Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

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As a former kid who grew up with a dad whose first and greatest love was antique cars, I would first recommend against taking up a time-consuming hobby while having a full time job and raising kids. You have the opportunity to be a tremendous influence on a young person's life; Richard Feynman described this very eloquently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=695Flhmjmg4. Feynman would not have become Feynman without all the time he and his father spent together.

If you try to give up sleep, it will make you less alert around your kids. Aside from potentially exacerbating a dangerous situation should one occur, it will also make you less responsive to them, less playful, and less patient. They will eventually learn to just leave you alone -- even if that's not what you intend -- and that will weaken your bond with them and make them less communicative and more rebellious later on.

I hope this isn't coming across as a lecture or a moral crusade. I'm not implying anything about how you are as a father. Just that, if you have a full time job and two kids, then you really don't have the time left to spend on personal projects or freelancing without sacrificing some of your relationship with your kids. The time you spend on freelancing or personal projects could instead be spent reading to them, playing with them, doing cool science-y things with them, and those things are all really important.

If someone had discussed this with my father while I was still young, I might still have something to say to the man.

I appreciate your response very much.

I enjoyed that video a lot as well. Thank you for your thoughts, I don't think you came across as didactic, as you might have feared, just trying to show me what's really important, and I do take that to heart.

I lost my father at a very young age, and I always told myself that I would be there for my kids, and I'm going to stick to that, no matter what. I love my boy, and my soon-to-be-here boy or girl, and I truly want the best for them.

I realize that, after reading all the responses, I probably framed the question poorly. Here's some better context, I hope:

I work full-time during the day, my wife watches the boy during the day, and then when I get home, we have ~30 minutes together, and then she goes to work till about 11pm (3 - 5 days/week depending on her schedule), as I take care of our son in the evening, so I focus on that, until he goes to sleep between 8:30 - 9:30pm. Money is tight for us, and I'm bring to get additional freelance work to supplement our income to better make ends meet, and hopefully allow my wife to tapper off of work (as she gets further in her pregnancy).

All in all, trying to work when he's asleep in the evening, or in the morning is tough, as it's tiring. :) But perhaps I just need to suck it up. :)

I'm sorry, I shouldn't've assumed you were wanting to work on personal projects. Wanting to be a little more financially secure makes a lot more sense.

There's a limited amount of sucking-it-up that you can do. Take care of yourself. :-)

I think you might need to update the "about:" field in your profile. This is the most valuable comment in this thread, despite being almost totally not what the OP was looking for. Frankly, some of the other comments are downright harmful (more carry out?? hire a babysitter?).

I don't even have kids, but thanks for this reminder.

Ya, your comment sound a lot like what my kid might be saying to me 20 years down the road, if I don't do thing right. I really don't want to sacrifice those precious moment of reading together, playing, etc etc with him.

That is why I try really hard to squeeze out time that wouldn't impact our relationship to work. It is hard but it is something I strive to do.

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