Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

I got extraordinarily lucky in the dad department, (unlike my kids, who are completely up a creek) and wanted to take today to say, “Thanks, Dad.”

• Thanks for all those little phrases you used to repeat so often that I now say them as if I inherited them genetically. Things like, “Just as God put little green apples on this earth…” and, “Don’t you know who you are?!”
• Thanks for showing me that sometimes, the best way to teach a lesson is simply to ignore the issue and keep going through your day. Like the day I got my first hangover: you just came into my room at a normal time—7am, was it?—and just opened the blinds. Didn’t have to say a word. Possibly the most effective teaching moment of all time.
• Thanks for always trusting me with the truth.
• Thanks for telling me to start keeping a journal when I was 14.
• Thanks for getting a 1963 Thunderbird when I was 15. You should have insisted I make that my car when I turned 16. (Hey, no one’s perfect.)
• Thanks for sending me to college.
• Thanks for giving me the opportunities to travel, both domestically and abroad. When I was 12, I took the Underground across London on my own. I had to figure out how to read a subway map and make a transfer. Which I knew how to do because I had already bussed across Chicago with a friend the year before.
• Thanks for knowing how to fix things… and for actually fixing them.
• Thanks for finding ways to bond with me over small things, like Bugs Bunny or a bag of peanuts.
• Most of all, thanks for taking time to raise your family when you were also busy building a practice. Those memories are the most priceless gifts of all.

I love you, Dad. I am far too hard on you far too often.

You’ve been great to me.

Thank you.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.