{"id":4873,"date":"2022-06-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailydad.com\/uncategorized\/their-needs-are-so-modest\/"},"modified":"2022-06-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T00:00:00","slug":"their-needs-are-so-modest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailydad.com\/their-needs-are-so-modest\/","title":{"rendered":"Their Needs Are So Modest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Letterman was the king of late night. His shows ran for 33 seasons making him the longest-serving late night talk show host in the history of American television. At its peak, he was making something like $30 million a year, watched by an audience of many millions every week.<\/p>\n<p>As the show went on through the years though, it started to become a drag. It\u2019s not that Letterman didn\u2019t enjoy it, but the grind of it wore on him. He had other priorities. He wasn\u2019t living and dying for the audience, so he hung it up. On the day he made the decision, Letterman went to his young son (who he\u2019d had later in life) with the news. \u201cI\u2019m quitting, I\u2019m retiring,\u201d he told Harry. \u201cI won\u2019t be at work every day. My life is changing; our lives will change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Who knows what Letterman expected his son to say, but as he explained to Judd Apatow in the book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepaintedporch.com\/products\/sicker-in-the-head-more-conversations-about-life-and-comedy?_pos=1&amp;_sid=f0bcc2a5d&amp;_ss=r\">Sicker in the Head<\/a><\/em>, he thought it would get more than a nod. \u201cWill I still be able to watch the Cartoon Network?\u201d his son asked. \u201cI think so. Let me check,\u201d was all Letterman could say in amazement. There he was, walking away from millions of dollars and one of the most coveted slots in all of television, and his son\u2019s main concern was whether <em>he<\/em> could still watch TV.<\/p>\n<p>Kids will humble us like that. We think we\u2019re so important. We think our work is so important. In fact, that\u2019s what we tell ourselves\u2013that we work those long hours to make the money to provide them a certain kind of life. In fact, our kids\u2019 needs are so humble. Mostly what they want is us, as we\u2019ve said before. And beyond that? They\u2019re pretty content with snacks. The occasional video game. A sprinkler to play in. Some magnet you picked up at the airport on the way home from a business trip. A parent who doesn\u2019t yell at them all the time. They\u2019re pretty easily impressed. Their needs are small.<\/p>\n<p>Remember this. Don\u2019t lie to yourself about it. Make your work decisions accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Letterman was the king of late night. His shows ran for 33 seasons making him the longest-serving late night talk show host in the history of American television. At its peak, he was making something like $30 million a year, watched by an audience of many millions every week. As the show went on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Their Needs Are So Modest - The Daily Dad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dailydad.com\/their-needs-are-so-modest\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Their Needs Are So Modest - The Daily Dad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Letterman was the king of late night. His shows ran for 33 seasons making him the longest-serving late night talk show host in the history of American television. At its peak, he was making something like $30 million a year, watched by an audience of many millions every week. 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