Career or Kids?
Tonight, when I was reading our daily bed-time story to my three-year-old son, my eyes teared up with joy. It is without a doubt the best part of my whole day and I am so grateful and blessed to have this daily routine. You have little kids for four years and then it’s GONE, never to return. And you miss it at your own peril because it is the literal definition of “peak life”.
I have been thinking a lot lately this past week about what I am doing with my life. I work a lot, there is no denying that. And it has always been that way. To prioritise career during the invaluable small kids-years is a painful sacrifice any way you look at it. Do note that I make a strict distinction between “job” and “career”. Those two are not the same thing in my book. To prioritize a job over dad time, I cannot justify no matter how hard I try. But career is a different story. Career is when passion, hobby, skill etc all integrate into one. When you love the work so much that you would do it even without pay. And just like anything else, a career can also turn into addiction, so one must be careful. I am currently in the process of figuring out exactly where the optimal balance is.
If you are aiming at complete domination in any given area, work-life-balance is a lie. You must go all in with >80-hour weeks constantly to stay on top. That’s not me. But I am not Mr 40 hour-week either. I have too much energy and my mental machinery needs more to work properly. One of the reasons I want to work more, is that I am convinced that real growth, a career, begins after the 40th hour and the excess hours scale exponentially – not linearly (That’s why you will never catch up with people like Elon Musk). And they also eat away the infinitely valuable hours with my son. Well, put it that way and the question is already settled. You can’t trade something with infinite value, for something that has finite value. So, that means that I also consider a career infinitely valuable – otherwise I must be lying to myself. Why is that?
The justification that first comes to mind is that when I am in the right place, doing the work I love, I become an integrated person. I become happier, stronger, more relaxed, and better in every single way. Simply put, I am a much nicer person to be around when I am working on a career compared to when I am doing a job I hate and can’t wait to just get back home. And consequently, the hours that I do spend with my son increase in value, even if they were infinitely valuable to begin with. Let’s do an analogy with work; Clock hours are completely irrelevant. You can easily produce 60 hours of work in 30 or less if you know where to focus. That’s where experience can be helpful. Why wouldn’t the same principle be valid with my little kids? The question comes down to how many of those extra hours am I willing to invest/sacrifice? At some point of extra hours, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
Since I did my major shift in career path back in 2019 towards self-employment, I have had one hell of a ride. The conclusion is that the highs are higher, and the lows are lower. It’s like a sine wave that has increased in amplitude by a factor of ten. But it also seems to have a higher frequency. Even if it sometimes feels as if I am running the gauntlet on broken glass, I have noticed that I nowadays can “snap back” faster than a couple of years ago. A LOT faster. Tonight’s bedtime story is a good example. In 2-3 hours, I went from feeling as if I am about to break, to tears of joy. That’s clearly proof that I am doing something right. Before, I could feel down and anxious for days or weeks on end. Because there was no love involved in the work. I did not have the ability to “snap back” and that would have been terribly wrong to my kids. They deserve better. They deserve that I am present.
Pursuing a career is tough and it is by no means for everyone, but from my personal experience I now know that the alternative that just pays the bills is worse. Much worse. I was given a special set of personality traits in the genetical lottery, and it is my duty to find out how to utilize them in the best possible way not just for me but for everyone else too. The answer is that I just need to keep aiming on becoming a better dad. That’s all that matters. A good dad knows how to balance on the razor thin edge between career and bedtime stories.