Baby Genesis (Part 1): Let there be light
In the beginning...there was only darkness
In the beginning...there was only darkness
It was the Year 7 BC (Before Child), and the second of my iPhone alarms had warned me of the perils of sluggish cognitive tempo. I reached over and fumbled to turn on the Philips Blue Light device I had purchased off of Amazon after realizing I could claim it via my company’s health benefits plan. Its eerie glow in a darkened room burned into my retina while at the same time searing away all the melatonin that was circulating in my brain.
The glare was too much to handle so I rolled over to face the middle of the bed, curled up in fetal position, to loving spoon my other pillow for a few more minutes while I nuzzled the end of the pillowcase, the loose threads tickling my chin. My eyes started getting heavier again and just as they closed shut, the emergency backup alarm positioned on the dresser six feet away loudly went off, forcing me out of bed into the cold, dry air of a one-bedroom apartment.
Now that both the alarms had been turned off, there was now light and no sound. I was engulfed in silence and as I looked around, I faced the realization that another day had gone by, and I was very much still alone. The shock of being all alone sent a flood of cortisol into my body, an unpleasant reminder that if I did not get my act together, I would continue to be alone tomorrow morning, and the morning after that. Then I hurriedly jumped into the shower, randomly selected one of my seven dress shirts and slacks out of my closet and made a mad dash for the office which was a six minute walk away. I had chosen my apartment because I couldn’t imagine enduring an hour long commute to a job that I was mentally checked out of two months into the job.
I had the privilege of working in a small office, in the rear of the ground floor of a nondescript office building in midtown. It had taken me just shy of two years to find a job after returning home and my boss had been kind enough to take pity on me. I sat down at the reception desk, put in my earphones, and proceeded to do some work. Now, to be clear, I wasn’t the receptionist; there was only one desk outside of the internal office where my boss work, so that meant I was in charge of reception amongst my other duties.
A real estate broker walked in through the door on a cold call and introduced himself to me. Many years later he told me,
“When I walked in that door, the first thing that came to mind was, ‘100% disengaged. 100% checked out.’ Didn’t want to be there at all.”
I will never forget that comment because it was 100% true, and that person is my friend to this day. So let’s look into all the reasons why that statement was true:
My previous job was overseas and while that job wasn’t terribly glamorous, taxes were low, take-home pay was high, and I felt I had learned something.
It had taken me six weeks to find a job when I had moved abroad completely on spec with nothing lined up. It had taken me ~20 months to find a job in my home country five years later.
I had broken up with my significant other 30 days after landing in the country.
I had no significant ties to this city beyond some extended family as I was born here but not raised here.
I made the mistake of attempting day-trading while I was unemployed and lost 90 percent of my non-retirement savings.
I had gotten severely depressed over the two year period as I had few friends, no job, no money, and nothing to keep me busy during the day.
By the time I had started working again, my nerves had become so frazzled from the never ending supply of stress hormones, and my confidence was completely shot leaving me unable to properly socialize with the working world. My boss had always reminded me,
“Smile more. You look perpetually angry.”
I had lost everything and was starting from ground zero, again. I simply didn’t care in my heart because I didn’t have my dream job and felt like I had to grind all the way back up the mountain I had tumbled down off of in a matter of months. As I didn’t believe for a minute I had a job that could get me anywhere, I felt trapped and I did what confined people do, I chose to find ways outside of mental cell to stay mentally engaged. While I was planning and dreaming of an escape, I was lucky enough that I didn’t get fired as I had an understanding boss.
Back then, there was only eternal darkness in my life. It was an indescribable sense of isolation I experienced, the closest comparable thing being solitary confinement. It’s why they call it cruel and unusual punishment.
What I didn’t appreciate until many years later, was that this “punishment” was meted out entirely by myself and none of it was actually necessary. If I had the life experience and wisdom to know what to do back then, my life would be very different now.
In the middle... actually it was the other side of the dance hall
There was a girl. She was a breath of life and gave me a living soul. She didn’t quite come from my rib cage, but the butterflies were definitely bouncing off the rib cage. We had one dance, then another, then another after that, after several hundred dances later we performed our own choreographed routine for our wedding dance.
Somewhere between the first dance and the wedding dance, my boss said to me,
“I wasn’t sure if you were truly ready to be promoted. Before, you didn’t seem to care much about money, advancing in your career and after your [first] promotion, you suddenly switched on. It was like a light bulb went on in your head.”
My first promotion occurred the same year I started dating my future wife, about six months prior to dating. The $64,000 question became, “So what changed?”
“I saw a future...one with potential hopes, dreams and responsibilities, all of which required money that was above and beyond what I was currently making.”
The problem with being a man, is that you’re conditioned from birth to believe that your sole purpose in life is to reproduce and produce excess resources to fund that reproduction. Now whether that conditioning is instinctual or cultural, the fact remains that a low-resource-production male is generally frowned upon by society. The flip side to this is that if you as a man believe there are few opportunities out there to get married and have a kid, or that there are but it’s simply not worth it due to divorce laws, then what’s likely to happen is that you’ll check out of society in some form or another.
That was me.
In the end...there was a new beginning
Fast-forward a few years, and my wife was constantly reminding me every week that “maybe it’s too late to have kids.”
Well...let’s just say I took care of that in short order.
Fast-forward nine months and I’m holding my 5.5 pound baby girl right after the OB has delivered her into my arms and there are two things that immediately come to mind:
What am I supposed to do now?
I must take a selfie of this and share it on Whatsapp.
My wife was still lying down, unable to move and desperately trying to inch her head into the photo. I have a legitimate photo of this!
The drive home must have been the longest drive I have every done outside of a golf course because I remembered nearly every minute of it. It’s one of those things where the combination of four espresso shots plus adrenaline causes enough dopamine release in your brain that there is a significant time dilation effect approaching that of an event horizon of a black hole.
That black hole is your state of personal finances with respect to your family. Money keeps going into that black hole, and nothing escapes from it, not even the light from the end of a very dark tunnel. As your sense of time is completely warped, you start to realize just how far you might have to stretch a dollar due to the gravity of the situation.
Babies are expensive. The diapers they poop in are expensive. Formula is even more expensive. An unhappy wife is the most expensive thing you could ever have.
In the Year 2 AD (After Delivery)
So if you’ve managed to read this far, either you’re currently a father or soon to be one and you want to know what’s changed and why? Links below: