do you have kids? Family? That is the ancient receipt for a great and happy life.
Two lovers entwined pass me by
And Heaven knows I'm miserable now
I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
And Heaven knows I'm miserable now
In my life, oh, why do I give valuable time
To people who don't care if I live or die?I feel like it should (but doesn't) go without saying that people should think carefully about having kids no matter who they are or how satisfied, but especially so if they're unhappy.
Well then you get your 60s and your focus changes. Kids become adults. Family is the true legacy. We didnt come so far as society searching for netflix and chill.
> I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge.
You cannot just relax, because guess what, some human beings depends on you. But yeah, some phases are harder than others.. but thats life.
2) this may sound weird, but I do think that if you want to be a good parent (and please note, I don't actually have kids yet, so ignore this advice if it doesn't ring true) is finding ways to get your 'alone' time despite family responsibilities. I'm also an introvert, but my 'recharge' time is stuff like meditation and solo-programming and math time, so that's pretty easy to do, just set aside a few hours a day to recharge my batteries so I can be fully present for my family the rest of the time, I can see that fighting in a foreign civil war isn't exactly the type of thing you can fit into an hour in the morning before the kids wake up, but if you have similar introverted activities that recharge you that can be more easily done alongside family life, I would argue that you'll be doing your family a disservice not to do them- they deserve you at your best, which means you should give yourself time do fully recharge yourself so you can be there for them the rest of the time.
That 1.3% or about 5 days is my vacation.
I went' from ~60% free time to 1% and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
If you already have a fulfilling and happy life without children though you are throwing a wrench into a good thing with a dice roll of how it's going to turn out. Turns out, I'm not the kind of person that finds raising children fulfilling. If my life was already unfulfilling, then that wouldn't have made much difference and at least added a distraction.
There's no one to blame but me for that, but I'm here to pass on the experience.
Of course what's interesting is that while you do have the obligation to provide for and take care of your kids, you don't have the obligation to enjoy it or find it fulfilling. But people get offended if you don't, which I've never understood, as there is nothing dishonorable about it.
"If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though. I was extremely, extremely satisfied with my life before children. My kid is wonderful and healthy but as an introvert I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge"
with
"I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea." ?
Both sentences dont add up, at all.
what? We went through so many bad periods in our history..is it sarcasm?
I'm wondering how on earth are people supposed to provide for a family these days?
the techno optimism has been absolutely insane. celebrating that people won't have jobs anymore, that robots will be doing everything and that how the human species is just a stepping stone or something and if you resist you're a "specist" (famously said by Larry Page)
Times are not easy, but they are not doomish. Or, every decade there were doomish periods where you could have the same view. every. single. one. How would you feel in late 30s when big part of the world was visibly inching to global war? This is nothing and nobody knows where this current moment will lead us to.
And at work? Yeah, the clock is ticking, and in this transitory period people seem to be happily ginving up on thinking and their agency. Execs are getting more and more sociopathic. Young people more and more disenganged. The planet is getting worse and worse.
At this point I really regret that I brought my kids to life, because I'm pretty sure it will be mostly suffering that they will experience.
Rustin Cohle:
Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of non existence into
this... meat, to force a life into this... thresher. That"s... so my daughter, she
spared me the sin of being a father.