Meet Joel 2.0

A story about rebuilding my home, faith, creativity, health, and life with my boys.

Sometimes life quietly begins a new chapter before you realize you’ve already started writing it. Other times, the change is impossible to miss.

A marriage ends.

You sell a home.

Nearly everything you own ends up packed inside boxes.

Years of work disappear from your YouTube channel.

You move back in with your parents at 41.

And while you’re trying to understand exactly how you arrived there, another house slowly begins rising from an empty patch of dirt.

The past few years—and especially 2026—have stretched me in ways I never expected. There were difficult conversations, frustrating decisions, sleepless nights, mistakes, moments of doubt, and more paperwork than anyone should ever have to see in one lifetime.

But this isn’t a story about divorce.

It’s a story about rebuilding.

And somewhere along the way, I realized I was building far more than a house.

Starting With a Foundation

When Bennett, Hudson, and I first visited the property that would eventually become our new home, there wasn’t much to see.

No walls.

No roof.

No kitchen.

Just a concrete basement surrounded by dirt.

To anyone else, it probably looked like an ordinary construction site.

To me, it looked like a foundation.

That same day, a fire broke out at my parents’ shop in Illinois. Several things caught fire and caused plenty of damage, but thankfully, the flames never reached the main buildings.

One family property was nearly damaged by fire while another was beginning to rise from concrete.

Some things can change in an instant. Other things take months—or years—to build. Both remind you not to take anything for granted.

House hunting is an interesting experience. You walk through someone else’s home, open closets you don’t own, imagine where your furniture might fit, and try to decide whether you can picture building a life there.

No pressure.

For me, the decision wasn’t only about countertops, square footage, or the size of the garage. I wasn’t simply looking for a house that worked for me.

I was looking for a home that worked for the three of us.

I wanted Bennett and Hudson to have rooms of their own. Not borrowed space. Not an arrangement that made them feel as though they had to fit around someone else’s life. I wanted them to open a door and know that the room on the other side belonged to them.

Children shouldn’t have to wonder whether there’s enough room for them in their father’s life.

There should always be room.

That mattered more to me than any upgrade, floor plan, or feature a builder could offer.

Watching Something New Take Shape

Over the following months, the concrete basement began turning into something we could recognize.

First, there was dirt.

Then concrete.

Then walls.

Then rooms.

I probably visited the construction site more often than the builders thought was normal, which is perfectly reasonable behavior when you’re building a house.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

There was even one visit when every door had been locked. A normal person probably would have accepted that the house was closed and returned another day.

However…we found an unlocked window.

I pushed Bennett up the side of the house and through it so he could unlock a door for us.

I’m not necessarily recommending this as home-buying advice, but we got inside. I’m also grateful Hudson didn’t have to explain to anyone why his dad was boosting his brother through the window of a house we didn’t technically own yet.

Every visit gave us something tangible to look forward to. Another wall appeared. A doorway took shape. A room that had existed only on a floor plan suddenly became real.

Watching the process reminded me that meaningful things take time. Foundations come first. Progress isn’t always dramatic, and sometimes the most important work happens before there’s anything impressive to photograph.

As the house took shape, I began to understand that God was teaching me the same lesson about my life.

I thought I was waiting for a house to be built.

God was teaching me patience.

Learning From the People Who Built Me

While professionals were building the new house, I traveled to Wisconsin and helped my dad build a custom wooden staircase at a cabin.

My dad has always known how to build things. Growing up, my brothers and I watched him remodel rooms, tear down walls, install floors, build furniture, and turn ideas into something real.

If our family sees something we want, there’s a good chance we won’t buy it.

We’ll try to build it.

Sometimes successfully.

Sometimes after several trips back to the hardware store.

Helping my dad with that staircase reminded me where much of my willingness to figure things out comes from. I wasn’t simply waiting for someone else to build my future. I came from people who taught me how to get my hands dirty, solve problems, make mistakes, and keep working until the pieces fit.

Later that summer, my brothers and I began tearing apart our parents’ old deck so we could build a new one.

Apparently, one construction project wasn’t enough.

There was something fitting about watching one home being built while helping rebuild part of another.

During that same summer, my brother Andrew was building a shop of his own. Everywhere I looked, it seemed as though someone in our family was building, rebuilding, repairing, or turning an idea into something real.

Watching his shop take shape felt like another reminder that this is simply what our family does. We imagine what something could become, gather the tools, and start building. We may not always know exactly how every piece will come together when we begin, but that has rarely stopped any of us from trying.

As I was finishing this story, my brother Nick was also beginning a new chapter of his own. Just a week ago, he moved into a building near Chicago that he now owns. He’ll live in one part of it while two tenants rent the others.

I haven’t had an opportunity to visit yet, but he has been sending me pictures as he moves in, works on the property, and begins turning it into something of his own. There are rooms to organize, outdoor spaces to improve, and already plenty of ideas for what the building could become.

I’m incredibly proud of him.

Sometimes Nick talks as though time is moving faster than he would like and there are still too many things he wants to accomplish. I hope when he looks around at what he has already built for himself, he can see what the rest of us see.

He isn’t behind.

He isn’t running out of time.

He’s still building.

Apparently, none of the Feld brothers knows how to move into a place and simply leave it alone.

I thought this chapter was only about watching my own house take shape.

Instead, it reminded me how much of who I am was shaped by the people around me.

Packing Up One Life

As the new house went up, the Maple Grove house had to come apart.

We rented a storage unit and began moving everything out. A storage unit is basically a life-size game of Tetris, except every piece is heavier than it looks and contains something you’ll suddenly need the moment it becomes buried in the back.

There was also furniture shopping because apparently buying furniture for rooms that don’t completely exist yet is part of building a house.

Eventually, the Maple Grove home went up for sale.

Life didn’t stop simply because we were surrounded by boxes. We went to a Twins game and watched Bennett’s band perform outside Target Field. Bennett and I saw Harry Potter at the Orpheum, and the three of us completed a 5K at the boys’ school.

I wouldn’t pretend we suddenly became professional runners, but all three of us crossed the finish line.

It was a start.

And I’ve learned a few things lately about the importance of starting with a solid foundation.

As spring continued, the new house gained siding, drywall, cabinets, and garage doors. Rooms that had once been separated by wooden framing finally began looking like places where daily life could happen.

Meanwhile, the old house sold.

Leaving was complicated.

A house can hold good memories and difficult ones at the same time. It can represent dreams, mistakes, celebrations, arguments, ordinary evenings, and years of life that can’t be neatly divided into boxes marked “keep” and “discard.”

I didn’t need to pretend none of it mattered.

It did.

I also didn’t need to remain somewhere simply because leaving was difficult.

Sometimes you can spend so much energy trying to make a situation work that you stop asking whether it’s healthy for anyone involved. You learn that peace isn’t the same as avoiding conflict, respect shouldn’t disappear during disagreement, and love can’t thrive when every action becomes another mark on a scoreboard.

Moving forward sometimes means accepting that a place can remain important without remaining yours.

I closed the door, drove away, and moved back in with my parents in Illinois at 41 years old.

That sentence was never part of my life plan.

Then again, neither was most of what brought me there.

Starting Over

At first, part of me felt as though I were moving backward. I had been independent for years, built a career, raised two boys, owned a home, and created a life of my own.

Suddenly, I was back under my parents’ roof.

Humbling?

Absolutely.

But sometimes the circumstances you would never choose become the experiences you never knew you needed.

Living with my parents gave me time with them that most adults don’t get. It gave me conversations over coffee, meals together, random adventures, and an opportunity to know my parents differently—not only as Mom and Dad, but as people.

During that time, Bennett and Hudson finished another school year. Bennett was preparing to begin his freshman year of high school, while Hudson was getting ready to enter sixth grade and start middle school.

I’m still trying to understand how that happened.

It seems like only yesterday that I was photographing Bennett beside the Twin Lakes Elementary sign on his first day of kindergarten. Now he’s beginning high school.

Hudson isn’t the little boy holding a blue candy cane for my camera anymore either. He’s starting middle school, asking bigger questions, and continuing to become his own person.

My brother Nick helped Bennett make a slingshot from a tree branch we found. It was a simple project, but it represented what I hoped this summer would give my boys: time with family, opportunities to learn with their hands, and memories with people who love having them around.

They didn’t have to earn their place in the family.

They didn’t have to compete for space or attention.

They could simply be themselves.

One afternoon, I caught my mom playing the piano. I knew she could play, but I honestly didn’t realize how well she could play.

Naturally, I took a video.

Mom playing piano summer of 2026

I photographed the flowers she had grown around the house. We walked through forest preserves, visited the windmill at Fabyan Forest Preserve, went swimming, attended rodeos, and hiked through Matthiessen State Park to find a waterfall.

Years ago, I repeatedly wrote about looking up, noticing the people around us, and appreciating the little things.

Apparently, I needed to read my own advice.

If I hadn’t moved home, I might never have learned how beautifully my mom plays piano. I might not have photographed her flowers, taken those walks with her, or watched my brothers spend this kind of time with my boys.

What initially felt like a step backward became part of the foundation for moving forward.

Sometimes the biggest blessings arrive wrapped in circumstances you never would have chosen.

The Summer We Needed

The summer wasn’t spent only thinking about houses, paperwork, or what had gone wrong.

There were friends.

There were fireworks.

There were rodeos, hiking trails, OneWheel rides, campgrounds, beaches, conversations, laughter, and reminders that life continued moving even when part of me was still catching up.

We visited my brother Eric and his girlfriend, Angel, in Indiana. We spent time with my childhood friend Dave at “The Lake,” where Dave once again proved that he has never met a fireworks budget he couldn’t exceed, and also visited Stamper and Jessica at their campground. Old friends never die.

We rode OneWheels through downtown Batavia. Bennett, Hudson, Nick and I explored Chicago, rode along the lakefront, and visited Chinatown. We spent time at Ogden Dunes and made more trips between Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana than I care to calculate.

A massive storm also came through Aurora. Trees came down, branches covered the property, and roofs were damaged. We spent hours cutting branches and logs and cleaning up the mess together.

Nick lost his drone in a tree and broke it.

The storm claimed quite a few things that day.

Sadly, the drone was among them.

It wasn’t the kind of family activity anyone had planned, but everyone showed up and got to work.

That’s what my family does.

We build staircases.

We replace decks.

We cut fallen trees.

We tease one another without mercy.

And when something goes wrong, we show up.

Looking back, those months weren’t simply the time I spent waiting for a house to be completed. They were filled with endings, beginnings, family, friendship, projects, laughter, fire, storms, trails, rodeos, windmills, waterfalls, and more driving than I care to calculate.

All summer, something was being built, repaired, cleared away, or prepared for what came next.

Including me.

Faith Through the Unknown

I have prayed more during this season than at any other time in my life.

Some prayers were thoughtful. Others were probably little more than:

“God, I need help.”

I prayed for guidance, wisdom, patience, peace, and reassurance that everything would eventually be okay. I didn’t always know what the answer would look like. I didn’t know when it would come. There were moments when I couldn’t see how all the pieces could possibly fit together.

But they did.

Doors opened at the right time. The right people appeared. Problems that once seemed impossible found solutions. Things I had worried about for weeks sometimes resolved themselves in ways I never could have planned.

I don’t believe faith means life will always be easy. I also don’t believe every prayer is answered exactly as we expect.

What I do believe is that God was present through all of it and still is.

I thought I was praying for answers.

God was changing the questions I was asking.

Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” I began asking, “Who do I want to become because of it?”

That change didn’t happen overnight.

But it changed everything.

What I Want Relationships to Feel Like

There were awkward moments during this season because, apparently, life enjoys testing whether you can practice all those lessons about patience and grace when your past unexpectedly crosses paths with your present.

Some situations were uncomfortable. Some were confusing. A few eventually became stories I could laugh about.

Healing isn’t a straight line.

Neither is learning how to open your life to new people after a relationship ends.

I made mistakes. There are conversations I wish I had handled differently, moments when I could have listened better, and things I understand now that I didn’t understand then.

But I also learned that you shouldn’t have to make yourself smaller to preserve a relationship. The people you love shouldn’t have to shrink either.

A healthy home should have room for everyone inside it—not only physically, but emotionally.

It should be a place where people are listened to and respected, even when they disagree. A place where encouragement is given freely, not withheld until someone earns it. A place where another person’s goals aren’t treated as competition or inconvenience.

Support doesn’t mean agreeing with every idea. It means caring enough to listen, offering honest guidance, and wanting the people you love to become the best versions of themselves.

I don’t want a relationship where someone wins and someone loses.

I don’t want love measured by who did more, sacrificed more, apologized first, or was right the last time.

A relationship shouldn’t feel like a scoreboard.

It should feel like a team.

I know more clearly what I value now: kindness, honesty, support, encouragement, curiosity, faith, communication, and peace.

If I share this home with someone someday, I hope it will be with a person who sees life as something we build together. Someone who supports my goals while allowing me to support hers. Someone who understands that Bennett and Hudson aren’t visitors passing through my life—they are a permanent and deeply important part of it.

But this chapter isn’t waiting for someone else to arrive before it can begin.

It has already started.

Starting Over Online Too

One of the more unexpected parts of closing the previous chapter happened online.

As part of bringing the divorce process to an end, I had to remove roughly 100 videos from YouTube because they contained photographs and memories involving people who were part of that former life.

It wasn’t a creative decision I wanted to make.

Those videos represented years of ideas, work, memories, and time spent building something. When the process was finished, my channel had been reduced to around 15 publicly available videos.

In many ways, I was starting over there too.

At first, it was frustrating.

Actually, let’s be honest—it was more than frustrating.

Those memories could have lived on and been fought for, but sometimes you need to learn when to pick your battles.

Once the videos were gone and the dust settled, I began looking at the nearly empty channel differently.

I couldn’t control what had to come down.

I could control what I created next.

I thought I was rebuilding a YouTube channel.

I was rebuilding my confidence.

The next version of Learn with Joel won’t erase what came before it. It will reflect who I am now: a father, photographer, teacher, creator, Apple nerd, and someone who still believes technology should make life easier—not make people feel stupid.

Fifteen videos may not look like much compared with what was there before.

But fifteen isn’t zero.

It’s a foundation.

And I’ve learned a few things about foundations lately.

I now have a new space in which to grow, learn, build, and share. The entire purpose of Learn with Joel was to help others. Somewhere along the way, I became distracted and didn’t give it everything I wanted to.

I also learned how important it is to have people around you who believe in what you’re building.

You shouldn’t need everyone to understand your dream, but the people closest to you shouldn’t make you feel foolish for having one. Support can be as simple as asking a question, celebrating progress, or recognizing that something matters because it matters to someone you love.

Now I have a new space, a renewed purpose, and a new plan.

The office didn’t instantly become the creative space I imagined. Like everything else in this story, it had to be built one piece at a time.

I arranged the equipment, installed shelves, and created a new Learn with Joel sign for the wall. I laid out every letter, painted the pieces, and carefully worked through where everything needed to go. It may have been a relatively small project compared with building an entire house, but seeing those words hanging behind my desk made the new beginning feel real.

This wasn’t simply a room where I could place a computer and record videos.

It was a space where I could begin creating again.

Building a Healthier Life

This season also forced me to think about my health.

Not simply how I look.

Not merely a number on a scale.

I started thinking about the kind of life I want to be physically capable of living.

I want the energy to travel with my boys. I want to hike farther, explore new places, carry my camera without feeling exhausted, and keep saying yes to adventures.

Someday, I’d like to chase grandchildren around a backyard.

Preferably without needing a recovery day afterward.

Health is easy to postpone because there’s always something more urgent. Work needs attention. The house needs something. Emails keep arriving. There’s always another video to make or project to finish.

But there will never be a perfect time to begin.

That 5K with Bennett and Hudson didn’t transform us into runners overnight, but it represented a decision to start.

One of the lessons hidden throughout my old writing was something I apparently needed to tell myself again:

Stop making excuses.

Start moving.

The goal isn’t perfection.

The goal is to be healthier, stronger, and more present for the people I love.

I’m not finished.

I’m beginning.

Moving In

Eventually, the waiting ended.

Move-in day arrived.

The house that had started as an idea—and then a concrete foundation surrounded by dirt—was finally ours. The rooms were no longer lines on a floor plan or spaces we visited while construction crews were away.

They were ours.

The boxes were everywhere, the walls were mostly empty, and there was still plenty of work ahead of us.

But we were home.

When I began writing this story, I hadn’t moved in yet. I could only imagine what the first days inside the house would feel like.

Now I know.

A newly finished house doesn’t instantly feel complete. Rooms still need furniture. Pictures still need to be hung. Boxes somehow continue multiplying, even after you’re certain you’ve opened the last one.

The house may be finished, but our home is still being created.

And maybe that’s exactly how it should be.

The Most Important Rooms

People have asked what excites me most about the new house.

The office is important. It’s becoming the place where I rebuild Learn with Joel, edit photographs, create videos, and probably collect more technology than one person reasonably needs.

The garage will become a place for projects. The kitchen will hold family meals, conversations, and coffee. The backyard will create space for adventures, evenings outside, and memories that haven’t happened yet.

But the two most important rooms belong to Bennett and Hudson.

More than anything, I wanted my boys to have a place that felt like home.

Not simply somewhere they stay every other week.

Somewhere they belong.

Seeing them light up because they finally had their own spaces meant more to me than any other part of this house.

Their rooms say something important:

You belong here.

You don’t need to ask permission to take up space.

You aren’t an inconvenience that needs to be worked around.

This is your home too.

I want their rooms to reflect who they are. I want them to feel safe here. I want them to know that no matter how old they become, they will always have a home with Dad.

I imagine homework around the kitchen table, movie nights, Nerf battles in the hallway, laughter coming from their rooms when they’re supposed to be sleeping, and shoes abandoned in places where shoes clearly don’t belong.

The little things.

The things that eventually become the memories we miss most.

I thought I was building bedrooms.

I was building memories my boys haven’t made yet.

What Home Means Now

For a long time, I thought home was a physical place.

A house.

An address.

A collection of rooms filled with furniture, photographs, and everything accumulated along the way.

I understand it differently now.

A home isn’t measured in square footage. It’s measured by the peace you feel when you walk through the front door.

It’s the place where you can be yourself without wondering whether that version of you is acceptable.

Where your children know they’re loved and never have to question whether they belong.

Where faith has room to grow.

Where friends feel welcome.

Where people listen to understand—not simply to prepare their next response.

Where mistakes can be discussed without being stored away as ammunition.

Where goals are encouraged.

Where differences are respected.

Where nobody keeps score.

Where laughter is louder than whatever difficult season came before it.

This house isn’t about replacing the past.

It’s about making room for the future.

Building More Than a House

I’m not sharing this because I want sympathy.

There are people facing hardships far greater than mine. Every person you meet carries a story, and most of us know only a small portion of what someone else is walking through.

I’m also not sharing this to make someone else the villain.

Relationships are complicated. People make mistakes. Sometimes two people can experience the same years very differently.

This is simply what I learned from mine.

Life doesn’t always follow the plan.

Relationships can end.

Homes can be sold.

Creative work can disappear.

You can find yourself living with your parents again at 41 while wondering how you arrived there.

You can make mistakes.

You can hurt.

You can ask for help.

You can pray without knowing what happens next.

You can decide that respect, support, peace, and room for your children are no longer things you’re willing to compromise.

And you can still move forward.

This season included frustration, disappointment, humility, laughter, friendship, family, prayer, and more trips to a construction site than I could possibly count.

It also gave me clarity.

I know the kind of father I want to be.

I know the kind of relationships I want to build.

I know my health deserves attention.

I know I still have stories to tell, photographs to take, videos to create, and places to explore.

Most importantly, I know I wasn’t walking through any of it alone.

God was present.

My parents were present.

My boys were present.

My family and friends were present.

And slowly, piece by piece, everything began falling into place.

The Next Chapter

The house is now finished, but the rooms—and the people living inside them—are still works in progress.

And maybe that’s the point.

There will always be another room to improve, another lesson to learn, another adventure to take with my boys, another trail to hike, another sunset to photograph, another video to create, and another opportunity to become a little more like the man I hope to be.

The boxes continue to be unpacked.

The office lights are on.

The boys are settling into their rooms.

I drink my coffee in a home that once existed only as an idea and a patch of dirt.