Did I say this was the year of the mom programmer? I did, didn’t I. 🤔

A quick note - if you want to tl;dr this post here it is: “I have been unable to complete either a project or a blog post since my last post in January and here are a few thoughts on the subject.”

Still here? Please continue!

Many months later (after the second child has arrived), here’s what I know:

The realities of having children strike again⌗

When I was pregnant I was not only tired all the time, but also still required to chase a toddler around. Now that I’m no longer pregnant I’m still chasing a toddler around, but now with less sleep (because babies do not care about your nighttime sleep regimen). There are days I can barely put a sentence together, let alone read API documentation. At least now I can drink all the coffee I want.

Child #1 finished school in May, and due to the impeding nature of Child #2 we decided not to put her in any summer programs. Opting for more “family time” made sense so we could celebrate the end of her only-child status, however the result has, unfortunately, meant all time is devoted to her and not my tinkerings. 😅

I still struggle to find enough focus time⌗

As a result, while I’ve done some programming work since my last post, it’s nothing I’ve been able to follow through with to completion. This is pretty frustrating not only because I’d like to actually complete a project, but also because that means there are more than a couple 75%-written blog posts simply rotting in my backlog. What a waste!

Getting my magical 2+ hour blocks of free time consistently (let alone a single hour) continues to be a rare occurrence. And we all know that the time it takes to refamiliarize yourself with code you haven’t touched in awhile (be it by a few days or a few months) puts a real dent in your actual programming output - how can I complete anything if for every 2 hours I can find, I spend 1 of them reviewing my previous work session?

Preserving my mental health vs. hustling⌗

PLUS, that assumes that every time I have a free moment I decide to spend it writing and programming and this is simply not the case.

While yes, there is the possibility that if I stayed up late after the kids went to bed, if I set a 4am alarm and worked in the morning, or if I generally hustled harder that I’d be able to reach my technical and writing goals while also being a full-time mom. But at what cost??

No, really - at what cost? Just my mental and physical health!

My mental health has improved after leaving my last job and getting comfortable being a full-time mom, and a lot of that has to do with simply allowing myself to stop hustling all the time. Coming to peace with the idea that being on the grind all the time is not necessary was a process, but it’s definitely given me back a lot of peace of mind. I’m not constantly torturing myself about whether I should be “getting more done” and feeling guilty for both not doing more at work and not being more present for my family. Allowing myself to let that shit go has given me the bandwidth to be a better mom and partner and given me time to - god forbid - just enjoy life guilt-free. How good is like…sitting down to read a few page of a book or play an hour of a video game?

Quick sidebar: my distinct impression is that this is old news for younger generations (yikes, I’m old) and the honeymoon phase of work being a “family” has well passed. Good - I struggled to make the distinction far past when I should have.

Holy crap, make your point already⌗

I guess the takeaway here is that being a full-time parent and executing your own career/personal goals is hard. It’s probably always hard no matter how old they get, but it’s for sure not easy when they’re as young as mine. Happy for feedback and input on this one.

Also…I do have some technical subjects in mind for a couple blog posts. As soon as I can find a couple hours in my day, I’ll get right to it. 😂