Or, like, damn, this thing needs continual feeding. You can't stop.
Yeah, I said that, too. At least the kid will cry if it's hungry to remind you. One of my former bosses actually did the "forget about the kid" thing -- the baby was asleep and she flaked and got all the way to work before she remembered it was her turn to drop him at daycare.
I think a lot of life is like that. Often enough, it's not, for example, the single massive harm that fucks people up, but rather the wear of a small harm, repeated daily, ad infinitum, that really fucks people up. And, more closely related to your actual post, I've had a couple of mothers tell me that the difficulty of children is precisely as you've described it: day after day, you have to pay a certain amount of attention to a series of trivial tasks, and over time, that can feel overwhelming.
this thing needs continual feeding. You can't stop.
Sometimes I feel the same way about my own body.
Kids are surprisingly durable -- sure, you need to feed them at regular intervals, but they do announce their needs.
(Although the story that kills me every time it happens is the 'baby dies in a hot car because a parent forgot to take it to day care.' That couldn't happen to me, because we've never had a 'drive to day care' routine, but it is horrifyingly possible. A newish (say, less than 9 months old) baby is entirely invisible from the front seat if it's in a backwards facing carseat, and they mostly fall asleep in cars. If you're the kind of person who means to run an errand after work but finds themselves halfway home in their normal routine before they remember that they meant to do something different, like I am, you can totally imagine a one-day change in the routine, being supposed to drop the kid off when usually your partner does it, and forgetting completely by the time you pulled out of the driveway. I hate reading those stories.)
That's kind of how life tricks you, though. The older you get, the more you find yourself doing these responsible things, and the more you do them, the more they become part of who or what you are. When I was in my 20s, I shaped my "career" on not having to get out of bed before 9am. Now, only a decade later, I'm the sort of guy who wakes up at 7.30am on the fricking weekend. On one hand, that's cool, because it means I get more done. On the other hand, I feel I'm not even me anymore, in a way. It's like life's pulled some sort of tai chi move on me or something.
I've read that, in terms of emotional well-being, people are better able to cope with major emergencies than with chronic, niggling problems. Eg a heart attack can be psychologically far less debilitating than a chronic bad back.
re: 7
I can believe that. I'm quite good in emergencies or acutely stressful situations.
The day to day grind on the other hand, can just wear me down.
8: Perhaps a heart attack to lift your spirits?
day after day, you have to pay a certain amount of attention to a series of trivial tasks
Yeah, this sums it up. When it's just you, you can decide you'd rather just eat a bag of potato chips in front of the TV than fix dinner. Or stop at a bar on the way home and unwind. With a baby, you get the daily grind of get home from work, empty the dishwasher, start fixing dinner, change the diaper, feed the kid while you try to eat your own, clean the dishes, get the kid in the tub, read the books, change the diaper, get them settled down to bed, clean up the toy explosion, get the laundry started. Okay, now you can sit down and watch an hour of television before the clothes get dry. Then fold the clothes, put them away, and drag your ass to bed, hoping they'll not wake up in the middle of the night hollering. Repeat every day for two years. Weekends and holidays are more work rather than less.
How daycare workers do this all day, then go home to their own kids is a mystery to me. They might just be the most underpaid workers in all of American society.
I think I'd prefer someone else to be having the heart attack. I'll just do the 'looking decisive and unshaven' part.
Repeat every day for two years.
After that they're on their own, right?
11 -- Yeah that's right, it's always someone else has to have the heart attacks, right? -- I guess you're just too good and pure and delicate to dirty your own fucking hands with the grunt work.
After that, it gets a lot easier since they spend their evenings stitching tennis shoes at the factory.
At least the kid will cry if it's hungry to remind you.
I didn't, apparently. The nurses had some very strong words for my mother.
Whenever I try to start a new habit, I always think to myself, "Oh shit, I've got to do this every day." Then the aggregate weight of all the times I would have to do it hits me all at once, and it's overwhelming, even if it's a minor thing.
I share the predilection here for handling emergencies rather than day-to-day responsibilities. But not everyone is like this. A lot of people hate stressful situations, and are fairly dependable day-to-day.
I wonder if this says something about the types of personalities drawn to commenting on blogs. We're basically all procrastinating, right?
re: 13
I went to hospital once with a suspected heart attack. Two residents and a junior cardiologist thought I'd had one.
Until some senior consultant turned up and told them they were bloody nuts and that my EEG was perfectly healthy.*
The experience -- my treatment left something to be desired -- didn't really leave me enamoured of emergency rooms.
* I'd had an adverse reaction to some medication that had led to many of the same symptoms -- chest pain, shortness of breath, etc.
I have a three year old niece. After twenty minutes in her company I am exhausted and irritable and wishing it were still legal to dope children with laudanum. I can't cope with her wee shrill voice, her constant movement and her continual demands for attention. I have been told by people who know children she's a normal specimen.
This is why I don't have kids and I marvel at the superhuman powers of those who do.
I've been thinking a lot about situations I don't want to be in, and I think Becks is the exact opposite of me. I'm fine doing the exact same thing every morning to make sure nothing falls apart, but just to think about the possibility that the freezer will break, thus disrupting all my plans for the day and costing me lots of money, fills me with a horrible sense of dread.
The best example I can think of is owning a car. Every day I think "If I do routine maintenance on this car, it won't break down nearly as soon." But then I think "What is routine maintenance? I see no way of figuring out what routine maintenance actually consists of." And then I just know that when the car breaks down I will be informed of what I could have done to prevent it, and I will feel like a failure.
Whenever I try to start a new habit
William Burroughs wrote a piece I found really interesting -- I think it was an introduction to a late edition of Junkie -- about the interval when you are starting a new habit where it is starting to get tedious to shoot up every day.
Isn't it, from a certain perspective, a good thing that responsibilities keep you from sitting in front of the TV eating chips? What if you were naturally inclined to do that all the time?
Responsibilities, such as, commenting on blogs.
21: Then when you add in tying off your kids and helping them shoot up every day, it just becomes overwhelming.
I have a three year old niece. After twenty minutes in her company I am exhausted and irritable and wishing it were still legal to dope children with laudanum.
You can always take the laudanum yourself. Although I think your brain makes its own opiates when you have a kid. It seems to have worked for my sisters. My new theory: post-partum depression occurs when brain fails to produce mother-opiates.
Cryptic Ned: just change the oil once each season. Then no one can fault you.
I'm not the slightest bit surprised how much this concern of Becks' resonates here; the gifted-and-talented/bored-at-work phenotype we all share runs to that. My happiest days at work have always been coping with disasters, when I've felt I could show my worth and feel alive; my worst have always been when some tedious and necessary task has been left just a little too long, and still I can't motivate myself to do it.
As to anxieties about being a parent, you've heard it a million times, but here it is again: don't worry, you'll be a natural (most of us are), the qualities you're afraid of in yourself will make you better at it.
I mean, what if your whole life turned into one big potato chip?
The experience -- my treatment left something to be desired -- didn't really leave me enamoured of emergency rooms.
Dikembe Mutombo to the rescue!
I'm the same way, immediate emergency-type stuff is much easier for me to deal with than day-after-day tasks. I think it has to do with the clearer deadlines that accompany crisis tasks. If I know that there's no way to say "I'll get to it tomorrow", then I'll just do it. But without that sense of urgency, nothing will get done. Even for waking up in the morning--if I don't want to get up at 1 in the afternoon on the weekend, I have to come up with something that has to get done at 9 a.m.
Yeah. Having kids really introduces an entirely new concept of personal space. As in, there is no such thing.
Hells yes. I've rounded 35 and heading for 40 without ever having worn a tie to work (heck, I've only worn one once at all, because someone asked reaaaaaly nicely). 10am sounds like a normal time to start that, too. Helps a bit that these days though, I'm a bit older, so I rarely come home after 2am more than two weekdays in a given week....
And I'm going to handle a child?
It's all basically because I'm a selfish bastard, natch.
1) Re: kids: Many people simply get used to it. You tune the uninteresting stimuli out and pay attention to the important stimuli.
2) Re: car maintenence: It turns out there do exist things like maintenence schedules which vary a bit by car but are basically followable. This was beyond helpful to me.
I slept better, was more disciplined, felt healthier, and enjoyed my free time more back when I had a horribly repetitive and unrewarding job. At the same time, I didn't have any responsibilities supervising other people most of the time I worked there and quit around the time I could have been promoted.
Do you really have schools that start at 7.30? That's bonkers. Every day chez Valentine is a race against the clock to make it there by nine.
I never forgot to take any kids to daycare but I did forget to pick one up a couple of times. Having to aplogize to a daycare worker who's been forced to stay an hour late at work was chastening to say the least. So - not great at routine, but surprisingly not much good in a crisis either.....