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Welcome to the Man in Many Roles Blog, hosted by yours truly, Michael P. Lovett, M.A, ALPS.
About the Creator:
I am Michael P. Lovett, a.k.a., pluvster, a veteran educator, having worked in education for over 23 years. I'm bilingual in Spanish and English, hold a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish, and a Master's in Educational Leadership. I've served as a Literacy Coach, Program Adviser, Peer Observer and Assistant Principal, after years of successful teaching of diverse students. I now work for Denver Public Schools as a Senior Program Manager for the district's Summer Academy program. I'm a heartsy leader who is a bit longwinded at times, strong in empathy, loves to listen, and to coach others. I'm certified in Advanced Cognitive Coaching, and as a Trainer of Trainers in Thinking Maps©. I think of coaching as "sacred space" where clients can think, consider their strengths and areas of growth, and feel clearer and more empowered as they move forward with my support. I truly love working with individuals and teams to create and or facilitate adult learning sessions and create tools that are useful to team goals. My core values include joy, influence, and hard work, and I feel great satisfaction as I bring those values into working and personal relationships.
I'm also a person of deep faith, consistently attempting to grow in being present and centering prayer. I love reflecting on parenting, thinking of things that come in twos, threes, and fours, conversations with friends, walking my dog, ChaCha, and more recently, paddleboarding. I live in Colorado with my wife (also bilingual and wonderful in so many ways!) and two sons. I'm a Colorado native.
Book a time to talk for a quote or a free consultation via Google Meet if my skills might match your organization's needs or your individual needs. I'm glad to coach, consult, or advise learning pods, homeschooling parents, and anyone supporting young people in their learning. Contact me HERE to offer feedback, ask questions, or comment.
Thank you for engaging with this blog, and podcast. May you find that it helps, teaches, and protects you as a man in many roles or as a person who loves a man (or boy) in many roles. Onward and inward!
About the Content
What if you could get 7 blogs for the price of one? Well, this blog is all about how men deal with balancing and living in their very different roles with integrity: the self, the son, the brother, the lover or spouse, the father, the leader, and the follower. Work and personal, physical, spiritual, emotional. It's a podcast for a man in many roles and the people who love them. The idea here is to be as helpful to men as possible by making content about our many roles that is compelling, inspiring, practice and helpful for both men who read this blog and for women, too, who have men in their lives that they want to better love, relate to, or get along with. In short, I want to write to you, the reader, with the perspective, advice, and care I would give my own sons on how to live well, as far as I know how to. Perhaps my sons will access this blog years from now, and remember all the talks we've had as they read this content.
Self: When I blog about this role, I'm reflecting on what I'm learning about being wholehearted and holy. By holy, I mean, different for the sake of bringing attention to God, being present, compassionate, and so that I wound other people less, and build them up more, starting with my immediate family. When considering this role I am considering the role of mindfulness, self-awareness, reflection, centering prayer, listening prayer, compassion, suffering, perseverance, solitude, stillness, silence, and much more, but you get the idea. I also will grow in learning and blogging more about physical health, and other aspects of life that relate to being a healthy self. Finally, I believe I can't love others well until I know, accept and love myself, seeing myself with compassion, as God does.
Son: I think John Eldredge's writing, especially in Fathered by God, influences several of the roles I write about in this blog in a deep way. Whether we feel beloved or not, we live out of our interpretation of our status as sons. I want more in my relationship with my father, my mentors, and sages in my life, so the Son role is where I explore that longing for fathering and mentoring. So goes our understand of our preciousness as sons, so goes our relationship with our children.
Brother: Every man is a brother to every other person who is born or adopted into their family of origin. Some men are brothers to others by marriage. Still others are brothers to others with whom they share (or shared) the deep suffering or intimacy of struggling with or through something wonderful or horrible like first-time-fatherhood or war. I think I may write a bit about being a brother to women, treating women with respect when dating them, and helping our sons treat all women as sisters and never as objects. Simply put, if you shed blood, sweat, tears, or great amounts of laughter with a man, chances are he is a brother to you. Let's build brotherhood up!
Lover/Spouse: I agree with Eldredge again here. This aspect of ourselves is about the appreciation of beauty. Not consumption or objectification of beautiful people, nor their body parts, but beauty created by God. In this role I want to grow and reflect on my life as a husband who loves his wife, and as a creation of God who loves goodness, truth, and beauty. I hope to help men with my experience, and pay forward great marriage and pre-marriage and dating advice, and to appreciate beauty as much as possible. One more thing, I hope that if/when women might read this content, they would be provoked to love their spouse/partner a little better because of what I am offering here. We shall see!
Father: I love being a dad! This role feels like a place where I have a lot to say, and I want my boys to grow up and have a place to get (or remember) some good advice. As God loves us, so we men get the privilege of loving our children. The father role is crucial, and there is a deep, evil fatherlessness, and pervasive hatred for manhood (and womanhood!) on a spiritual level in our world. Division and derision are mainstream. We and our identities and uniqueness are all under attack, whether we are sons or daughters. Clarity and conversation about good, true and beautiful fatherly effort is needed. I hope to fight well to champion fatherhood. Join me if you are a father, and offer me feedback, because I need to grow and would love to hear your story and experience with your father, if you would be so kind as to share it with me. Click here or I'm on Twitter & Instagram @maninmanyroles.
Leader: John C. Maxwell says in his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership in essence, A leader is anyone who endeavors to develop the potential in others. [my paraphrase] This is hard, daring, difficult stuff, and I want to lead better. I want to create more consistently, developing my own potential. I want to overcome caricatures of uncaring, hard, obnoxiously aggressive leaders and be the leader I was intended to be, and I will share what I am learning as an educator (which is another word for leader, meaning literally, "to lead out"). I really need to grow in finding this balance between Care and Challenge, as Radical Candor discusses. As men, we are designed to enter into, or penetrate situations, lives, organizations to fertilize and bring forth life. Where and how and why we bring forth our strength and identity has the effect of promoting or suffocating potential in others. We either violate or we honor with our presence. To be honest I write and think and read about leadership because I need to grow as a leader. Let's swap stories and inspire each other's leadership!
Follower: At the end of the day we are all followers, and we follow our desires or those of others. We are inconsistent, and we need an amazing, compelling example to follow. I have found no other, none better than Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, to follow. My experience is that Jesus provides fuel and inspiration against shame and blame that leads to judgment. Jesus the Same is a favorite book about the character of the most influential man who has ever walked the face of the earth. So when riffing on the role of follower, that may be where things get a bit religious, but I would like to make the content less sappy or religious and more compelling and accessible to all. I also feel like being a follower has a bad name, and I would like to recast following as a necessary, more explicitly discussed skill. Thus, this blog.
Thank you for joining me, and reading! May the content produced herein bless you and edify you, and usher more peace, clarity, and companionship than you have yet enjoyed.
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