Being a Dad
A software engineer, Nicholas Charriere, wrote a post about being ambitious and being a dad. The writer can’t rectify the tension between those two things and I admire that he wrote it without trying to provide a solution. There was one line that I was glad to see:
“I do not believe the quality time theory. I firmly believe in maximizing the quantity of time spent with them.”
Among highly motivated workers there’s a falsely held belief that you can make up for missed time with your children by planning exclusive time with them, either over a nice vacation, or special night in a month, or some dedicated time carved out in both of your schedules. You can’t. Any time is better than no time. But I think that strong relationships are best built in the down moments, the “bored” time, the drives to school, picking up the house, mealtimes, random crap: that those are the times that you discover the little nuances of your children’s personalities (and, importantly, when they and you discover the nuances of your’s).
Before kids, I frequently defined myself by my work or my hobbies. Meet someone new and you’re chatting with them, and I’d say “Oh, yeah, I’m a software engineer, yeah, I like to fish, I play basketball, I love watching football and drinking beer, I’m from Worcester, I went to this college and studied this subject.” And that’s how I defined myself. Work, hobbies, biographical accidents, academic pursuits. Especially among men, this is pretty normal. Since having kids, so much of my identity has changed and how I identify myself has changed. There’s this []“Don’t Talk About Your Kids” sketch from “I Think You Should Leave”](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PD_J4AGRt1k) that resonated with me, because it’s so hard not to, especially with other people who have kids, it’s like … what else can I talk about? The hobbies I had before kids seem pointless and valueless in retrospect when you have these little people in your life who are doing routine things but because they’re the ones doing them, the things seems miraculous. “Mick played with his schoolbus on the back bumper of my car, making bus noises.” In any other context it’d be bizarre to bring it up, but because I’m a dad, it’s the most relevant, important detail of my day.
When I started writing this journal again, I had thought that I wouldn’t write about my personal life. It’s MikeMurray__.dev__ after all, and the About page captures how I intended to write: “I’m Mike Murray, a software engineer from Massachusetts.”
After our second child, my wife got sick, she was diagnosed with ALS when he was just over a year old, though she had undiagnosed symptoms going back to before she was pregnant with him. She physically can’t care for him, and so I’ve been my son’s caretaker, and my daughter’s primary/default caretaker though she’s 8 years old, so my wife is able to contribute more evenly with parenting for her. As he gets older, depending on the progression of the disease, that can increase with my son as well, but for a newborn, infant, baby, and toddler, there’s just so much physical care at those ages that it’s hard for someone with a neurological, degenerative disease to contribute in the same way.
Kids changed everything with me. Every way that I define myself. I don’t define myself by my work at all anymore, and I sometimes define myself by my hobbies, but I feel entirely defined by my kids. If I was answering some general inquiry about myself, and if I was allowed to be frank, I’d lead with my kids, it’s how I see myself.
When I saw the Bob Odenkirk interview from Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, I cried, because it hit me right in the throes of parenting hell. I have a wife who I’m taking care of, I had a ~7ish year old who I was trying my best to help through adolesence, and I had a 1½ year old who I was completely and wholly responsible for keeping alive, keeping healthy, and keeping happy. And this line hit me like a freight train.
Birbiglia: “Who are you jealous of?”
Odenkirk: “Anybody who has little kids at home, growing up. … Yeah, there’s no question I knew what I was doing when I had kids growing up, I was being a dad. I mean, that was my job, and I didn’t have to ask myself, ‘What am I doing here? How can I be a part of this world? How can I be meaningful today?’ I didn’t have to ask that question, because the fucking answer is ‘Pick up everything between here and the door, and make sure they get to school, and have a laugh with them.’.
I understood my purpose.”
And god, that fucking resonates with me so, so hard. It still makes me cry when I hear that or see the clips, because I realized that when I was answering that question every other time trying to describe myself, and when I answered with what I do, and what I studied, and where I’m from, or what my hobbies are, those were all bull shit. And now when I think of who I am, I know who I am, I am Tilly and Mickey’s dad.
I am a bad software engineer. I’m a mediocre project lead. I think I’m a good colleague. But I know that I’m a great dad.