Earlier today a friend of mine brought this blog post to my attention. In it the author talks about the quantum nature of mentally perceived age. He says “In my case, I was 22 until TB was born, at which point I was suddenly 32.” Having just had a baby of my own, this statement hit a little close to home for me. This year I will turn 30. Honestly, I really am not the kind of person who cares that I am reaching that age, but it is somewhat of a milestone that I cannot ignore.

For me, my “22 to 32″ moment happened not when we had Kaylee, but when we decided to really try to begin having a baby. If you rewind the clock by 12 months or so you’ll find me, unemployed, struggling with a monster of a semester in school, and trying to make a baby. Heather and I knew we wanted to have children, and we also knew that we wanted to have them before we got much older. However, I was working a job that seemed instable ( turns out it was ), and I was not yet done with school. We used those excuses for a long time, trying to plan for the perfect time in which to conceive a child. However, one day we realized that time stops for no one and while a bit of planning is a good thing, we were likely waiting for the “perfect time” that would likely never come. We decided “to hell with it” and we stopped planning and preventing and just let things happen. This was my “22 to 32″ point.

It was at this point that I took a survey of my life and decided that I had wasted enough time. I was about to graduate and begin just working for a living. I really enjoy my field, but my career is NOT my life. I could see life becoming a giant rut of work, dinner, TV, sleep … rinse and repeat. It would be easy to just live out my life working for a paycheck, coming home at night to play world of warcraft, eat something and then go to sleep. We wanted a child, and having one was a great way to introduce some change into my life.

When people find out that you are having a baby, you will constantly have people telling you things like “Say goodbye to sleep!” or “There is going to be poop all over the place!” These things are absolutely true. However, as undesirable as they may be, they are introducing some much needed “newness” into my life. I may not be able to put as many hours as I want into world of warcraft, but I realize that things like world of warcraft are no longer as important as they used to be.

John Lennon once said “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Truer words were never spoken. Despite all the work involved in raising a child, I don’t lament the loss of freedom to do whatever the hell I want. I still do things I enjoy, however, I now also have a beautiful daughter that I will eventually be able to share these things with. Speaking of that … I need to look into getting her some WoW clothes. … hey, I’m 30, not dead.

Even though the race may never be won
I can lay like a dandy, get heavy in the sun

This entry was posted on Wednesday, 20 June 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under Aimless Rants. You can leave a response, or Trackback from your own site.