I’ve said before that more opinions and bullshit are traded into and out of our day to day lives than anything else, but recently I have been struck by a sudden sense of jealousy, sadness and urgency around one thing that I possess – or at least occasionally possess.

Some may have noticed that I’ve been away from my blog for a little while – in short, we have dealt with a few bouts of sickness; the type that seems to do circles through the house for weeks at a time. Then an annual family vacation – the kind that never goes for long enough and always leaves you more tired than before. Oh and then a return of the sickness, plus finding out we have another baby on the way, then returning to a relentless and hectic work schedule that drains one of all creative thought and endeavour.

Its nice to be back though. I’m sitting on a plane on a Sunday night making my way interstate for what will be a week of flying, hotel rooms, meetings and computer screens. My 20 week pregnant wife is at home with our other child who has recently learnt that it’s not enough to merely say words as you learn them, but that you need to repeat them ever-more loudly until someone confirms that you have in fact said that word. “Car” he says on the way to the supermarket for groceries. My wife and I continue our conversation, building the usual list of items we must remember, knowing something important is probably going to be missed anyway...

“Car”.

“CAR”. “CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR CAR”

“Yes son. Car”

“Bike”…

He has also taken to calling out his bodily functions. I worry about the day he will announce the arrival of a ripper butt-burp in church on a Sunday morning.

They say that when you have children, the days are long but the years are short. Which brings me back to this recent sense of frustrated, jealous urgency I have been experiencing.

Time has been on my mind.

While on our holiday, I managed to find some solo time with my old man. Even though he was on holiday, he was still handling final preparations for bringing a big client on board with the business he had launched about a year ago. Between sips of whisky sitting on the balcony and long silences listening to the waves crashing on the beach below the holiday house we had rented for the week; then the occasional phone call or random visit from my 18 month old to make sure I was still there, we talked about what all old men eventually talk about after afew drinks.

Time.

As migrants to a new country in the 80’s, my parents have never been strangers to work. I vaguely remember them both working 2 jobs when I was a kid, or bringing me along to help work on a house they were trying to flip, or jumping into a truck with the old man for an 18 hour day hauling whitegoods when one of the regular drivers called in sick. In short, I have always known my father and mother as the kind of people that both worked their arses off to try and provide anything above the bare essentials for their children. Now as adults, we have all had the opportunity to study and work, in turn creating families of our own.

When we got to talking about the pressures of life and family, my Father always steered the conversation towards the ceaseless search for opportunity in what limited time we have. I always found myself steering towards discussion about family. Then suddenly, there it was. The words we had both been searching for, from the mouth of the wiser. “Every moment in your life is a compromise”.

For my Dad, a hungering for a life without the endless carousel of work and home. To dream bigger dreams and retire without fear. He seemed to search back for a way to re-state his previous comment, then said nothing.

I felt myself realise for the first time that for every moment my father had chased his dreams, his passions, his love for family and his wish for their security, there had been a compromise elsewhere.

As a somewhat typical working geek I often spend much of my time reading articles and blogs or listening to podcasts (nerdy, right?) about business, entrepreneurial ventures, self-improvement, leadership and success.

In the pursuit of a life better lived, of opportunities taken and the great aversion to failure or risk; one can overlook the idea that someone, somewhere, has compromised something that I already have, in order to have what I want.

It’s quite a thought isn’t it? The person burning the candle at both ends to go from a Thought-leader to a 10x’er will likely not have the privilege(?) of sitting on the rug with their kids making fart jokes at 7 o’clock on a Tuesday night. The student throwing hours and hours at exam prep and accelerated courses to finally nail that post-grad probably isn’t spooning their wife (or doing the back-pack/reverse spoon) on a lazy Sunday night.

The levelling force in all ambitions and hopes seems to be time – at least to me. I wonder about what moments I have compromised in the wrong way, or what I will remember as the great milestones where my compromises were rewarded with a life still intact.

I will admit to you all that right now I’m tired, exhausted even. I have no new advice or sagely wisdom to share beyond the throwaway comment from my father on holiday.

Next week I will come back with the second post I’m working on - another thought regarding time; this one from one of my mentors – but for now, I would love to hear your thoughts about time and compromise. By all means leave a comment on here or on the Facebook page, I will make sure to get to it.

My wife and I had our first child about 18 months ago, and while I can honestly say it's been a great time of growth and challenge, I would also preface that with the notion that the usual "it's so rewarding" hasn't always felt completely true. There are a number of serious and sometimes harsh realities that you face as a new Dad; the least of which can sometimes begin with a traumatic birth, an exhausted and stressed household and the ever-present sense that you may in fact be a complete dumbass.

I bet when the US Department of Defence created the first network of PC’s they didn’t picture afew hundred million people chuckling to a video of a Korean dude dancing in a Maroon suit. Today’s post is all about how the modern internet and social media have enriched my life immensely.

Yep. Nope. I may do one of those some day, but I’m lazy and it’s much easier to have a cry about the stuff that irritates me online, so below I’ve listed off some of my favourite things to hate online. 


Challenges – creating awareness for ignorance-sake

While not all viral challenges start out stupid, our penchant for both wanting to be told what to do, and then rolling whatever we are told further down to the lowest common social denominator will always come back to remind us that we should never have done it. It’s the snowball effect that comes about when you publicly do something stupid instead of just showing your friends. Who would in turn have only brought it up again at your wedding. This is usually late-teen and 20-something aged dudes because, let’s face it; there’s the sweaty combination of a shitload of free time and a strong urge for high-five based approval.

So, after downing the first of 4 morning coffees, here I am slaying my first deuce of the day and trying to rationalise the importance of someone’s situation, with some dude slamming 4 beers and jumping into a frozen lake. We really should stop pretending that doing something stupid for a laugh does anything good for anyone else’s cause. Unless the cause is “the urgent need to increase society’s threshold for dumb stuff in order to allow us to do even dumber stuff”. Then by all means let us collectively acknowledge this worthy cause and get on it asap.

Awareness appropriation – that’s a thing, right?

No Iggy jokes I promise.

Now, there are certainly causes that could do with a boost in public awareness. They remind us that there are people in the world who suffer immensely while we argue over whether Coke or Pepsi mixes better with cask wine (totally a thing). However, I’m about to make a big call here – we suck at turning entertainment into knowledge, and then using that to motivate us for serious change. I don’t imagine that a whole lot of casual web users are stockpiling a cache of valuable information while posting a no-makeup selfie. Most of us are on here with the express interest of being entertained by random crap and hoping old friends got fatter than we have. When I have my game-face on for some straight up wisdom it usually doesn’t involve sitting on the couch in my jocks with a bag of Doritos. That’s when I am most likely to see someone’s first profile pic and go for a quick look at my own first profile photo. Then realise that I have been online for way too long.

Commenters who write an essay of their credentials

Ermagherd you have worked drug addicted adolescents in Myanmar? Well allow me to share tales of dog-neutering in downtown Sao Paolo … Look, we get that you were in the Mounties for 20 years or whatever other things you preoccupied your life with before you became a full time e-meninist. While I won’t argue the value of anyone’s service and labour, I will point out that it doesn’t preclude anyone from being a total asshole. Just because you’ve had a front seat to whatever the author is writing about doesn’t mean you were always doing anything more than a mediocre job with that experience. Sure there are plenty of infuriating morons slinging garbage for truth, but before you cite the years of experience in cretinology and many associated white papers on social refuse, take a moment to ask yourself if this will actually serve to bolster your point, or make people write you off as a colossal douché  (<that is not a typo. I say it right or I don’t say it at all)

E-Activism – hammering on causes that only you give a shit about

Have you ever had the awful experience of liking a band’s facebook page, only to realise that they’re full blown nudists? Me either. But often when we add acquaintances to our friends list, or click “like” on a public figure/figures’ Facebook page, we sign ourselves up to a freshly discovered acute awareness of how horrible our lives are without legal weed. Or how much damage the vaccines are doing. Or worse – how stunted or crippled my baby will be if it’s not breast-fed. Forget the years of love and attention you’ll be pouring into this child – THE TIT OR QUIT.

The internet can be a pulpit. A big polished timber one with a staircase on either side and like a minimum of 4 microphones on it. The stage is set… take the floor… walk up to that platform, and then – BOOM say the same thing over and over and over… and over again as if you aren’t quite sure that people are getting it. Believe me when I say, people are getting it. But along with “it”, they are also getting that your online persona is one-dimensional and maybe a little… *taps nose*

We’ve all been guilty of getting a little over-excited online. A pinch of obnoxiousness reminds everyone that there’s a human on the other end. But let’s try to remember that a pinch is a pinch. Sprinkle that shit on a little here and there to let people know you can be salty mofo – I won’t hate you for it. But when it’s time, leave a little crazy at the door before you sit down to write that post. Again.



Pranks – the internet version of small kids being assholes, appended with “but it’s opposites day”

This one is quick because it goes without saying, but I’m gonna say it anyway because I’m fresh like that:  dub-tee-eff is with videos of people being assholes and calling it a prank? Walking up to a group of black people and using the “N” word is not – and should never, ever, ever be referred to as – a prank. Getting into someone’s personal space and making lewd comments also does not qualify as prank-worthy. It makes you a gigantic ass clown. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling yourself an asshole or a shock-jock and trying to flog your wares to the public online. TV shows were doing it for years in the 80’s and the canned laughter made up for the utter lack of substance and personality. We now get it streamed to our mobile phones via a news feed and youtube channels. Good on you for making a buck. But FFS do not yell “Stop it’s a prank” when you’ve just invaded someone’s space, touched them inappropriately or embarrassed them for likes and hits. Its not in any way a prank. Its just people being dicks.

 
I sometimes wonder what the internet will be when my children grow old enough to sit here ranting like a grumpy bastard at 11 at night. Honestly, it worries me that we are giving away our b-game to more and more people each day. I swear that there’s probably only a few dozen people who have ever seen me on my worst behaviour. Now the potential to let our collective idiocy do the rounds for millions is so strong, I feel an odd pressure not to ruin this good streak I have going. I’m sure somewhere on here there’s some shit people will dig up one day to prove I’m a moron but for now I’m ok because the greater internet populous is still ignorant to my true idiocy.

Like/Comment/Share – would love to hear what other e-foolery you’ve dealt with. And with the massive, massive readership I currently have I am sure that you will be crazy surprised to see your comments even make it onto the list :)

I had been rubbing her back for a solid 6 hours.

My palm had moved on from being sweaty to tingling to numb to outright sore. Eventually, the blood began returning to my finger tips. At this point I was holding a beautiful, healthy baby with the most beautiful little rosebud lips i'd ever seen, and yet the birth process had been so exhausting and traumatic that we could barely keep our eyes open as we waited in the birthing suite for our room to be made available.

Shit you not, I cried a lot that day. Not movie tears either. That ugly shit that you try to choke back and end up looking like a sad clown with sticky boogs firing out of both barrels. It was emotional overload. I'd been initiated into parenthood and I managed to hold it together without puking of anxiety. I made a lot of promises that day too. And in the toilet of all places. 

I had understood something innate and experienced incredible, impossible love. It was the beginning of a closer bond with my own mother, a profound respect for my wife, and a deeper understanding of my own faith.

It makes sense that my first post would be about the day my first child was born. Becoming a parent has been an unbelievably transformational force in my relationships, my career, and my interests. I hope to share more of this with you in the coming posts.