Family Time and Turning on an LED
Because my wife works full-time during the week, I’m the primary caretaker of our daughter during the daytime from M-Th. I work on my PhD primarily during the evenings and on Friday and Saturday (I don’t work on Sundays for religious reasons) aside from a few hours that I watch N before her bedtime. In some sense, Saturday at midnight is like my wife’s Th @ 5 pm (she works 8/10’s, so every Friday off). Weekends are also generally when many social activities get scheduled, like church activities, community events, birthday parties, and informal gatherings with friends. I find myself in a pretty regular dilemma needing to choose between spending time altogether as a family participating in various, fun activities vs. making progress on my PhD work. I’m far from finding a balance, but I try to dynamically redistribute my time and attention based on needs. Far too often, this leads to an unhappy mix of less attention to my family and a feeling of dissatisfaction or “being behind” at work. While it sounds very nice in my head, “being present” in whatever situation has been difficult for me to put into practice. Often my mind wanders to research problems just before bed, and while I’m watching N, or I’m answering emails, replying to GitHub issues, and responding to messages on Slack. On the other hand, N loves to come up to my “office” in the corner of our living room and tickle me through the back of my chair, which is both endearing, fun, and, well, a bit distracting. Also during my clocked-in time, V often brings my attention to new or funny things that N does, brings up “business” items that require my attention, like grocery shopping lists, events, and locating items that N may have hid in special locations throughout our apartment.
Often, I feel that my mind and body are spread thin, and when I feel like this I tend to get irritated more easily, be less attentive, and feel less satisfied with work and family life. All that said, there are some redeeming moments that help bring things back into perspective. Last night was one such occasion. I felt impressed to take some time away from my usual research time (post N’s bedtime) and chat with V. We spent a while talking about our recent international trip, doing some introspection, and talking about how things were going in my research group. It was refreshing and helped to ease some of the stress. I realized that I probably hadn’t even mentioned that I’d been having a positive mentoring experience for the past few months with a new student, which was a sign that having that sort of long, unstructured chat was much needed.
After that, there was about an hour left before midnight, and I set the goal to get my Raspberry Pi set up and get one of the LEDs on the Blinkt! module for the self-driving-lab-demo to light up. About fifty-five minutes later, I took the following picture:
During this hour, I was able to refocus back from notifications, messages, etc., locate the appropriate resources, and follow the instructions with little incident. I’ve had similar experiences in the past, where I’ve prioritized what I believe to truly be most important despite perceived external pressures, and the remaining time seems to be magnified with smoother and more efficient progress. Prior to getting started with that hour, I said a prayer in my heart with the desire to consecrate the time and with the goal in mind of turning on one of the LEDs. While in some ways a rather small victory, to me, it meant much more. It was both an answer to a prayer and the fulfillment of many weeks of planning and anticipation, and it was an achievement that was all the more sweet because it wasn’t at the expense of my family. For that, I feel very grateful.