I woke in a panic last night, bolting upright and gasping in a way that is entirely uncharacteristic of me. The burning feeling of acid in my stomach–having become my constant companion these past few weeks–churned and kept me blearily awake for awhile. I had been dreaming of something that I couldn’t quite pin down, but really I know it was the familiar feeling of falling that had jolted me out of sleep. I’m not ready for this.

In a bit more than 24 hours from now we’ll be upping our baby quotient by one. Our small unit of three will now be four and the sleepless nights spent rocking and soothing will return, and the zombie-like days of panicking over college funds and daycare costs will set in. I’m really not ready for this.

Do most parents come apart this much before the arrival of their second? Gone is the giddiness and anticipation of the unexpected that accompanied Liam’s birth. Knowing what’s coming (and when it’s coming) this time is killing me. This is the split second after you lose control of the steering wheel, before you hit the guard rail, when you’re floating through space and time magically slows to a crawl. Having time to contemplate things makes it infinitesimally worse. Am I ready for this?

When Liam was a baby, with every new developmental milestone he would acquire it and file it away. He learned how to roll over and having mastered it, never did it much after that unless it was purposeful. I realize now that he’s like me. I bumbled my way through the rough parts of early fatherhood, figuring out just enough to keep things going and now I see that I packed all of these emotions and mindset away in my mental attic since Liam has graduated to toddlerhood. Dusting off these feelings is terrifying because I forgot just how scared I was when I first became a father, the apprehension of failure looming over my head. I didn’t think I was ready then, but things were fine in the end.

Last week after I had picked Liam up from daycare he was sitting at the table at home and announced, “When I grow up I’m going to cook food.” Stunned, I looked at him and asked if they had been talking about jobs at ’school’ and he said yes. The Wife™ chimed in and asked if he meant that he would be a chef and he said, “yea, I’ll cook food like Daddy does.” It was then when I realized just how much impact you have on your children, that they watch what you do for them even when you think that they don’t. The entire gravity of fatherhood came rushing in to smack me in the face, reminding me just how important this fatherhood thing is.

I’m ready for this.

I enjoy cooking. Sure I like food, but I enjoy the act of cooking much more. That seems weird to me, but perhaps it’s just the notion of “creating something” that I find satisfying.

I didn’t start cooking until a few weeks after The Wife™ and I got married. There was a feeling of duty to be domestic, and I wanted to cook for my wife, to be a good husband. Actually, I wanted us to cook together but after the first week as things progressed I realized that wasn’t going to happen. She just didn’t have the same sense of responsibility that I do about preparing food. We’re an odd match on this topic, as I’d be fine eating the same thing every day for a month but yet feel that if you’re going to cook, do it right. She gets bored with food easily but doesn’t like to put effort in to it. Neither of us is ‘right’ in any classic sense, but it certainly keeps the ritual of Sunday morning menu creation a lively event. We’re a divided house in that regard, and likely products of how we were raised.

The excuse that “cooking takes too much time”  is a cop-out.

My wife thinks I go over the top because I insist that everything be made from scratch. Everything. She’s correct in that it takes me a long time to do things in the kitchen because of this. Most Sunday’s I’ll easily spend six or seven hours cooking food for the week for dinners and lunches, and I always have a few projects going on in the background, like curing bacon or making beer or wine. It does take up a lot of my time. The difference is that she sees it as a waste, since there is a myriad of prepared foods available or simpler dishes to make. I see it as a familial obligation to not only choose healthier ingredients (sans the junk that comes in shelf-stable processed foods), but to also impart to my kid(s) the importance of home cooking.

This morning I stumbled across an article by Michale Ruhlman essentially arguing the same thesis. While he takes aim at the “30 minute quick meal” culture, the idea is similar. The excuse that “cooking takes too much time”  is a cop-out. Saving money is a much more realistic excuse to stick with, as it is true that processed foods cost significantly less than fresh. But not having enough time to cook a decent meal even once a week like I do (we do leftovers during the week) or a few times a week is simply that: an excuse. I choose not to watch TV or become a workaholic as my tradeoff.

The point is not to be a great cook or even to make praise-worthy food. The reason I spend a large chunk of my non-working time in the kitchen is because it’s my duty as a parent to do so, to teach my kids about nutrition, to keep them healthier and to keep us around the kitchen table as a family unit. Learning how to cook is something I feel compelled to pass down. My mother taught me the ropes so that when I grew up  I wasn’t a complete idiot in the kitchen. I owe my children the same experience of learning self-sufficiency, so that they don’t feel like they have to rely on Lean Cuisine meals or fast food when they move out of the house. And since I derive some satisfaction from playing mad scientist in a lab and from learning new techniques and playing with new toys, it works.

Do I sometimes go overboard with my from-scratch mentality? Admittedly, yes. Will there be, and are there already times when it will be entirely unfeasible to cook amazing meals for a family? Undoubtedly. But if toasting and grinding my own curry powder makes the difference between someone liking a dish and being in love with good homemade food AND I have the time to do so…so be it. And like Ruhlman states, “we all have the same hours every day, and we all choose how to use them.” I know I want my kids to have memories of our family sitting around a homemade pizza with vegetables from our own garden, instead of our family going through the McDonald’s drive-thru. But maybe that’s just me.

With yesterday being the 17th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, I was watching some old Nirvana performances online when I hit their 1992 performance at the MTV VMAs. What struck me was not how ugly Mr. Cobain’s shirt was, but rather that I was immediately transported back to September of 1992, watching the performance from our family room in Toledo during a wicked thunderstorm and being ecstatic to have a chance to see one of my then favorite bands perform. The same feelings I had at age 12 of being awestruck and excited surged, even if just for a brief moment. It jolted me into realizing something so basic and yet so overlooked in my life these days: I don’t wait for much anymore, and that’s sucked the joy right out.

Now, at the age of 30, any fleeting thought that pops in to my head I can look up and find a video recording of, a definition for, an explanation of with detailed diagrams. Anything of interest to me, such as an artist or a band, is immediately accessible down to the most granular detail of what they ate on a particular morning (thanks, Twitter). I no longer have to wait a week to catch an episode of of a show, or wait an hour for a certain song to come on the radio to get excited. I don’t have to spend time each week digging through crates at a local record store, picking the brain of the guy behind the counter for suggestions because a computer program monitors what I already listen to and suggests new music to me that can be purchased in under 30 seconds. Hell I don’t even have to type anything in to look it up, I can just take a photo of something and shazaam, I’ve found what I’m looking for. I suppose it sounds pedestrian to harp on the idea that “instant gratification is bad.” I know it makes me sound more like a parent. But as someone who easily connects to things on an emotional level, I deeply miss having to wait for anything exciting because I think it lessens the joy.

Without having to wait for something, I think we miss the lead-up time where we experience our excitement and it has a chance to build. During that period we formulate notions or expectations and when the event happens we get to evaluate whether it blew our minds or if it disappointed us. Instead, we skip straight from having an impulse, of wanting something to having it delivered. That reflection period, that evaluation of expectations has vanished.

I deeply miss having to wait for anything exciting because I think it lessens the joy.

I’ve mentioned before that the nighttime bath routine in our house includes me horsing around with Liam on our bed while the tub fills. He loves it, and giggles and snorts with laughter as we wrestle around. But what he laughs the hardest at, to the point of not being able to breath steadily, are the moments where I withhold tickling him. The anticipation, the waiting for what is coming is almost too much for him to handle.

This isn’t a rant about how technology is evil or how society is in decline. But it is a reminder to myself to continue to try to fight that urge to use my phone in public to entertain myself for two minutes, or to pontificate to my DVR about how slow it is in bringing up the show listings. And as dumb as it sounds, I’ll continue to wait to have that beer until after work on Friday because damnit if it doesn’t taste all that much better having waited for it.

Nothing says professional like a coffee table on top of a desk

Three weeks ago, I had all but decided to stop sitting at work. Why? I’m batshit insane. I’m not entirely sure, but the basic premise is that I just felt the urge to not sit all day. The more I thought about it, I realized that I get out of bed and within 30 minutes I’m in my car, sitting for another half of an hour while I commute to work, where I’ll sit for nine hours, walk for  5 minutes to my car, sit for another 30 while I drive, and so on. I was slowly becoming one with my desk chair, melting into the blue fabric, sapping my energy (and posture) away.

Not long after, I come across the umpteenth article about switching to a standing desk and in theory, it makes sense. I can buy the notion that humans aren’t made (biologically) to sit all day. Maybe one day we’ll evolve into a species that is cool with that, but so far it’s not looking so good. There seems to be some scientific evidence to support this, and so as a matter of simple experimentation, I stood up.

Now, the first iteration of the desk was not nearly as snazzy as this Architectural Digest-worthy setup I have going on in the photo. I used boxes of old magazines to get the height correct. And then I freaked out because my 27″ iMac was acting like it was on the stern of an dingy, waggling back and forth precariously. So I did what any industrious worker in non-profit would do. I plundered someone’s coffee table and put it on top of my desk. It’s glorious, in all of it’s matching veneer wood. The height is only about an inch too high, but I’ll live.

All in all, I’m happy to report that my experiment thus far has worked. I can tell that my posture is improving. My energy levels are surprisingly higher and my back hurts significantly less. I did, however, drastically underestimate the role of flooring in my decision. My office has a thin layer of linoleum on top of a concrete slab, which is not really conducive to standing still all day. In most shoes, my feet are hurting within an hour or two. I’m thinking of adding a old welcome mat or rug to add a little cushioning.

Originally I had only intended to try this for two weeks, but so far I have no plans to abandon it. It would be nice to have a desk that I could adjust on the fly so when I needed to sit I could. But at my office, all furniture comes from either the garbage collection or surplus warehouse on campus. So unless some bozo magically threw out a Geek Desk, it looks like my bastardly creation will have to suffice.

I suppose that’s okay, though. I’ve certainly given my co-workers yet another reason to think I’m asylum-bound.

“I wanna watch a mooooooooovie…I wanna watch a mooooovie…” he intoned obnoxiously.

(Flippantly, under my breath) “If you don’t stop whining I’m going to cram a movie down your throat.”

*Cue record scratch*

“What?” Liam said, stopping dead in his tracks and peeking around the corner at me.

Still in shock that he heard what I said, trying to find a way to spin this into something that wouldn’t get me in trouble with The Wife, he cut me off again. 

“Did Daddy say he’d put the TV on my head?” he said quizzically.

We burst out laughing, which made him laugh, and explained that surely Daddy would never, ever do something like that. How silly! And then he continued down the hall giggling to himself at the utter thought of such ridiculousness.

Now I’m just hoping that this doesn’t come up again when he’s in therapy as an adult. Or in daycare some day this week. Because I really don’t want to spend Christmas trying to convince Child Protective Services that he misheard me and that I’m fit to raise my son.

(And when did he learn to use the word “what” in context?)

The past five years I’ve wrestled with this, locked an epic struggle where I’ve gone from being the eager-eyed-post-dotcom designer willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to a jaded, cynical, listless body in a chair that still refuses to compromise standards despite the fact that the passion for design packed up and moved on long ago. Back and forth I swing, being re-energized and finding renewed vigor and purpose, only to be beaten down again by–for lack of a less cliched term–the system, the organization. It’s taken a toll on my health, my family, my ambitions. And I’ve internalized it all, blaming myself for being an ungrateful punk who at least has a job during a wretched period of economic downturn. Maybe I’m just a product of a navel-gazing generation of kids stroked and told that there’s a job out there for me that’s perfect and rewarding? Maybe I’m just a discontent misanthrope that likes to complain? And then I stumbled on to this post, and never have I been so stopped in my tracks by such simple words.

A good portion of this rings so clearly to me, helping me to understand possibly why I’ve felt this way for five years.

As a creative person, you’ve been given the ability to build things from nothing by way of hard work over long periods of time. Creation is a deeply personal and rewarding activity, which means that your Work should also be deeply personal and rewarding. If it’s not, then something is amiss.

Creation is entirely dependent on ownership.

Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to change things for the better. To build and grow and fail and learn. This is no small thing. Creativity is the manifestation of lateral thinking, and without tangible results, it becomes stunted. We have to see the fruits of our labors, good or bad, or there’s no motivation to proceed, nothing to learn from to inform the next decision. States of approval and decisions-by-committee and constant compromises are third-party interruptions of an internal dialog that needs to come to its own conclusions.

That’s it. To understand those short sentences is (apparently) to understand how I work and operate outside of my home. And unfortunately I work at a place where the playing field is not level, it’s non-existant. It’s a place where there are no consequences, good or bad, for anything. Everything is meaningless, no one is rewarded or punished for their performance. It’s a vacuum where nothing matters until someone above you complains about it.

This doesn’t jive with my need for a system of feedback and responses, as when you create something you need to see an effect in order to measure the results. A chef doesn’t cook just to throw away the food before it reaches anyone’s mouth. Creation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Thusfar I’ve gotten by on inner drive, a lot of self-blame and guilt, and mostly determination not to let my wife and son down by quitting my job.

Now I wonder if this is all just a part of what I do, growing pains of a newborn trade (in a historical sense) where creative work is done within businesses, not as stand-alone artisans like silversmiths or cobblers. It doesn’t eliminate the grief, but reading Ben Pieratt’s take on things perhaps puts things in perspective a bit more.

In Praise of Quitting Your Job (via Kottke)

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I mean, let’s be realistic. This is about as long as my normal pullquotes are.

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I’m not going to lie, 2009 kinda sucked. Between the week-long ice storm and the flood that displaced me for four months and between the 10 rounds of pink eye, five ear infections and countless bouts of other assorted maladies…yea, sure, some other stuff happened. I didn’t paint a room in 2009! That was totally worth breaking my “no exclamation point” rule just to be able to write that. First time in five years.

But looking back on it all, I truly don’t remember much. I had to go back and read what I wrote about those experiences to remember. Because in my head, 2009 was when Liam learned to sit up, to crawl, to stand and walk and run. It was the year he learned how to call me Dada and ask for things he needed (and things he didn’t). I will remember 2009 as the year that my son became a little man and not just a baby.

So even though I contemplated writing a “things I did this year/things I’ll do next year” list, as I have in the past…I decided not to. Instead I can simply say that in 2009, I tried really hard to be a better father and husband, despite failing many times.

And in 2010 I’m going to try to never forget what it feels like when my son gently takes my hand and leads me to the couch to read him a stack of books. Because that’s all the reason I need to try to be a better person.

EDIT – Sh*t. I forgot I painted the garage this summer. 2009 really did blow.