Presenting: Not Right Now

Hey!

It’s Quinn.

If you’re a parent, at some point someone told you, “The days are long, but the years are short”, or something like that.

Fun story: in 2025, everything is long.

A lot has happened today and this year, and it is only 8:45 AM/February.

A lot happened last year.

A lot happened the year before that, too. And the year before that, and before that. And so on.

I don’t really remember my own personal “before-times” — before kids — but I do know two things:

1. Despite spending all of our money and emotions on IVF to make our kids, and then a week in the hospital with our first child, I was shocked to discover they just…let you go home with a baby?
   

2. The world has changed in profound ways since that week in 2012, and the rate of change is only accelerating

It is a lot.

It is a lot for a human with zero attachments, but it is a whole hell of a lot for parents, who are usually (but not always!) adults, and so who have to both interact with the real world every day — another devastating discovery — and somehow continue to parent.

Maybe you’re a parent with a wonderful support system, like me (shoutout to my mom and Grandma Mary). Maybe you have none, or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle, with some chosen family you can call when you really need to. Or not.

Either way, I’m confident that at least once in the past month you — probably a wonderful, caring, attentive parent — have walked into another room — a bedroom, a bathroom, a closet — and screamed. Into a pillow, into a mouthful of Harvest Snaps, silently. Whatever.

I know this, because I have, too.

What’s fucked up is, hours later, you were probably like me, scrolling through old photos of your kids and wondering and worrying whether they’re starting to detach and turn away and do they already hate you? Wait, look at this picture from preschool, fuck they were cute. Was it easier then? Harder?

Why am I so goddamn tired every single day?

Is this my gummy kicking in?

IS THAT A CHILD OUT OF BED AGAIN?

I am an expert in nothing, but I can tell you this, with confidence: you’re not alone.

It’s a lot, all the time, and still — you have to fuuuuuucking parent.

Sometimes, you even try to be a good (!) parent, which is something people/the internet love to tell you you’re doing wrong, all of the time (fuck those people, btw). Sometimes it’s your partner or — as is typical — your own parent telling you how you’re doing it wrong. And sometimes they’ve got a point! But also sometimes you just need to get to bedtime.

I get it.

Any parent knows that besides affordable shelter, childcare, health care, and education, the most important piece of the “keep sane” puzzle is other parents and people who fucking get it.

Other parents you don’t have to explain yourself to. Because they are in it, too, and they also have a designated place to scream.

It is a lot. Amid climate change, and a coup, and bird flu and, shit, just trying to get your kids to wash your hands because you got an email from school about norovirus and please, god, just don’t bring that shit home (literally).

We vowed to reach more people in 2025, to not just help “people who give a shit” answer the question “What can I do?”, but to meet way, way more people where they are, and then bring them down the funnel along the way.

Because in their heart of hearts, most parents do actually give a shit about other people’s kids, they just need their own kids to stop asking so many goddamn questions so they can remember what it was, exactly, they wanted to try to do to help, you know, next week, when things calm down a little.

I began reading Claire Zulkey’s blog, Evil Witches, in 2023. It’s not specifically written for me but it always, always, always felt like Claire and her coven of engaged Witches had a camera inside my house, like they were simply documenting my parenting and going, “We get it.”

Claire’s work is smart, and funny as hell, and compelling, her principles and values a siren and north star to any parent of any kind who gives a shit about their parenting and gives a shit about their kids but I mean christ, it’s a bit much, isn’t it?

Another snow day? In this economy?

I wish I could say it was the explicitly clear language against anti-vaxxers that first made me want to work with Claire, or her collections of commentary from other witches about how to talk to your kids when a parent is sick, but honestly, those were just the icing on the cake. It was the inherent trust and camaraderie and community that really drew me in.

It was other parents who just get it.

Claire is unafraid to share her story and — voila — it makes other parents unafraid to share their story, to listen to one another and go, “Holy fuck, RIGHT?”.

So — we connected, and we started talking about where our worlds and work overlaps, and agreed, fuck it. Let’s record these and see if there’s an audience who gets it, who needs to hear other parents spill their shit as we all wrestle with incredibly uncertain times AND kids who are trying out profanity in really the worst possible classroom to do so.

As we recorded our first conversations, we struggled to figure out what to call this thing, and then one day I texted Claire from where I was hiding in the bathroom and said, “You know what I’ve said to my kids 349 times today including six seconds ago? ‘Not right now’.”

Not Right Now.

Despite trying to be as present and attentive as possible, I feel like I say Not Right Now over and over again and yet honestly probably don’t even notice myself saying it to them half the time.

But also — Not Right Now is what we feel when some fucking Apple News notification shows up as you’re doing the laundry because your kid doesn’t have exactly the right pants.

When the school calls during your hourly shift or a work zoom.

When your your kids need another snack immediately after the dinner they didn’t finish, or the dog is sick, or…all of it at once, both predictable but also — only — when you need it the least.

Not. Right. Now.

I hope you enjoy our new show. It’s super super informal, and fun, and full of profanity, and personal, and — I hope — something you or a parent in your life can identify with, and maybe get some relief from.

It’s intentionally and decidedly NOT an advice show. 

It is a once-a-week parasocial commiseration session about trying to raise kids and continue to be a human and maybe even a partner amid…all of this.

It’s, more than anything, a “You’re not alone” show. You may feel, often, like you’re the only one that could possibly feel the way you feel every day, and every night, and it’s true, we’ve all got wildly different circumstances and support systems, if any.

Claire and I are each both lucky, to have some support, and supportive partners, but we also make very clear where we stand on America’s continued, willful neglect of families, of moms, of kids.

But again we also know that so much of parenting is universal, and that parents of every stripe relating and giving a shit about each other — not just in the words or in the comments, but in their actions — can go a very long way to not only better understanding one another, but rebuilding trust in our communities, holding companies to a higher standard, and electing people who understand how hard it can be to make and raise a family.

And, yeah, obviously: if some small percentage of listeners make their way to becoming full-fledged Shit Givers or even Important Members, hell-bent on building a drastically better world, we’ll take it.

The first episode of Not Right Now is out right now, anywhere you listen to podcasts, and I hope you love it.

If you do, or even if you don’t listen but know someone who would appreciate it, please please share it. We’ll have more ways for you to directly support the show in the very near future, and even some ways to interact with it.

But first things first: please join me in a huge thanks to Willow for editing and producing this chaos in addition to our OG show (back soon!); to Tim Blane for the always-jaunty music; to fellow-witch Kristen Cox for our incredible artwork; to my incredible wife Dana and sometimes-reluctant mother of my kids for her endless support of this project; to my own mom; and of course, to all of you.

Here’s Claire’s wonderful intro to this chaos — enjoy.

Thank you, as always, for reading — and thanks for giving a shit.

— Quinn

PS: Got questions or feedback? Shoot it over to [email protected].