![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dad
I've been rethinking my stance on fatherhood.
For the last few weeks I've been sleeping like an infant... better than an infant; I'm not waking every four hours to throw up and scream for boob.
I've been sleeping well, for the first time in ten years I'm totally game to get back to doing standup (and really don't have the time), and I've been thinking about whether or not I want to become a dad.
My stance was always this: I can't afford a cat. To become a father to please myself, and bring a child into the world at a point when I can't make a serious attempt at both caring for it and making the most of the first seven formative years... it's just irresponsible and selfish. It's not right. Couple that with things like the world being overpopulated, the figures on the resources it takes for a person to live a normal life plus it costs more than a million dollars to raise a child to 18... it was never something I could seriously consider. And there's also the fear that my life as I know it would cease to be. ie. my career would wither and die. But I do think I'd make a good father if I was capable of being financially stable.
The thing is, so many kids are being born into loveless families just so Kevin Rudd will buy mum and dad a flatscreen, that there's a need for families that raise their kids with love and humour and understanding. In that sense it's ecologically and socially moral, I think. Kids raised to have faith and confidence in themselves are more likely to be good for this world than bad, even if only as role models or bringing something positive into the lives of others, who then go on to be less damaging... in whatever way you care to consider. So there's that.
The other thing is, I first came to Melbourne on the wave of something laughably bad that went down in Brisbane in 1996. I thought I'd dealt with it pretty well, but it's the nature of these things to not die so much as fade into the background, and then throw clogs in the works while you're out to lunch. I was pretty good at lying to myself about a whole range of things, basically. The biggest being about my ability to write my own life. If I want my career to work, it will. It's taken twelve years to find that particular lever. If I can make it work, I can have money. If I can have money, I can be a father. I know it doesn't take cash to be a good dad, the main requirement is being there and being more mature than the human being you just created.
The third criteria, which I haven't mentioned, is being in love with someone who could be a good mother and is a great friend. I have the advantage of time and being male, but if this is going to happen it'd be best if I didn't wait so long that when I attend this kid's graduation I'm more focused on the pudding.
So it's a thing. I don't know if it'll ever happen, but oddly it was like a weight lifting when I realised this was how I felt about it now, and that had changed because I've changed. It feels like that scene in the last episode of Due South where the ghost of the main character's dad is in his cabin, gets his hat, walks to the door, and all four walls fall away revealing a beautiful, frozen landscape and he just walks out into it. Possibilities, endings and beginnings. I dunno. Stuff. Feels important, I guess.
For the last few weeks I've been sleeping like an infant... better than an infant; I'm not waking every four hours to throw up and scream for boob.
I've been sleeping well, for the first time in ten years I'm totally game to get back to doing standup (and really don't have the time), and I've been thinking about whether or not I want to become a dad.
My stance was always this: I can't afford a cat. To become a father to please myself, and bring a child into the world at a point when I can't make a serious attempt at both caring for it and making the most of the first seven formative years... it's just irresponsible and selfish. It's not right. Couple that with things like the world being overpopulated, the figures on the resources it takes for a person to live a normal life plus it costs more than a million dollars to raise a child to 18... it was never something I could seriously consider. And there's also the fear that my life as I know it would cease to be. ie. my career would wither and die. But I do think I'd make a good father if I was capable of being financially stable.
The thing is, so many kids are being born into loveless families just so Kevin Rudd will buy mum and dad a flatscreen, that there's a need for families that raise their kids with love and humour and understanding. In that sense it's ecologically and socially moral, I think. Kids raised to have faith and confidence in themselves are more likely to be good for this world than bad, even if only as role models or bringing something positive into the lives of others, who then go on to be less damaging... in whatever way you care to consider. So there's that.
The other thing is, I first came to Melbourne on the wave of something laughably bad that went down in Brisbane in 1996. I thought I'd dealt with it pretty well, but it's the nature of these things to not die so much as fade into the background, and then throw clogs in the works while you're out to lunch. I was pretty good at lying to myself about a whole range of things, basically. The biggest being about my ability to write my own life. If I want my career to work, it will. It's taken twelve years to find that particular lever. If I can make it work, I can have money. If I can have money, I can be a father. I know it doesn't take cash to be a good dad, the main requirement is being there and being more mature than the human being you just created.
The third criteria, which I haven't mentioned, is being in love with someone who could be a good mother and is a great friend. I have the advantage of time and being male, but if this is going to happen it'd be best if I didn't wait so long that when I attend this kid's graduation I'm more focused on the pudding.
So it's a thing. I don't know if it'll ever happen, but oddly it was like a weight lifting when I realised this was how I felt about it now, and that had changed because I've changed. It feels like that scene in the last episode of Due South where the ghost of the main character's dad is in his cabin, gets his hat, walks to the door, and all four walls fall away revealing a beautiful, frozen landscape and he just walks out into it. Possibilities, endings and beginnings. I dunno. Stuff. Feels important, I guess.
no subject
no subject
Like most things it comes down to how you play the hand you're dealt. I could have handled that episode a lot more competently, but at least I handled it in some fashion, and I learned a lot. Which sounds a lot like water-headed optimism, but it is actually true.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I think our little Gen-X pocket of Australia has had some unrealistic ideas about how resilient we could expect ourselves to be in the face of emotional terrorism and with so much of the economic odds stacked against us, esp after growing up with expectations of the opposite.