Getting Transcendental

Three Years Running

Next week, I will hand in my 40th Transcendental Day column to Manchester Ink Link. Seems crazy that I’ve been writing that column for three and a half years. If you add the half dozen that were published previously in the now-defunct Parenting NH, the column has run for a total of four years.

And not just in Manchester Ink Link - but in Go Monadnock, Parent Express, The Hippo, Monadnock Underground, the Nashua Telegraph, NH Home and a few others. It’s been a solid run.

But back to Manchester Ink Link. In 2021 and 2022, my editor over there, Carol Robidoux, honored me by submitting the column to the NH Press Association awards and what do you know, the column won me best columnist of the year two years in a row!

Well, guess what!? I didn’t win first place this year. (Ha, fooled you didn’t I?) Instead, it turns out I’m the third best columnist of the year this time!

“Hey, you’re on the podium,” my practical wife told me. “Besides, sometimes you have to give other people a chance.”

Of the column this year, the judge wrote: “Many parents hurry through the routines of daily life, unable to appreciate the blessings within. Dan Szczesny invites them to stop and notice what’s extraordinary.”

It’s fine. I’m fine. One of the best three years running is really more than I expected from a column about mindful parenting. Certainly, with Little Bean, I’ll never run out of ideas.

The only thing that’s changed the last year or so is that she’s more involved now in what I write about - more aware of the process and the content. She’s getting older, she’s her own person. I’m still her dad, yes, but what kind of a Mindful Parenting column would Transcendental Dad be if I wasn’t, you know, mindful of her?

Anyway, thank you to Carol and the crew over there for the honors and enthusiasm. And thank you to all of you for reading the column and coming along with me on this parenting journey. What a trip it has been!

And let me ask you. I’m curious. What sort of parenting topics or themes might you be interesting in my writing about? I’d love to hear from you.

Till then, we’ll keep on writing. And we’ll see if maybe, next year, we can reclaim the throne!