The chicken, the egg, and the frying pan

Enjoying pondering the unresolvables as I do, I am often faced with situations in which the path to maximizing 'the good' is impossible to know for certain.

For instance.

The big kid has a journee pedagogique which he was excited to attend as it was foam sword fighting day. "Epic" in the argot of the times. Mid week, when the day he thought they were meant to make the swords came and went with no swords being made, he began to stress that today was not in fact fight with foam swords day.

Mounting unhappiness.

Lobbying commences to not attend.

Parents, having, you know, jobs, and time spent with kids elsewhere under threat - resist. "You're going!" "I'll read books all day" "I've got to work" "Please!" "No" "I hate my life"

et french sealing cetera

He's smart and pulls out all the pro stay at home arguments - boiling down to it's just one day and why are you so mean?

But as increasingly autonomous as he's becoming, inevitably he becomes bored, needs food, love, or any number of other unreasonable things, and less work gets down.

And this is the chicken and egg and the frying pan of it all.



I want to maximize happy. If we're broke we're unhappy - if kids are over institutionalized, we're unhappy, if we're stressed because work's not getting done, we're unhappy, if we're stressed because we're feeling guilty about sending kids to what they believe is 'we're just going to fill out papers all day long' instead of 'epic foam sword fighting day' - we're unhappy.

So being self-employed and having the flexibility to manage my time means I could keep him home - but I knew it was sword day so drag him to school, foolishly engaging at increasingly high volume in debate about the degree to which my earning a living rather than keeping him home makes me evil, and we get to the door, ask the directrice of service de garde if it's sword day, it is, and all this bull hickey washes away.

Except for my need to come home and analyze it.

You need to invest time in your family - there's no substitute for time to build strong bonds. You need to invest time in your business. If you had more money, you could possibly spend more time with your kids. But if it takes all your time to grow your business to the point where you have enough money, well, the Cat's in the cradle and all that is 'Cat Stephens on some FBI watchlist now?'

So - baby steps. Experiment. Adjust. Iterate. I know to date 9 times out of 10 I've put the family before the career, but do that too long and you risk ending up resenting them. Christ, I'll be dead before they're old enough to be 'grateful'…

But, whether it's eggs or a chicken, heat up that frying pan, and dollars to donuts but that's dessert, the outcomes likely to be tasty.