Parenthood

Life has changed...

This has been some year. I have become a dad. It's pretty baller. That's my excuse for not writing here, but I know that's just a convenient excuse.

Babies are great

Yeah it's great. Seriously, I didn't think I'd enjoy it so much. I keep telling people this and I'm not sure they take it how I mean it. I was, understandably, pretty apprehensive about having a kid. Almost every free second I had, I'd be like "there'll be no more of this when baby arrives", and, while there is certainly more to do all the time, both me and my wife have found some time for each other and ourselves -- more than I thought we would.

It wasn't all smooth sailing and particularly in the early days, it was brutal. Days filled with a tiny screaming bean (like nonstop). Nights filled by a screaming bean every 60 or so minutes. Tough scenes.

When everyone is running on precious little sleep, cortisol is high, mood is low. This was definitely a challenging time in general, particularly for my wife who did almost all the night feedings; sometimes our baby woke like 5/6 times -- it really sucked.

But as time went on, screaming bean got a little less screamy. When we moved her into her own room, she began sleeping better almost instantaneously! A miracle, we were finally able to sleep; sometimes, 2/3 hours at a time!

No really babies are great

Anyway, this all sounds bad doesnt it. Well it's not. Its a grind yes. You're on your feet doing things more than you want to be. Washing up, packing bags, unpacking bags, holding little fleshy potat. But therein lies the joy of it all.

You're constantly busy, filled with duty and responsibility and for what? For this little cherub; this little divine entity staring at you with utter love and joy in their eyes. You are their whole world, their teacher; the lens through which they begin to interpret this storm of electromagnetic impulses that we call life.

And this is it. It sounds simple and it sounds trite, anyone who reads this may (as I often did) roll their eyes and say "yeah, yeah, whatever...", but I'm telling ya, it's a good feeling. If you're a dog person^[1], it's similar to the feeling of seeing the devotion and love you see from your canine buddy, but, like a great Primitivo, it's richer & more complex than that - the feeling moves around and grows; it changes as the baby develops and as they cast you conspiritorial side-eye or giggle impishly at your jokes.

This goddamn blog whose domain I still pay for finally gets it's second post in a year

Anyway, finding time to write this blog has not been a major issue, but finding the motivation has. Most idle moments I like to spend horizontally playing Slay the Spire 2 on my Retroid Pocket 5 or otherwise switching my brain and body into the off position. Dad bod ahoy.

Alas, writing and publishing a blog felt a distant faraway thing. A lofty goal for someone who had ambitions outside of "keep baby alive".

So, last sunday, with a bit of "what-am-i-doing-with-my-career blues", I decided to reitre my old Gitlab-pages based workflow for releasing my blog and instead migrated to a shiny new CMS. A CMS that I "wrote"^[2] and host myself for MAXIMUM CONTROL.

How did this become another "here's my blog stack" post? I dont know, I guess that shows how boring I really am 😅.

Anyway, removing my git based workflow and replacing with a WYSIWYG markdown web editor, with drafts & preview site and CSS editing all in one place (oh, plus a claude integration, so I can have it do the CSS for me^[3]), will surely spur me into action more frequently... right...? ^[4]

Probably not, but sure. It was another slightly fun segway and antitode to no longer feeling like a competent software engineer. At least I understand all (most?) of the terms that I chuck into the LLM soup in order to produce a working application.

As ever, I proceed into the future trepidatious and awkwardly optimistic. If it all goes up in flames, then at least we all go together. Conversely, if we manage to navigate through these treacherous rocks then perhaps we'll arrive at a serene beach with piña coladas on tap and great snorkelling in the clear azure^[5] waters.