Babies, day jobs, and other hazards to a writing career.

My Inner Thoughts During a Major Life Change.

On October 6th, my wife and I welcomed our son Léo to our quiet corner of the world here in Bend, OR. We are over the moon. Our home has been filled with much joy since he arrived.

And I, selfishly, have a pesky thought floating in the back of my mind: How will I manage it all? It’s hard enough to juggle a writing career, a demanding day job, and a fitness lifestyle and maintain close interpersonal relationships with family and friends without a baby. And with? I fear I may fall short.

I find myself teetering back and forth on what I may need to cut. The writing? Absolutely not. I’ve spent my entire adult life with the goal of sustaining my lifestyle in my writing career alone. It’s not a hobby. How about fitness? Also, no. I have to maintain my physical health. After all, I can be of no use to anyone if I am not well, and fitness is my outlet for stress and anxiety. My day job, then? Also, no. There’s no living in this world without means, and the day job currently provides the means. All that’s left are my interpersonal relationships. How could I ever justify cutting those? It would spell disaster for my mental health.

Of course, this is all coming from a place where I want to spend time with my son. I could have chosen to be like my father, to leave the baby on my wife’s lap while I galavant around the globe. In no uncertain terms, that’s not who I want to be. I want to be present for my son, to feed him, change him, cuddle him, and otherwise devote my time to him and his development. “Baby duty,” as I like to call it, is the most non-negotiable.

Thankfully, in speaking with friends and family, my feelings are not unique. However, they indicate an internal turmoil that merits closer reflection. For me, it all starts with the ill-conceived question: how will I MANAGE it all?

In this context, the word ‘manage’ is nothing more than a synonym for control. Like the director of a movie, I’m trying to manage all the different moving parts of the set, including the actors. The thing is, I am not the director. None of us are. I am an actor. More precisely, I am an actor who struggles to accept the part I was given.

What it all boils down to is I’m trying to make the baby fit into my old paradigm when, in reality, his arrival has brought about a fundamental change in my life—a shifting of the winds, as it were. It’s a change I chose, that I welcome, and yet, in another facet of myself, I cannot accept it. I am faced with two diametrically opposed impulses that place me at a proverbial crossroads. The director in me wants it both ways. The actor cannot have both.

What, then, to do about this juggling act? Again, it’s the wrong question. My managing impulse drives me to ‘do’ rather than to just be. It’s the same impulse that drove my father to use his work as an excuse to keep his children at arm’s length. If I’m being honest with myself, I am subconsciously starting to do the same. I did it with my first son, Leif, with whom I barely have a relationship today. It took my wife telling me that she felt taken for granted yesterday to make me realize that in trying to manage everything, I had already let her fall by the wayside. And I had no one else to blame but myself.

The sad part of it all is I know what the solution is. It’s painfully simple. As a close friend and spiritual guide of mine once said, “The hoop you are trying to jump through is bigger than you think.” I have a tendency to make simple things overly complicated. To his credit, my father is a wealth of many wise sayings he shares with me, one being, “Why do things simply when you can make them complicated?”

Evidently, what I am facing is not only common, it’s fundamentally human.

The solution is to let go. I must accept that I am not in control in almost all areas of my life. Léo is a literal embodiment of that. Here is a tiny human for whom I am responsible, but I no more control his hunger, bowel movements, or emotions than I do the wind. I must also let go of the idea that I will always know what’s best for him, my wife, and me. Repeatedly throughout my life, I have been shown that if I had received what I thought I needed at the time, I would have cheated myself. I never actually know what I need until after I receive it.

None of this is to say that I should absolve myself of any responsibility. In no uncertain terms, letting go does not mean letting go of responsibility for my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Those are in my control. If I am wrong, I must admit to it; if I cause harm, I must make amends. Letting go means accepting things as they are and committing fully to the role I was given rather than trying to play the director.

The philosopher Alan Watts summarized it poignantly when he said, “Trust nature, even though she is not always trustworthy.” He meant that we must trust the unfolding of events outside our control, even when they might hurt us. Because through that pain, we receive the growth and wisdom we actually need rather than the growth and wisdom we thought we needed. Nature doesn’t care what we want; she cares what we need.

Therefore, letting go is an act of trust—trust in what is meant to be and learn from it what is meant to be learned. In simpler terms, trust in fate.

The Vikings (of course, I am bringing them into this!) espoused a similar philosophy so far as we know. They saw fate as inescapable. A proverb book called The Fafnismal says in regard to fate, “In the water, you shall drown if you row against the wind.” All of this carving up of my life into tiny, well-organized pieces, stacked in neat little rows on my calendar, and telling all the people around me what they should be doing and how they should be behaving, is my foolhardy attempt at rowing against the wind, and the end result is always the same. I need to trust that the wind will carry me where I am meant to go.

All of this brings up some valid questions on where to steer my proverbial ship. I think it’s fair to say that goal-setting, discipline, and steadfastness are good things. They must, however, be aligned with the direction of the wind rather than against it. What does that mean for my writing, fitness, day job, relationships, and the rest? I don’t know yet. Nor should I. Letting go means living with the ambiguity of not knowing where the wind is taking me. I must let go of the future and the past and remain grounded in the now.

I must trust nature.

P.S. There is no question that I will continue to write. Perhaps just not as quickly for a while.