front burner

This morning so far has been perfectly illustrative of what is going to be one of the major challenges, if not THE major challenge, of child rearing.

The major question, which I'm sure everyone encounters in everything that they ever do, is "what goes on the front burner?"

That's not very profound, but there is plenty to say about it. Tai wanted me to go to the gym with her about an hour ago, and I was in the process of responding to an email about someone who was very upset because they are part of a project that has gone almost completely neglected for the past 2 weeks. This in and of itself is not a major concern of mine, as that person doesn't have anything in writing that says they have a right to be assigned new work on the project, nor that they should be paid on a regular basis, and for that matter they have already been overpaid in the past for work they never got done. So I wasn't worried about that person's concerns, but it was something I had to address because this thing I'd left on the backburner had just boiled over.

So Tai wanted me to go to the gym. "Well, I can't go to the gym -- I have to do this." Well you didn't plan ahead. You shouldn't have started that thing before you finished the other thing.

You shouldn't have started that before you finished everything else. Now THAT ... that is a statement that leads me to what I consider profound thought. Should we have finished everything else before we decided to have a baby? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly would make things simpler if you could just push a button and decide when you're going to have a baby. I guess these days, you probably can, what with implanting embryos and whatnot, but let's be old fashioned and say that you can't control when you're going to have a baby. Then your choices are either (1) make a list of everything you want to do. do everything on that list, hope that nothing new will ever come up to be added to the list, then have a baby or (2) live your life, and let a baby happen.

Now the first option is something that I think a lot of people try. I mean certainly they put off having a baby until after high school (there are laws designed to help with that). A lot of people try to put off having a baby until after they have completed college (we both did, I don't think our parents really did -- my mom had me in her first year of medical school). And then there's the people that want to say "ok, I need to get into a career, get really far in that career, travel to every corner of the world, reach the top of the world, and then maybe I'll have a baby". A lot of my friends are still in this group. I think Tai wanted in large part to be part of this group. I arguably was part of it, got as far as I did in a career before I felt like it was pointless and making more money wouldn't be interesting, I'd spend that money and do the travelling that I felt like, but the only thing that would motivate me towards having a career again like that one I had had would be if I was married and/or had a baby that I had to take care of. That was four and a half years ago.

So anyways, you've got these people who wait into their mid-30s and maybe they make it in business, maybe they don't. Maybe they become executive directors of their non profits and realize their greatest ambitions leading delegations and whatnot. Then all of a sudden they're like "aww crap, I have 5 years to have a baby now before my eggs go bad." And then maybe they're with a guy who can't produce, but they don't find that out for a year. I dunno -- this happened at the beginning of Idiocracy, with the guy from Lost who punched Juliet. So I mean, that would be a major concern of mine. That would be putting the baby thing on the back burner and keeping everything else on the front burner, and then one day finding out that it's too late to have a baby, that train left the station.

So to make it perfectly clear to the world, I'm COMPLETELY happy that Tai and I are going to have this baby now. Things could have been done a different way, other decisions could have been made that would be deemed "responsible", and maybe I could have been 33 years old before the time would have actually come to find out whether or not I was capable of having a baby. If I had gotten into my mid-30s and found out that the process of conceiving a baby was not going to be as simple as I'd hoped, I would have considered that to a major, major personal failure and ultimately the least responsible lack of planning I would have ever imagined.

So then in the meantime, we have the pregnancy on the front burner. Well, we have to pay for everything. So where does that fit in. Does work go on the front burner? Does reading baby books go on the front burner? Does going to the gym to ensure the baby's health (and our long lives) go on the front burner?

The gym is a perfect example of what I really wanted to write about when I thought of this blog entry. On any given day, there is arguably something you have to do that is more important than going to the gym. On any given day, the gym should NOT be on the front burner, unless you are going to be starring in the movie 300. But if you never squeeze it in -- if you never take an unfinished project OFF the front burner for that hour so that you can go to the gym -- then you will never go to the gym and you'll get out of breath climbing the stairs, and you'll be too tired to play with the kids and they won't love you, and blah blah blah. Ok, hopefully the kids will love you even without the gym, but the point is that it's never possible to finish everything before you start something new, and it's really really hard to figure out what is really supposed to be on the front burner at any given time. Arguably, I shouldn't be writing this blog right now, but then again Tai REALLY REALLY wanted me to be writing on the blog this morning -- it was definitely FRONT BURNER as far as she was concerned at the time -- and if I never wrote on the blog then 9 months later, there wouldn't be any entries from me on the blog.

So it's a challenge.