youngest daughter from summer school if my wife is at work.
My 13 year old however — she has discovered the library. She will stay there as long as humanly possible, surrounded by books, games, and coloring projects, completely unbothered by the chaos at home. Honestly I respect it. 😄
I pick her up later, at her will. She is kind of a princess and has princess sized opinions.
In between pickup runs I squeeze in whatever I can — emails, meetings, web updates, the occasional existential crisis about whether the CSS is rendering correctly on mobile. 😄
The Media Empire
Oh right. I am also building a media empire.
MyAnthologyOfThoughts — my blog, newsletter, photography gallery, video page, and apparently the accidental solution to a marketing problem I spent years trying to solve — does not run itself.
Posts need to be written. Newsletters need to go out. Facebook needs to be tended to almost as much as the chickens. Almost. 😄
So some nights I am up late. Sitting at the computer. Hashing out the next post. Editing photos. Checking view counts like a person with a perfectly healthy relationship with social media metrics. 😄
I sleep when I can.
It is fine. Everything is fine. 🔥
The Weekend Edition
If you think the weekdays sound like a lot — let me tell you about this weekend.
I am removing a tankless water heater. Just casually doing plumbing. No big deal.
I also have half a tree in my front yard.
A week ago high winds ripped it right in half and there it sits — waiting for me and a chainsaw to have a very direct conversation about it this weekend (or next…we’ll see how the plumbing goes). 😄
And somewhere in between the plumbing and the chainsaw work and the chickens and the kids I will also be attempting — and almost certainly failing — to keep this house somewhat clean.
We have four cats, a lion dog, three kids, and 23 chickens.
Clean is a relative term around here.
The View From the Marsh
Here is the thing though.
We live on the Horicon Marsh. One of the most beautiful and wild places in Wisconsin. And on the days when the chaos quiets down — even just for a moment — I can look out at that marsh and remember that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
Four hours of sleep. Chicken poop on my boots. Cats judging me from the couch. Simba sighing. A half tree in the yard. A media empire to build. A book to finish. A university website to manage.
And I would not trade a single chaotic beautiful ridiculous moment of it.
This is my life.
And honestly?
It is a pretty great one. 💙
— Nate
