Rui CarmoGiven the past few days, I think we can lay off Google for the time being, given that Buzz just got another round of fixes and they mostly make sense (even though one is reminded of the expression “defective by design”), and stop bashing the endless Facebook redesigns that take away basic things like filtering (which, incidentally, Google Reader still doesn’t do, but alas), and turn to that oft-ignored portion of our existence called “real life”1.
Becoming a parent sort of puts things into perspective. Becoming a parent for the second time is like having perspective smashed in your head by way of “a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick”:Wikipedia:Zaphod_Beeblebrox#Pan-Galactic_Gargle_Blaster, and the resulting migraine isn’t pretty.
And no, it doesn’t quite happen like this:
I’m very happy to have my second kid at home now, even considering that having to wake up two to three times in the middle of the night to deal with bottles, changing diapers, putting the older one back to bed after being woken up by all the ruckus and whatnot is turning my brain to mush.
Amazingly, I feel a whole lot better than I did in the preceding few weeks, even though I’m basically exhausted and could sleep on pointy rocks if I had to. You know why? Because I’m doing stuff that matters to me.
I think that will be the biggest challenge I have to face this year – finding ways to be with my kids more often and give me a better work-life balance.
Going completely offline for a while would certainly have happened by now If I didn’t need a creative outlet and enjoyed writing so much, but once I go back to a full work schedule something’s gotta give…
—
1 Facebook has slightly improved its geek cred by doing XMPP chat (an insanely useful feature that Twitter killed off, never to be seen again), but that doesn’t mean they’re safe at this point.