Tag: angst

New Father Brogging, #024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today marks seven months since my daughter was born.  Since then, she’s over doubled her birth weight and creeping closer and closer to ten inches grown.  She’s gone from being a NICU baby that struggled to feed from a bottle to being a strong independent infant that doesn’t need mom or dad to hold the bottle for her to wolf down a full feed in eight minutes.  She’s now eating solids, and has been a very good eater thus far, consuming pretty much everything we’ve put in front of her.

It’s difficult for me sometimes, to not get emotional over every little step she takes and the growth that we watch happening right in front of our very eyes.

But last night was a particularly difficult pill to swallow, as it was the first night in which mythical wife and I both slept apart from our child, as we have begun the transition into having her sleep in her own room.  Monitored, obviously, but sleeping in a room outside of ours.  The reality is that she has basically outgrown the Snoo bassinet that carried her throughout the first six months of her life, and she needs room to turn and maneuver, otherwise it leads to a very grumpy and unhappy fussy baby.  Combined with teething, it led to what was basically the worst sleeping week of our lives over the last week and change.

Gradually working in her crib for naps has proven to be working that she can sleep in the crib, and it’s proven that the crib and its space is proving beneficial to our child’s sleep, so we finally pulled the trigger and had a few test nights where she stayed in the crib overnight, while I slept on the futon in the room as a safety net.  It only took two nights to really prove that she was up for it, and as of last night, we had her sleep in her own room by herself for the first time.

It was hard to not feel emotional going to sleep myself, watching her on a monitor, instead of knowing she were mere feet away, and I would be seconds away from swooping in to get her if there were any sort of discomfort or need to physically pick her up.  I had some unpleasant flashbacks to the NICU days, where mythical wife and I only had the comfort of a webcam that had limited times in which it would be on, instead of 24/7 real-life accessibility as we’ve had over the last seven months.

Ultimately, we know this is for the best, and is the natural progression of growth for children.  Obviously, she was never going to be sleeping in the same room with us forever, and it was only a matter of time before she’d eventually be in her own room.  This was always part of the plan.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that it makes me all sad and emo-ey knowing my child is growing so fast and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before she’s asking me for $100 at a time so she can buy some frivolous crap, or will eventually be asking me for advice on which insurance plan she should be picking at work.

Seven months have flown by, and it’s going to be hard to not feel a little choked up when I have to pack up and move our $1,200 bassinet out of our bedroom and into storage.  As much as I’ll be glad to never stub my toes on the legs of it again soon, I’m going to miss like hell, the days of our sweet little warm baby sleeping right next to our bed.

New Father Brogging, #023

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

tommen jumping

This gif is precisely how I feel after my kid wakes up at 9:30 pm, 12 am, and 3 am to scream bloody murder for an hour each time.  Although we’ve narrowed the possible causes to a bad case of reflux or teething syndrome, it definitely seems to be more the latter, given the related symptoms going on.

At no point did any book, parent or any other resource tell me that teething was going to be this bad.  Teething is absolutely the worst thing that’s happened throughout my foray into parenthood, and there aren’t many ways to describe how much I’ve grown to hate the misery it puts me, mythical wife, and our child.

If teething were a person, and you locked me in a room with it, the baked potato and Adolf Hitler, and then gave me a gun with two bullets, I’d shoot teething twice.  I’d rank teething higher than coronavirus and Atlanta morning radio, as in things that absolutely suck.  I would rather have an entire week of one-on-two you-suck-at-your-job meetings than a single night of the hell that teething put me through the night prior.

Seriously, I could go on, but there aren’t enough words to express just how much I hate teething now.  Obviously it’s of no fault of my precious kid herself, but damn does it chap my ass to how much things are sucking, and having no expectation or warning that teething was going to be this bad.

There is no more feeling of being helpless and defeated than your kid wailing in agony at their little infant teef, drilling and boring upward to try and be out in the world, and us as parents who have little to no ability to do anything about it.  We’ve tried teething rings and other little aides, and as much as I don’t want to have to, we even tried infant Tylenol to try and dull the pain, but nothing seems to be working other than snuggling her until she tires herself out back to sleep, which usually takes anywhere from 45-60 minutes, which at 3 in the morning is about as appealing as getting on I-75 the morning when the baked potato is in town.

And this has been going on, off-and-on over the last few days, which now that both mythical wife and I are both back to working, is very much discouraging.  We already get less sleep than either of us would really want to be getting, but the one thing we’ve always been able to rely on throughout the last six month is that our kid has been a very good night sleeper, capable of sleeping through the entire night.  But now that’s been compromised, and we’re very much feeling frazzled and defeated on a nightly basis, as we have no time to really wind down and relax, without the anxiousness of worrying about if/when she’ll wake up unexpectedly, and we’ll be greeted via monitor of angry cries and screaming.

Suffice to say, teething has really been the worst thing about new parenting there has been.  I know that all babies are different, but as far as ours is concerned, I don’t think anything has been as painstakingly crushing as the teething experience has been.  I know this storm too, will eventually pass, and it’ll hopefully be back to some semblance of normalcy again, but until then, it’s a nightmare every single night.  And the fact that she’ll have like 30 teeth give or take to grow in, it’s only a matter of time before we realize that this will either happen frequently, or mercifully only in bunches.

New Father Brogging, #022

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been two days since I’ve reported back to work, and the first day wasn’t admittedly as horrible as I thought it would be despite the fact that my credentials didn’t get activated until nearly 1:30 pm despite me following all proper protocol to come back to work, but on the second day, I’ve already had a ten hour work day, where I had maybe 45 minutes before my child was ready to go down for bed.

After she goes down, I have some errands to run, and then when I’m back home then I have to run, because it’s good for my health and I don’t want to ever be at risk of ending up on My 600 Lb. Life no matter how stoked I’d be to be able to meet Dr. Nowzaradan, and when I’m done with that, I have a litany of little chores, cleaning and baby prep to do, before I go upstairs to shower and then finally sit down to relax.

It’s practically 10 pm at this time, and I’ll have less than two hours before the smart move is to get ready, and go to bed, but not before waking up my child for what mythical wife and I call the nightcap, which is a miniature feeding, in order to tide her over through the entire night despite the fact that on this specific morning she awoke at 5:11 am screaming bloody murder to which really was just, hunger.  We’re hoping this is a growth spurt or some aberration, and nothing that will become an ordinary occurrence because 5:11 am is frighteningly insane.

So what do I do to unwind starting at 10 pm?  Watch something else on Netflix or Plex?  Burn time browsing through YouTube and instead inevitably watching video clips I’ve seen hundreds of times?  Nope.  Brog about all of these slice of life experiences and inevitably end up sitting on my recliner and doing internet surveys for 42¢ for 15 minutes (I’m currently at $569.99 made through internet surveys).  Because when the day is over, that combination of activities seems remotely more productive and self-gratifying to me than burning brain cells looking for something to watch and inevitably finding nothing, plus I’m still building towards the inevitably blet fund for a blet that will never ever be released so maybe it can go towards a fancy vacation or something in the future instead.

A long time ago when I was in the midst of my life of freelance, I developed a pretty good working relationship with one of the account managers of the agency in which I temped through.  She was really nice, and one quality important to me, which was loyal.  We kind of lucked into each other when I came aboard their roster, and within days of starting up with them, I was immediately placed with ScumTrust, which at the time was a massive career upgrade for me, but was more importantly, an open-ended contract with no definitive end date, which means we were both getting paid as long as I did good work, which I did.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #022” →

Have ad blockers become obsolete?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever since I got my brog back up, I’ve occasionally struggled to find a good groove in which to get back to writing.  Even being down for four years hasn’t really changed anything in that regard, in spite of how gung-ho and excited I was to get it back up, and thought that I could bounce back quicker than hoped.

Honestly though, it’s not so much the lack of want or desire to write, it’s just that I’ve had difficulty finding things that I want to write about.  Considering my life is basically like 85% thinking about baby, I kind of rely on the internet to feed me news, articles and stories to hopefully inspire me to write words, instead of me having to search for them currently.

But a large part of my difficulties these days is that all of the sites I used to go to, to look up local and national news, stories and potential inspiration, all of them have become neigh unusable for people like me who don’t want to be inundated with ads, because either sites all have anti-ad block blocks on them, or I have to white list them and I’m drowning in an ocean of ads that turns me off faster than seeing pictures of psoriasis on Google images and I leave disgusted.

I guess this is one of those points in my life where I realize how much of a parent I am because I don’t want to dig to find out or look for solutions, but basically I’m a Chrome user, and having Ad Block Plus on either makes the browser mostly unusable unless I whitelist all sites to which then the aforementioned drowning in ads becomes the norm.  I’ve given cursory Google searches to why this is the case but finding no real tangible proof of it, but all I know is that in the end it just discourages me from seeking news from once-reliable sites to seek out inspiration to write about, and it’s definitely contributing towards the struggles to keep on writing.

It’s frustrating because this is one of those situations where a little bit of give and take on either side might fix everything, but advertising has gotten so out of hand these days, which is what necessitated ad blocking to begin with, but with advertisers getting into bed presumably with the sites that shill them, they’re making it less possible for people to browse them without the luxury of blocking.  Maybe if every banner wasn’t animated, needed sound or autoplaying video, they wouldn’t be so obnoxious to want to block, but here we are.

Anyway, this is all mostly one big excuse to why I’m struggling to write more regularly, on top of the usual explanation that my kid comes first.  So I’ll leave it with this unnerving photo I saw on the AJC of some Asian women wearing MAGA caps and shirts that appear to state Asian Pacific Americans for the Baked Potato, and all it really does is make me wince, cringe, and shake my head at how disgusting such a thought is, and how I really can’t comprehend how any Asian minorities, much less those of the female gender, can support a guy who fucking hates their very existence.

What a perplexing and obnoxious ‘Murica we live in today.

Is this the worst era of politics ever?  Yes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Occasionally, there are things that go on in the world and in the lives of people in my own little bubble, that I wonder if these are things that every generation goes through.  Take for example, as my general generation of people are all climbing out of their 30s and some into their 40s, we’re entering stages of our lives where peoples’ parents begin to ascend into ages where life expectancy is nearing their ends, and there’s occasionally the somber conversation that comes up where family members have passed away.  Undoubtedly, this is something that every generation goes through, as Father Time is unbeatable and everyone eventually goes.

But the inspiration of this post is unfortunately politics.  It doesn’t take people with the power of enhanced sight to see that it’s a powder keg of a topic and the most volatile thing to possibly discuss in the world these days, and there are people who are smart enough to keep their mouths shut and keep their opinions to themselves in public, and then there’s everyone else who just can’t manage to shut the fuck up about politics.

I didn’t imagine the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have bothered me much, since usually the passing of anyone in Washington is met with who cares indifference.  But RBG meant a whole lot to a lot of people, and even casual news followers like me had heard plenty about her stances, accomplishments and general grit and determination throughout her career and her life.  And seeing the reaction of many of my internet friends, both female and male, about their general disappointment at her passing, puts into perspective for people like me just how big of a loss this is to a country that desperately needs strong people like her in it.

As sad and as much of a loss it was with RBG’s passing, what predictably happened next was no less nauseating and disappointing, no matter how inevitable it was; in spite of the fact that in previous instances of a justice passing away in an election year, their replacement was held off until after the elections, but shocking nobody, the baked potato and his cronies are going to do everything in their power to fastrack another hand-picked stooge to fill RBG’s seat as fast as humanly possible.

This, has unfortunately overshadowed the news of RBG’s passing, as this administration has the power to take absolutely anything in the country, and turn it political, obviously ruining everything it touches.

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New Father Brogging, #021

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As my paternity leave winds down, I naturally feel like the last six weeks have blown by, and that I wish I had more time.  Mentally, I’m not really that prepared to return to work yet, but it’s not like I really have much of a choice if I want to be able to provide for my family, other than to suck it up and get back to it.  But I definitely wish I had more time, without a doubt.

Overall, the last six weeks have been mostly anything but easy, as raising a child is definitely no small feat, and I should be fortunate that I even had the luxury of paternity time in the first place.  As necessary as it most certainly felt to me, the reality is this is something that my company did not have in place when I first started there, which wasn’t even a full five years ago.  I remember the big deal it was within the company, and even getting some national news traction about how when we went full paternity, and thinking nothing of it back then, because I wasn’t even married yet, but having capitalized on it now, I couldn’t be more grateful to work for a company that offers it, because I know that such is not the case everywhere else.

But throughout my paternity leave, my child has grown a bunch, begun eating solid foods, competently rolling over front to back to front, has graduated out of swaddles, and has been teething, chatting a lot more, and we’ve begun trying to get her to sit up on her own strength.  One of my prime hopes was that while I was off, we’d be able to get her into a casting call for some sort of baby company, and put her to work a little bit, and once she actually did get put on a shortlist of candidates, but then they hit us with the curveball that all babies would be required to be able to sit up on their own power.  Bummer

Aside from baby-ing, over the last six weeks, I managed to get my brog back up and running, although it’s an indeterminate time to whether when or if I’ll ever get the pre-2010 archives back up and running, because that’s way lower priority than the brog.  I also had some house issues, when some freakish storms exposed some leaks in my home, which turned out to be a time consuming and costly ordeal in its own right, which really messed me up, and I also found out that my own dad has been having some minor health issues on his own, leading to my sister and I to have some real talks about the inevitable future.

Needless to say, it’s been a time during paternity leave, and it’s hard to comprehend that these six weeks have evaporated so quickly.  Put being on full-time daddy duty 10-12 hours a day, with next to no help and practically no down time for myself, and it’s been very understandable when people try to expound the difficulties of parenthood.

To reward myself and/or indulge in some retail therapy, I decided to get myself a new belt, as well as track down my own belated birthday gift, in this sweet Power Rangers T-Rex DinoZord.  And the belt is mostly as a result of an Amazon gift card my sister got me for my birthday when her own attempt to get me the T-Rex stalled out due to a flaky seller in Japan, and much like Target gift cards, I’m left with a wtf do I purchase, until it came to my attention that Amazon actually had a few people selling legitimate belts.  So now I have a Ring of Honor tag replica, that guys like Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish, the Young Bucks, Hardys, AJ Styles, Kevin Steen Owens, Cesaro, CM Punk and Seth Rollins have held in their histories.

And modeling the belt is my new life-long tag team partner.  As intensive as some parenting might have felt at times, I wouldn’t take anything away from the last six weeks, and I’m sad that it’s likely I’ll not get another massive chunk of time like this to spend with my child for the immediate future.

The cold equations of life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There was a sci-fi story I read in high school that I always remembered called The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin.  In short, it was the story about a guy who was piloting a supply ship through space, to deliver medical supplies to a mining colony on another planet.  However, unbeknownst to him, a young girl, hoping to hitch a ride to the colony where her brother was located, had stowed away and was discovered after the ship had launched and was already in route.  She thought the punishment for her discretion would merely be a fine, but quickly learned that the ship had only enough fuel to make it to the planet and did not account for the weight she had added to the ship. 

In other words, her stowing away jeopardized the lives of herself, the pilot and the colonists depending on the medical supplies because the ship didn’t have enough fuel to haul the extra weight and would fall short of its destination and crash.

Initially, the pilot was callously instructed by his superiors to jettison the girl off the ship and continue the journey, and naturally he showed tremendous reluctance at the thought of having to kill someone; but it was a matter of kill one person to save the many people who needed the medical supplies, or jettison the medical supplies in order to save the girl. 

Spoiler alert: they deliberate for so long that it doesn’t even matter; after jettisoning the medical supplies, it turns out that a little thing called physics had already come into play, and they’d been flying overweight for long enough to where the girl needed to be unloaded anyway, due to fuel constraints.  The pilot is mentally murdered by having to push the button on someone’s life, the colonists on the planet do not get the medical supplies, and he is arrested and imprisoned for insubordination. 

Everyone loses.

Continue reading “The cold equations of life” →