I stare at the screen. Looking up, my wife is pouring coffee. My four year old sits on the kitchen floor, legs out rocking his four month old brother in the rocker, staring off in the distance while he chews on a cookie. The smell of coffee fills the air, but my nose is congested. I’ve been suffering from a cold and vague symptoms throughout the week. I can’t shack this malaise. I want to write every day. Just the exercise alone is what I’m after. I don’t have any grand proclamations of thought. I just need to exercise my thoughts, articulate whatever feelings I have in me, whatever my eyes register around me, seize and put down. Otherwise I feel that I am sleep walking through life. It passes me by day by day. I’ve succumb to the routine of parenthood, of being a professional. I am getting ahead, but I can’t seem to feel that I’m getting ahead. I received my W2 form last week, and my gross income was roughly $377,000. An all time high. We bought a house two years ago, and two new cars this last fall. My credit card debt has inched up. My wife isn’t working. Just raising the boys. I feel incredibly uninspired at work. My optimism has waned. The last five years in my role has been incredibly stressful, physically, emotionally, mentally, so I’ve taken my foot off the gas and now I’m just coasting. It feels somewhat better, but I also must live with the anxiety that I’m not applying myself, not doing my best. I want more and more and more, but at what cost? I am considering other roles, but I keep reminding myself, whereever you go, there you are. So I cannot escape myself by going somewhere else.
It’s been a long winter. Sometime in November until now, there hasn’t been much progress. One of my new hires left after 9 months of pouring myself into their training and development. This was devastating. She’s left to pursue AI safety. She believes the world is at existential risk of annihilation, and thinks its pointless to do anything other than alert the world of the dangers of AGI, which experts believe will arrive in 2027, and there will be no turning back.
I watch my wife play with her sons on the kitchen floor. She eats a muffin. Our four month old sits in her lap and our four year old sits across from her, holding up toys and rattles to his brothers face.
My lungs are congested. My nose. My head. I’m not sure if this is the old mattress, or the cold, or the old house.
I haven’t exercised in 9 months. I did cross fit for about three months this last spring/summer, but stopped when temperatures reached 100deg in the gym. I didnt have it in me to endure those workouts. I felt horrible afterwards. And then I attended weddings and travel and of course work, and the habit never continued.
I look in the mirror and accept my age, reluctantly. This year I will be 40. I have aged significantly the last five years. Because of work, because of kids, because of life, I’m not sure. But I have not been maintaining.
The world feels upside down. Phone addiction is real. Endless scrolling. Endless fear porn. AI. Epstein files. Geopolitics. Economics. Markets. It’s all madness, impossible to keep straight. When I speak to my friends, there’s unanimous agreement the world is mad and all that’s left to do is hug your family and persevere and protect the them. My son reminds me of the innocence of life. The naivety.
I would like another child. A girl. But I would be content with one more.
Romantic intimacy is at an all time low, with kids, with work, with stress, with monotony of life.
I consider my life options. Working out and regular exercise is a good start. Perhaps change jobs. Perhaps move out of California to Florida, to be closer to my larger extended family, the nieces and nephews.
Home prices are deflating, which isn’t great for selling. But if I can preserve my level of income in florida, I can take home an extra 10% in net earnings due to no income tax.
I hear the heat blowing through the register behind me, throughout the house. I look out the front windows and see the sun slowly turning the dark blue sky white at the horizon as it inches upwards, the silhouette of redwoods stand in stark contrast to the sky behind.
Sleep has been terrible. I’ve been sleeping with my son as my wife sleeps with the baby. In theory this means I get more sleep, since she feeds him every few hours. But my four year old is chronically kicking and snuggling and waking to ask me to snuggle him or warm him up.
Since we returned from our family vacation in florida, he’s been getting up between 4 and 5:30am, which has been brutal, requesting food, expressing his hunger, and his desire for me to make him something. Nothing I say puts him back to bed, and so I rise begrudgingly, make coffee, and try shaking my stupor for several hours before sitting at my desk for the next eight hours.
I’ve been looking for jobs, but its a terrible job market. I can make a transition to another professional services and consulting firm, but I’m not sure if that’s what I want to do, if that will be fulfilling. It’s good money, but the stress is insanely high. I wonder if it will be different elsewhere.
William Dare 