The Advantage of Responsibilities
Reading time: 4 min
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
“I used to resent obstacles along the path, thinking, ‘If only that hadn’t happened life would be so good.’ Then I suddenly realized, life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path.”
First thing in the morning
Every morning I get up at the break of dawn to allow myself an hour or two of writing before my daughter wakes and my boss calls.
Well, maybe it’s not always at the break of dawn. Sometimes my alarm goes off, I snooze it, and my wife kicks me out of bed. Sometimes, when the previous night I had to watch that last episode of [insert show here, even if it's the 100th time I watch it] I may go downstairs and feed the dog, but then “rest my eyes” for that extra twenty minutes that will make my day a hundred times worse.
Sometimes, I am on nappy duties and there is a poo-nami on the way. Sometimes, the dog is sick and I need to care for him. Sometimes my daughter is just too adorable to be in the other room, which means that my writing time is consumed by what I can only sum up as life. Despite life, I always manage to write.
I complain, of course, because I’d like to write more, but the simple fact that, at this point, I can write every day is simply remarkable.
Parkinson’s Law
As it happens, and because we’ve got a wagon of relatives eager to meet the newcomer back in Italy, my wife flew over for a week, leaving me in the UK with the dog, Larry. Before leaving, she made sure I knew what I was supposed to do during those seven days of freedom.
It wasn’t cleaning. It wasn’t fixing the bathroom door. It was writing.
My wife’s my greatest supporter. She goes to the extent that, I think, I wouldn’t be writing at all if it wasn’t for her. She wanted to make sure that I would write as much as I could while relieved of father's duties; and yet, this has been my least productive week since my daughter was born.
I know this article might cost me a slap on the wrist, but—hey—I’m writing this while she’s away. It counts.
What is of bigger interest to me is why I’m not writing, though, in theory, I’d have all the time in the world.
And the problem is exactly this. Having all the time in the world is not good. (As Tim Urban knows.)
Photo by Nick Abrams on Unsplash
Just as the day before a deadline students put up gargantuan efforts with mesmerizing results, my creativity shines in the moments before my day job starts.
As I said before in another article, during weekdays, I would delay (or forget) to brush my teeth or get dressed in order to hit my word count. Knowing that my writing window is limited pushes me to get across that scene as quickly as I can, and gets me out of the toilet in a reasonable amount of time.
It’s no news that deadlines and time pressure help increasing output. Smarter people than me have observed the phenomenon, and in 1955, Cyril Northcote Parkinson formulated the now famous Parkinson’s law; stating that
“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Motivation
I know what you’re thinking.
I don’t have the time pressure coming from my family now, but my working arrangements haven’t changed. Why are they not working as well anymore, then?
To explain this, I need to dive deep into the dirtiest word of the English language: motivation.
Waking up early every day is not easy—especially if no one is paying you for that. Facing the blank page is not easy. Writing 650 words when you think the previous 50,000 are shit is not easy. And yet, people do it. And yet, I do it.
I do it for me, sure. My family would undoubtedly benefit from some extra time with me—either directly, cuddling, changing nappies, or indirectly, tidying up the kitchen, for example—but I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for them.
I want to be fulfilled to be a better husband. I want my daughter to be proud of me. I want to show her that everything is possible if you put in the work. I want her to use me as an example when she’ll face the challenges of life.
Without my wife and my daughter in the house, I’ve lost my rhythm.
My motivation, if you want, dropped; but that’s ok.
As much as I would love to be—engineering background, right?—I’m not a machine. How I feel, whom I miss, my emotional balance affects my productivity, and now I miss my family. I miss them very much.
And this is good news.
It means that I don’t have to abandon my dream because I decided to have a family, as many well-intentioned people have tried to make me believe. It is quite the opposite. It is my family fuelling my dream.
Alla prossima.
