Having Kids

I'm right there with you. At about 915, after stand up and coffee I have this spike of energy that gets me into work and makes me think 'tonight I'm going to put aside two hours for x'. Where x is side project, exercise, date night, whatever.

By 7:30pm that energy is a vague memory. Often the best I can manage is not falling asleep while I put them to bed.

People talk about crowding out the bad with the good: don't make time for things, just do them and let the world mold around what you love. In this stage of life though, the consequence of don't this can be massively damaging.

Kids this age are relentless, if you push hard for yourself it can be very hard to recover. But in line with other comments, I can feel the change coming. At 2 and 4, the sleep is better and their needs on us are becoming less.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and this helps me recognise that right now just isn't the time to push hard.

> Studies consistently show childless people are happiest irrespective of age

Not true. It depends on the support network around the parents. Government support, kindergarten opening hours, grandparents, etc. I would conclude that spending time with your kids is great in moderation, but achieving moderation is nigh-impossible without (a lot of) help.

So, I have one 6-year-old. I will say the number one source of my hobby programming time over these past few years is sacrificed sleep, and while I feel it's been worth it, it's a finite resource. I'm in the back half of my 20's and feeling the age; I can't pull all-nighters like I used to. Thankfully, my son is also a little more self-sufficient now, so I find that if I've got some wholesome activities for him to throw himself into (Legos, visual art, writing, music, occasional movies) then I can find time to do my hobby programming. I also spend a lot of my spare brain cycles at work reading and having/developing ideas over time. Patience is key here - the idea for my current project came to me months ago, and it has taken a combination of reading, planning, waiting, and one all-nighter to get to the point where I can opportunistically use a 1-2 hour burst of energy in the morning / evening to accomplish something concrete. It's still not easy though, because at the end of the day you do need to relax and recuperate. I think I find this project relaxing to work on because I create a lot of pressure on myself to release it. If you don't have that pressure on yourself, you may not feel like it's worth it to use that time to work on a side project.

Sure. But they got to over $1B. I'd imagine this particular co-founder has a net worth approaching $100MM. That sounds like success to me. And it was done with a family and multiple children.

Honestly? No, yes, and somewhat.

> So you consider your life so far has been only pain, nothing of worth or fulfillment because you've not had a nest of millions-of-dollars to lie in?

Not only pain, but definitely not actualized either. My life to date is a gamble that I'll maybe be able to achieve autonomy before death. If I was born into wealth, I would have started with autonomy.

Not everyone is cut out for work, and I have to dedicate pretty much 100% of my being to make it happen.

My week is consumed by work, my weekends are consumed by resting for more work. Maybe some people can compartmentalize work in such a way that it doesn't eat their life, but I haven't been able to figure that out yet.

> You'd rather not have lived?

To date? Yes, I suppose. But my hope is that I'll be eventually be able to buy my freedom, so maybe I'll eventually be thrilled that I struggled and achieved independence, if that ever happens.

I'm hoping that someday, by not having kids, I'll be able to stop working and give living a try. Maybe I'll be an artist? Or work on some kind of cause to help others? I might be getting too old for sports, but it'd be nice to physically train full-time for something to see what my physical capabilities are. Or maybe read the classics and study philosophy? I don't know, the point is, I can't know, because I can't pursue anything else full-time while working.

I don't really consider my 30-something years so far as much "living", because I can't think of a time after childhood where I've had longer than 20 consecutive days without a job to be done. Even as a kid, it was only 60 days or so of summer vacation. Incidentally, that was the time I learned to write code, which ended up becoming a job because I couldn't learn anything else while trying to pass school.

> Do you resent your parents having you?

Somewhat, because I wouldn't have done it myself. I will never understand how they could toil for others for their entire lives and then think it would be great if we could continue the tradition for another generation.

I try not to be bitter about it because there's no sense in that. I can't really undo my parents choices, so I'm trying to make the best of things. But if I were somehow able to advise them before they decided to have me, I would have tried to politely decline existing.

From my perspective, I really only exist because they wanted children, so my purpose in their life is to bring them happiness. I can really only start setting my own purpose once I achieve enough autonomy that I don't have to work to exist.

If I can scrounge together enough wealth to retire before I die, I'll consider it an enormous victory. There's a good chance work will kill me before I can leave it. I'm pretty sure I'll never make enough to have kids.

I'm holding out for the chance that I'll be able to restart life in my 40s, but this time with a trust fund of my own creation. Then, without work, perhaps I'll be able to achieve a good life.

I know my view is considered extreme, but I don't see any other way to look at it.