- Pushing around a stroller really made my shoulders ache & elevators and buses were annoying, so I'd wear the baby with an Ergo when possible.
- One thing I started when my kid reached toddler age was visit every playground in the city by bike or transit. It was a good way to combine my interests & child rearing, and felt like a huge accomplishment as it took several years!
The first is reasonable, but I have barely tried. The reason is that I *like* having the ability to bring a bunch of stuff with us if we are far from the house. Using the Ergobaby with a backpack feels . . . nuts!
I'm a similar age to you Reece, and I am going through a lot of the same thoughts:
- I decided to not finish my Computer Science degree, despite being great at coding and problem solving. I see where my friends and university colleagues ended up (both financially and location wise) and cannot help but feel jealous and frankly bad at decision making.
- I follow a lot of people on social media who seem to always be on exciting vacations multiple times a year. Whenever I see their posts I feel as if I'm missing out on a better lifestyle.
Those are just a few examples. But, in contemplating about it more and reading your blog I realize that where I am at now is a culmination of both my circumstances and life decisions. All of that is set it stone, so the best I can do moving forward is to make the best decisions possible to get me where I want to be. There's also an aspect of also owning your past decisions, and your flaws as a human (we all have them) instead of dwelling on them too much.
Thanks for the blog post, it was a nice read and got me thinking.
If you feel bad about not finishing it, you ought to consider finishing it! That being said, you could probably find a job without it, but it might be harder than just finishing the degree would be! I try to not pay too much mind to vacations because I do think travel is particularly susceptible to making you think people are living a life that they aren't.
I think the idea here is nice, but comparing ourselves to others is such a standard part of the human experience that it seems extreme to suggest we should never do it. Sure it can be taken too far, but it's also a good way to inspire us, and to learn etc. etc.!
I had a similar moment with a recent trip I went on - I do take quite a few photos, often of nature or built environment, when I'm out and about at gardens and museums -
But nothing has stuck nor inspired me as much as that time that, while still experiencing the remnants of a whack of Covid, plonking down on a bench on a dock and sketching out Funchal as I saw fit to remember it. Not even an exact recreation, no colour, just sketchy, short, inexact lines of what stood out to my eyes, and out of all the places I've ever visited, that one shot of Funchal by the docks staring up into the foggy mountains is stuck in my head, and I still remember it fondly despite having a nasty illness at the time.
I'm also someone who struggles with putting records of my past up, since I have that same thing of "I don't want to mark the walls, it won't be my space someday soon anyway" and feeling a bit detached from all the great and difficult things I've done. It's doubly worse that working in software, it's a _good_ thing if the things we made are allowed to fade out, because it shouldn't be running in prod some twenty years later! (I am very envious of architects and civil engineers, since they have much the opposite, _and_ their legacies are literally physical monoliths.) But these "anchors", as I call them, help return us not just to the past but to the present by reminding us that "this was then, and I have changed since", rather than letting our minds blur everything into a haze.
Yeah, I'm moving soon and one of my key priorities is to be willing to put stuff up on the wall. I think I wrote about this in a previous post but literally nothing is ever permanent, and the extent to which permanence is sold is massively overblown. (People pay a lot for a sense of permanence even when again you can never really get it). I think a hard thing about software is that sort of like YouTube in a way there aren't that many anchors to be found anyways. So much of it is numbers and data, but not objects or moments.
I enjoy traveling a lot but I think what I really need to do is try to create some of those great moments I have when traveling right at home.
Some older dad thoughts:
- Pushing around a stroller really made my shoulders ache & elevators and buses were annoying, so I'd wear the baby with an Ergo when possible.
- One thing I started when my kid reached toddler age was visit every playground in the city by bike or transit. It was a good way to combine my interests & child rearing, and felt like a huge accomplishment as it took several years!
Haha, I love your second idea.
The first is reasonable, but I have barely tried. The reason is that I *like* having the ability to bring a bunch of stuff with us if we are far from the house. Using the Ergobaby with a backpack feels . . . nuts!
Ergo + Backpack helps balance you out :-)
It's pretty warm on a hot day though!
Interesting! That seems pretty hardcore! But interesting
I'm a similar age to you Reece, and I am going through a lot of the same thoughts:
- I decided to not finish my Computer Science degree, despite being great at coding and problem solving. I see where my friends and university colleagues ended up (both financially and location wise) and cannot help but feel jealous and frankly bad at decision making.
- I follow a lot of people on social media who seem to always be on exciting vacations multiple times a year. Whenever I see their posts I feel as if I'm missing out on a better lifestyle.
Those are just a few examples. But, in contemplating about it more and reading your blog I realize that where I am at now is a culmination of both my circumstances and life decisions. All of that is set it stone, so the best I can do moving forward is to make the best decisions possible to get me where I want to be. There's also an aspect of also owning your past decisions, and your flaws as a human (we all have them) instead of dwelling on them too much.
Thanks for the blog post, it was a nice read and got me thinking.
Thanks Peter, I really appreciate that.
If you feel bad about not finishing it, you ought to consider finishing it! That being said, you could probably find a job without it, but it might be harder than just finishing the degree would be! I try to not pay too much mind to vacations because I do think travel is particularly susceptible to making you think people are living a life that they aren't.
One thing I learned in order to stop myself getting miserable is "never compare yourself to others". Never ever.
I think the idea here is nice, but comparing ourselves to others is such a standard part of the human experience that it seems extreme to suggest we should never do it. Sure it can be taken too far, but it's also a good way to inspire us, and to learn etc. etc.!
I had a similar moment with a recent trip I went on - I do take quite a few photos, often of nature or built environment, when I'm out and about at gardens and museums -
But nothing has stuck nor inspired me as much as that time that, while still experiencing the remnants of a whack of Covid, plonking down on a bench on a dock and sketching out Funchal as I saw fit to remember it. Not even an exact recreation, no colour, just sketchy, short, inexact lines of what stood out to my eyes, and out of all the places I've ever visited, that one shot of Funchal by the docks staring up into the foggy mountains is stuck in my head, and I still remember it fondly despite having a nasty illness at the time.
I'm also someone who struggles with putting records of my past up, since I have that same thing of "I don't want to mark the walls, it won't be my space someday soon anyway" and feeling a bit detached from all the great and difficult things I've done. It's doubly worse that working in software, it's a _good_ thing if the things we made are allowed to fade out, because it shouldn't be running in prod some twenty years later! (I am very envious of architects and civil engineers, since they have much the opposite, _and_ their legacies are literally physical monoliths.) But these "anchors", as I call them, help return us not just to the past but to the present by reminding us that "this was then, and I have changed since", rather than letting our minds blur everything into a haze.
Yeah, I'm moving soon and one of my key priorities is to be willing to put stuff up on the wall. I think I wrote about this in a previous post but literally nothing is ever permanent, and the extent to which permanence is sold is massively overblown. (People pay a lot for a sense of permanence even when again you can never really get it). I think a hard thing about software is that sort of like YouTube in a way there aren't that many anchors to be found anyways. So much of it is numbers and data, but not objects or moments.
I enjoy traveling a lot but I think what I really need to do is try to create some of those great moments I have when traveling right at home.