Father mows best

Title is a shirt that my wife got me. Its so rewarding being a parent. What everyone says, how it changes your life, is true.. you really don't expect the emotional changes that happen. I never would of guessed I would feel sad when my daughter is sick, or how little sleep you really need to run off of, or how little time you really have.

Before Quinn was born, and we lived in a condo, my wife and I started binging so many movies. A bunch of classics, we hoarded movies on our plex account and it was great. Sometimes multiple movies in a day. Basically, waking up at 7 spending time to make breakfast together, and after 4pm we could spend the whole day watching movies, or working on our hobbies. Thats like 7 hours or so after work sometimes. Weekends were literal days. You could make so much progress in anything you were working on.

Now, we usually don't get a full night sleep. Quinn usually jolts us up at least once to scream only for a minute, then fall back asleep. Thankfully, she does sleep pretty good besides that, from about 8pm to 6/7am. So before work we are more groggy, and then after work and making dinner and cleaning up for us 3, it's usually 5:30 or so. After my wife has watched the baby all day, my wife does deserve a break so I take Quinn and play with her for a bit, so thats about 6:30-7. From there I usually get about an hour to work on a project, and then at 8:15 or so my wife is finished putting the baby to bed and we can get some time together. Sometimes I can get an hour in or so there.

Weekends I swear seem like I should be able to get so much done, but in reality it's much different. Owning a house your chores pile up during the week, and almost a full day is needed to get caught up. Deep clean a room, re-organize the kitchen, the dishes have piled up, you threw all the laundry in the corner, the litter boxes need to be fully switched out, the leaves outside need raking, and the dog needs to have his poo cleaned up. We have church on Sunday, and then we like to have at least one date night out where we go out to eat together and enjoy a meal where we don't have to clean up. I try to get 2 sessions in with Quinn so thats 2 hours each day there. Theres still some hours in there where I can get some time to do some hobbies, but it's tough to get mentally focused for things like game dev. I've got some other hobbies I've started like juggling, yoyo, magic, cardistry. None of them scratch the same itch as programming, but you have to make due with what you have.

All that being said, I really do love my life. We just go through different phases. I feel like my "project" of Escape the Fate is the hardest it's ever been. Working in C, embedding lua scripting, making the sound, opengl, freetype, all of those things myself and using vi, lldb, to debug; it's a lot. It doesn't feel like a lot though. You continue to grow as a person, and as a programmer. Sometimes it may not feel like it, but we continue to get better at everything we do. Continuing to learn and grow is so beneficial to the mind. I thank my wife for being so loving, even though I know it's hard sometimes.