Day: June 30, 2016

2335. On Parenting in the digital age

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My kids are bored. We have every ball known to mankind, a hoop, bikes, skateboards, skates, over 200 matchbox cars with tracks, four different gaming consoles, a computer, a bouncy house, cable tv, the internet, netflix, and an in home library with at least 400 kid-friendly texts.

Still, my kids are bored.

The problem is not even as simple as ‘they have too much to do’ the problem is a lack of attention span coupled with the need for constant direction. They rather I lead the activities all day long, telling them exactly what to do and when vs. have the freedom to take advantage of the ridiculous amount of stuff they have access to here. As a parent it is hard to be ‘on’ 24 hrs a day–especially when you work from home. I cannot get any work done because I am far too busy keeping them on track and out of trouble. I’ve tried the ‘let them do their own thing’ method and the result tends to be me walking out of my office after thirty minutes to a wrecked house. In fact, I slipped upstairs for a 10 minute write-a-thon with the full expectation that they are going to wreck everything in their path. I can still hear the seven year old screaming his tiny head off as I write. His voice is the loudest and his needs the greatest. I suppose that is a fundamental part of being the baby.

This behavior has to change. They are still young enough to learn a new way to act. It is still important enough that they find out how to deal amongst themselves while the grown folk are working. At this point there is clearly an expectation that I’m going to be their so-called Cruise Director for the rest of eternity, and I don’t want that job. There are more important aspects to being  dad than that.

Some Thoughts:

  1. I created a new category. I call it ‘rants’ and I think it will be very populated in the coming weeks. Rants make me feel better, just like writing makes me feel better. Therefore when I write and rant the effect doubles!
  2. I’m going back to pursuing the Torathae. I stepped away yet again, because I was struggling with the races and where to start. I think I’ll start with a map and abandon this focal notion of what the world looks like that seems to be keeping me in a non-progressive state.

2334. Allergic Reactions

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It is no secret that I have been struggling with writing lately and that struggle arrived on the heels of summer heat. Its gotten wore and worse over the past few weeks with each day seeming like a real struggle to even want to do anything beyond Minecraft. I thought it was depression. Nope. Then I figured it was a complete disconnect from writing as a whole. Nope. I still have a desire buried down deep. Then, the other day I recognized that I was having an allergy attack and hit the medkit. That was the most productive day of the summer. It took me several more days and one droopy eye to recognize that a huge part of the problem overall is just that: Allergies.

I was passing by the mirror a few minutes pre-post when I noticed my eyes looked weird. One looked really hooded as if the lid skin decided to move further down my visage. Yep, I went to WebMD. I went looking for confirmation of what I already knew: I was having an allergic reaction, likely to the ridiculous mass of pet dander flooding my house. The cat is shedding and I haven’t opened a window since May. This combined with the constantly itchy, red eyes leads me to believe that allergies are taking control of my system and my system is seriously deteriorating my attitude about life.

There is a simple solution. Clean my house better and take the darn pills. So, I’m on it. Tonight I’m going to gather as much of the offending fur as possible via vacuum, etc. and dump it. What makes this hard is that the cat’s fur is largely invisible to the naked eye and the offending dander has already filtered throughout the house. I took the financial hit and got the cool filters, so we will see how things go. Unfortunately, things got a lot worse before they now have a shot at getting better.