One of the things they don't prepare you for when you become a parent is just how many things they don't prepare you for when you become a parent.

(Read it again. I made sure it makes sense. Which is good, because parenting little kids does not.)

Some parenting things are hard, like how to tell whether their screaming means they're hungry, tired, cold, or just as upset as you are with the umpire in today's game. I mean I know Aaron Judge is 6-feet, 19-inches tall but COME ON, UMP, YOU'RE--oh, shoot, he pooped, gotta go...

Other things are funny, ranging from "funny ha-ha" to "funny oh no." I'm fond of Yogurt Shoulders myself. (That's when you don't realize until the second you log into the webinar to give a talk that wearing a black shirt and feeding your toddler yogurt today was a bad idea.)

Then there's the sort of parenting thing I experienced the other day -- a third category you can't prepare to experience.

Hidden in this particular category of stuff is a lesson we need to learn about a style of story we need to tell to stand out from the noise and put our creative fingerprints on the work.