Plate Spinning
You’d be forgiven for wondering whether my resolution to “continue to be a passably responsible gaming dad” meant not posting anything in 2020. Luckily, that is only partially the case.
I don’t actually know how other people do it. My wife and I both work, which means that gaming time is typically limited to when she and the baby go to sleep. But said gaming time is really “do everything else time,” so in practice, it’s like 30 minutes. What can you meaningfully play in that amount of time?
The kicker is work changes. I used to have some downtime in which I could write posts. Now that I’m in an interim position, that’s out the window. It’s been out the window for a while, but not all the plates had stopped spinning. Now that they are slowing down, well… I should probably learn how to spin them, yeah?
I’m kidding – I’m amazing at everything I do. It’s the choosing to do things that needs some work. So I’m going to do that.
And maybe shorter posts? We’ll see.
Posted on January 15, 2020, in Miscellany and tagged #firstworldproblems, Ain't Nobody Got Time, Baby. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
In An Age 
My typical schedule, with two younger kids: Wake up, get kids ready, drop a kid off at school, go to work. Home from work at 6pm. Dinner, about an hour with the kids, kids in bed at 7:30pm. Technically I can now game from that time until midnight, but generally I’ll spend an hour or two with the wife watching something or gaming together, plus maybe 30 minutes for house stuff. I’d say I average at least 2hrs of uninterrupted gaming a night, not counting mobile gaming throughout the day.
Weekends are basically the same, with the only difference being the work block is replaced with family time. Night time is still basically the same, with the option to stay up later.
Unless you are going to sleep at like 9pm, I don’t see how you are so time crunched each day.
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The baby isn’t asleep until 8:30pm if we’re lucky. Generally speaking, my gaming time is that 8:30pm-10:30pm window, as the baby usually wakes up again at 10:30pm and doesn’t fully go down for the night until after that second feeding. I can obviously stay up later than 10:30pm afterwards but that is directly trading sleep for gaming. Which is something I have done for years before I even met my wife, but it gets harder and harder to do and still function the next day.
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How much do you sleep? Even 8 hrs a night from 11pm means waking up at 7am. Cut that 8 to 7 and we have similar windows.
Back when the kids were in those earlier years of more naps vs longer sleep, the wife and I would also trade off days on baby watch, so the other could have a longer uninterrupted window to do whatever (go out, game, nap, whatever). Once they sleep longer, and then when the second kid comes into the pictures, that’s no longer doable, but it worked well for the first during that time.
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On any given weekday, I’m running on ~6 hours or less when I actually need 7-8. Getting to bed on time is a struggle, but putting the phone down and actually going to sleep when I need to is harder still. Regardless, I have to wake up at 7am (really it should be 6:30am), in order to get up and showered and dressed and out the door to get to the babysitter’s and to work before 8:30am.
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Phone down before bed was a major change I made. I found I was sitting in bed for like 30 minutes on the phone each night, and realized I’d rather be playing a PC game for 30 minutes longer than being on the iPhone ‘wasting time’. Means less time for CoC and CR, but more PC gaming. Also means less random browsing of Reddit and such, and if I’m being honest, that’s not a huge loss long-term.
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