Promoted: Married >> Parent

Being Real.

After the initial change is status, and all the special attention, you are soon on your way to the old life with new added responsibilities, priorities and roles. A few weeks pass and the level on the conformability scale starts to decline. If you are anything like me, Id like to know what’s ahead on the road, not in a crazy manner, but more to the nature of being somewhat prepared.

So endless reading on baby issues, baby development, baby diapers, baby health, baby rooms, baby toys, baby wipes, baby cream, baby formula, baby monitor, baby gadgets. Research on each of these items on their seemingly limitless choices, can be stressful. Add to these, stages of baby development. It’s kind of funny, if you don’t study what to expect at different stages, you stress and read too much into new behavior. And if you read the stages, you keep waiting to mark it off your check list, constantly worrying why your baby hasn’t passed the bar.

Lets complicate it a bit more, add health to this mix, mother’s, baby’s, possibly fathers. Constant doctor visits, where they point out how high or low your child is on the average scale, further adding to the pressure.

The baby doesn’t make things easier, sure the moments of cuteness and playfulness far out weigh any of the above issues, but you cannot ignore the baby cry. I actually dread it. I always feel I am doing something wrong for him being so uncomfortable. Sleepless nights, feeding and burping issues, all of these attribute a huge percentage of the toll the parent takes.

Every step is a new challenge and at each level, we are (I am) judging, if the decision we make goes in to what and how our child develops.

Mind you I am not trying to be the least bit discouraging; I am just trying to be real.

OK, stop. We get it. Actually we don’t. If you enter parenthood, with out being cognizant of the real issues involved, things will enter a downward spiral, which will be far compounded by the stress in an ever dynamic environment.

To sum this up, Parenthood is not a new lifestyle, it is a new life.

_/sleep-less

Juggler's Ball

So after creating my first blog, I thought I had entered a new world of self expression. Excited, I vowed, to do this religiously. Unfortunately, I have 2 basic things wrong with me. My dedication and priority proportions are completely out of order. Secondly my decision capabilities are seriously hindered by just too many choices.

Anyway, as I attempt to get back (which is primarily because of reading another blog), I do want to talk about a concept I just read on rootburn. Too much of a good things, talks about PDE, a concept of digital media effect on produce and acquire vs consumption. Rajat talks about how our rate of consumption is running stagnant, where our rate of production increases.

Upon reading the concept I realized, to some degree l enact the model at a physical level. I easily get involved in too many new things, but never end up in finishing the one’s I get involved in. According to the theory mentioned above my desire to do new things, generates in me a level of production faster than I may consume, that level of production is far compounded by the ease of getting involved, further complicated by so many things available to get involved in. Even more, the rate increase causes me to reduce my attention span to appropriately distribute load, thereby adding a level of incompletion, to be addressed based on priority.

This takes away the spark that generated the interest in the first place and leaving me to find something more interesting to do, without really letting go of the first one, hence the pile up.

I find my self constantly involved, racing through things, hardly enjoying the things that caught my interest and mostly never finishing them.

My analysis of this problem is that at some level we all have to juggle. The balls we juggle are weighed unequally based on priority and interest. Interest controls rate of production and priority controls consumption. Doing it right is just a matter of finding the right interest/priority combination. I on the other hand am a very bad juggler.

_/juggle-crash