One good way to engender a crisis of self is to have a baby

Or: Who am I, really

I have a pile of business and tech-related ideas for this little blog, but none of them have managed to make it past the headline stage thanks to new demands on both my time and energy. Having a kid has really changed the flow of my days. Enough that my time for non-work-related efforts has been dramatically altered.

In the past I had sufficient free time that wrote up lists each year of things that I wanted to try out. One summer I did a series of paintings. Am I a very good painter? Hell no. Was it good to spend some time in the sun having fun with art? Hell yes.

A few things have changed since. I took on a larger, more involved role at my job. Managing a team is far more work than merely managing yourself, and in particular demands that you empty your social batteries more rapidly during the day than you might, say, as an individual contributor.

Then we had Ada, and I suddenly had new jobs to do. Initially my roles in baby-land were clear: Care for Liza post-op, help with the hour-by-hour care of a newborn, remember to eat. As time went on and we got our childcare set up and Liza healed, I had less to do. Around the time I was starting to truly flounder, I went back to work.

That helped answer some questions regarding who I am, but not all of them.

Since returning to the day job I’ve had to learn a new balancing game: How to help care for the dogs and kid before and during work, and jumping into family tasks like cooking and cleaning and taking turns trying to rock a stubborn and perfect child to sleep.

Back in the day my self-conception was built entirely around my work output. Getting married shook that up some, and for the better. Now that I am also a parent my old models of self-worth, and self more generally simply don’t work.

I was always more than my job I suppose, but now it’s very clear that that’s the case. So what, or who am I? It is not easy to go from a simple, if selfish form of self-consideration to a more blended, less self-centered answer.

I’m Ada’s dad. I’m Liza’s partner. I’m Maggie and Scout and Nola’s source of food, walks, and games of fetch. I am also Alex at TechCrunch, and internal to that team I am the guy who cheerleads paywall inclusion.

All that places me in relation to others. The question of who I am to myself is harder to answer.

I’m figuring it out. One thing I want to do is get back to creating for myself. And I want to conserve more of my energy each day for post-work things. That’s not going to be easy, but here’s hoping that therapy has the roadmap I need.

Back in my youth I thought that identity and mid-life crises made little sense; it’s not hard to have direction in your post-college years if you are busy with work, so why did folks struggle with it later on? It turns out that as time passes it’s very easy to wind up with a maelstrom of personal, professional, and emotional commits, all of which matter. You have to do some choosing. And that’s where at least some flash points come from. Here’s to my own, and finding real balance for the first time.