Thoughts on life, travel, and fatherhood
Thursday February 13, 2020 // Past Bedtime
Extremely short post.
Tonight for a solid ten minutes I shook at half-drank (drunk?) Gatorade bottle in front of my son and he laughed harder than I’ve ever heard someone laugh before. Which in turn caused me to laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed before.
Monday February 3, 2020 // Past Bedtime
I want to talk about something the parenting books and blogs and coworker with six kids doesn’t warn you about enough — dishes. The sheer amount of dishes one does as a new parent is mind-boggling.
Dishes take up about 4% of my waking life. How’d I get to this calculation? I’m awake from approximately 5:30 AM – 10:30 PM. That’s 17 hours or 1,020 minutes. I spend roughly 40 minutes doing dishes each day. 40/1020 = 3.9%. How can I be a 100% father when that much of my day is dedicated to a sponge?
Thursday January 23, 2020 // Lunchtime
What is important? I’m not talking about the “urgent vs. important” topic that always comes up in discussions about productivity. I’m talking about life.
What’s important in life?
As a new father, a lot of my thinking is directly related to parenthood.
Tuesday January 7, 2020 // Past Bedtime
Can I tell you a secret? It’s deep and it doesn’t want to be shared. It’s the kind of secret you have no problem keeping to yourself. There’s zero temptation to let it slip out to your friend or even your dog.
Saturday December 28, 2019 // Morning, Still Asleep
Moments ago I was in another Chrome tab attempting to work on a blog post for my other site. Work began on it two weeks ago. There’s a couple hundred words written and I’m still not to the “meat” of the post. It feels…forced.
A common monster I’ve battled over there is trying not to have it feel like work. It’s a side project. It’s supposed to be “fun” or at least not like work. It shouldn’t be soul-sucking or tax some part of my creative brain making it feel like it’s selling out or not providing value or not creating “art.”
Saturday December 21, 2019 // Morning Nap
My wife is out running errands and the little guy just fell asleep. A shot of espresso is in my system and the dog is content with a bone. As long as the nap holds, there’s no better time to attempt to write than this very second.
My son will soon be six months old. Wow. They’re right. Time flies once you become a parent. The first ~two months are kinda slow because it’s all so new and you’re exhausted. Since then though, it’s gone by faster than I could have ever imagined.
Monday December 9, 2019 // Bedtime
It’s been awhile since I’ve checked in. I haven’t forgotten about you. I’ve been buried under a mountain of work and emails and bottles and laundry. Too far buried to think about sticking my head out for even as long as Punxsutawney Phil would.
Being a working parent is rough. I knew it going into this whole thing. I wouldn’t trade it for the world (well, maybe working part and the dishes part). But I sure do wish it wasn’t 9:30 PM every night and I’m looking around thinking, “where did the day go?”. Every night. Tonight is no different.
Saturday October 19, 2019 // Evening Nap
I came across something the other day that’s stuck with me from one of those inspirational tweets or Instagram posts that magically appears in your feed without you asking for it. The exact quote escapes me but the gist of it was this:
Imagine your to-do list is blank. Literally nothing on it; like it never existed to begin with. Nothing from the past matters. Nothing you told yourself that you’d get done at some point matters. You can choose anything you’d like to work on. What is it?
This idea has been sitting with me, fermenting in the back of my brain over the past few days.
What would I work on if there was a blank canvas in front of me?
Thursday October 10, 2019 // Evening Nap
Ouch! What was that? I slapped my neck and see a smashed mosquito. Ugh, that’s going to itch for two days, isn’t it?
I step inside the house and unhook my dog from her leash. The steamy summer evening walks at sunset have turned into crisp autumn walks in the dark. Our summer trip to Asheville, North Carolina feels like a fading memory. Yeah, I never got around to finishing that blog post on it did I?
I head upstairs. Warm up my kid’s bottle and start the nighttime routine. The days are blurring together. Wake up, work, pick up kid from daycare, hang out with kid until he needs to nap, eat dinner with wife, wash dishes, do nighttime routine, go to sleep, repeat. Each day is wonderful. Each day I see my child grow and laugh and learn. Work treats me well. The Nats are winning baseball games. All is right. Until the itch sets in…
That was no mosquito that bit me. It was the Travel Bug. It’s two-inch fangs were dripping venom when it sank its teeth into my flesh.
