Angry Robot

Resurfacing

I am starting to have the time to write something here and this has led to a crisis of purpose of sorts. What sort of things do I like to write? It’s not that I can’t think of anything, I can think of too many things and can’t decide on a single one on which to spend my still-precious few minutes of surplus time.

That’s because of the boy. You have a baby and it throws your life into complete disarray. At first they never sleep for more than three hours. They sleep, wake, eat, shit, go back to sleep. There’s plenty of chance for you the parent to sleep also, but only on their very weird terms. As the weeks drag on you are exhausted, disoriented, isolated. You wake up in the morning but it feels like the evening. To leave the house your mental checklist extends to like 20 things you need. Plus you fear the kid crying and disrupting the restaurant, grocery store, whatever it was. If you are going to the grocery store are you going to bring that stroller? Because then you can’t push a cart can you? Things get complicated and the easiest course is often to not make that trip. When you do find a few minutes you are going to slump semi-defeated into your couch with a glass of wine and some bullshit Netflix superhero show. You are not gonna write that fucking blog post about Trump or cool smart lights.

The kid actually slept for 12 unbroken hours last night. So that’s a sort of milestone. He’s three months now, and more baby-like. Newborns are like little alien pods. They barely open their eyes, they are preternaturally wrinkly, and they are probably resentful of being out in the world which must seem cold and hostile to them. They have a bundle of reflexes but very little in the way of human reactions and expressions. These come gradually. You might see a smile that represents something other than the passing of gas. You might start to hear coos and goos that sound like the child trying to say something. Plus their sleep clumps into longer stretches at night and more predictable naps during the day. That’s where we are now, and that’s why I find myself with the time to string sentences together, and the energy to do it.

The question remains: what to write about? Or hell, this is my blog, I’ll just write and see what it’s about afterward.