25 Things I Learned from My Dad

Life lessons, in chronological order, from a recently deceased parent

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dad_at_radio

Kate’s dad participating in a radio competition

1. Kraft dinner is pretty good with pepper.

2. Motown is the best music, especially in a car.

3. The square root of 2 is 1.4142135.

4. Smart people who don’t practice violin or do homework won’t get anywhere in life.

5. Even though your dad falls asleep at your recitals, he’s still really proud of you.

6. Wear good boots.

7. Use the right tool for the right job.

8. Computers are awesome. They’re also dangerous.

9. Teenagers are dangerous too.

10. Sometimes adults fight, even when they love each other. It’ll turn out ok.

11. You’re not as smart as you think you are.

12. Homework is not as important as you thought it was.

13. You can learn anything — literally anything — with enough effort.

14. No software without hardware.

15. No success without failure.

16. Learn to say yes, no, and go fuck yourself at the right moments.

17. Don’t let lack of experience and education hold you back from attempting to produce the highest quality work in your field.

18. Your career is infinitely less important than your family.

19. Don’t wait for the right moment to say I love you. Now is that moment.

20. People you thought would never get old will get old.

21. 26 is not old.

22. 70 is old, but not old enough.

23. Dying is just another problem that needs solving. You’ve dealt with problems your whole life. You can deal with this too.

24. When it comes to relationships, the really important ones, the details are the least important thing. The time, the place, the exact words you chose at that moment — they never matter as much as you think they do. Love, built over years and years of just being human together, will always be with you, and it’s all that really matters.

25. It’s ok to say goodbye.

Kate Hudson (@k88hudson) is a software engineer at Mozilla. She writes a technical blog at ispacebar.com and gives talks about javascript, mobile development, and diversity in tech.

Her father, Paul Hudson (1944–2015), was a hacker, a pilot, an amateur radio enthusiast, and a tech entrepreneur. He died of pancreatic cancer. If you look closely, you can still see equipment he designed 30 years ago being used in many newsrooms around the country. If you’d like to donate to the Paul Hudson memorial fund, you can do so here.

This post was originally published on Medium.

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