{"id":46875,"date":"2020-04-09T10:40:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T14:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46875"},"modified":"2020-08-13T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T14:40:19","slug":"new-father-brogging-005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46875","title":{"rendered":"New Father Brogging, #005"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re now well into the brave new world of pandemic ruining the planet, America \u201cascending\u201d to #1, as in, being the country that\u2019s most been most devastated by coronavirus and had the highest afflicted\/death toll in the world, and pretty much everyone in the world has been advised to stay inside, avoid other people, and generally hunker down and hope for everything to eventually blow over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cabin fever, has perpetually been viewed as one of the biggest obstacles for Americans across the country, and it\u2019s no more evident than whenever I do go out (pediatrician appointments, picking up takeout meals), that there are always <\/em>people out and about, taking walks or jogging, more than ever.\u00a0 Seriously, a running joke that myself and many people out there have, are that we\u2019re all seeing people in our own neighborhoods that we\u2019d never seen before, because people are mostly recluses to begin with, but forced into situations where they are discouraged from wasting time elsewhere, they feel the itch to waste time at home, even if it means being seen by their neighbors.<\/span><\/p>\n

It kind of defeats the purpose of social distancing, but Americans have always been shit about following directions in the first place.\u00a0 Although going on walks and jogging is a pathetic bending of a rule that isn\u2019t going to help, things could be worse, so I guess it\u2019s mostly a \u201cfuck it, let them have that\u201d kind of compromise, although I have heard of more draconian areas in the country that have police willing to write tickets for those not properly practicing social distancing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Personally, cabin fever hasn\u2019t really hit mythical wife and I, because the vast majority of our days have been overwhelmingly consumed by the whole, now we\u2019re parents thing<\/strong>. I highly recommend popping out a newborn and raising it, if you\u2019re feeling anxious about the way the world is now; I assure anyone that it most definitely is effective at taking their mind off of the inability to go out and do things, and that there\u2019s absolutely no feeling of having too much time on your hands.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it stands, since I\u2019m working remotely, I actually feel like I work more now that I\u2019m doing it from home, than I do when I\u2019m at the office.\u00a0 In fact, I feel like a lot of my reports and a lot of my peers in general are doing similarly, mostly on account of the fact that they all feel like they need to prove that they\u2019re working, and subsequently actually become more productive than not.\u00a0 I\u2019m glued to my work machine for full work days, and by the time I log off, it\u2019s the start of the evening, and we\u2019re on a general cycle of feeding and changing the baby and then suddenly it\u2019s 10 pm, and I need to start thinking about the next work day.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are people out there who are complaining about how they\u2019ve watched \u201ceverything\u201d on Netflix already and are thinking of what streaming service to subscribe to next in order to find more fresh new content to watch; I\u2019ve barely watched any television at all over the last few weeks.\u00a0 The only things that I\u2019ve really seen are when mythical wife is on pumping\/feeding duty and I\u2019m hanging out for support, and she\u2019s been watching stuff like Great British Baking Show<\/em> or Crash Landing On You<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I catch up with my wrestling through YouTube bootleg consolidated highlight videos, and in an ironic twist, since coronavirus has basically cancelled every sporting body from baseball, March Madness, XFL to the Olympics, I don\u2019t have to feel any anxiety of falling out of the know when it comes to current sports.<\/span><\/p>\n

But speaking of irony, in spite of the devastation across the globe coronavirus has inflicted, it\u2019s given both mythical wife and I, a tremendous amount of time for us to spend with our newborn baby, and actually learn to be parents.\u00a0 Such would likely not be the case if not for a pandemic going on, as at some point one or both of us would have to begin going back to our respective on-site jobs, and then the dread of separation anxiety would ultimately take place.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a conversation the other night that if that were the case, then our child would actually have to begin going to daycare, like very soon.\u00a0 Our barely one-month old baby, already begin entrusted into the hands of strangers; licensed trained professionals sure, but still strangers in the grand spectrum of things, and most definitely not under the care of mom and dad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As she was premature, she\u2019s not even to her original due date, and we would have had to hand her off to daycare, not to mention start paying the second mortgage that is their tuition?\u00a0 Sounds like a colossal bomb of oh hell no<\/em>, that we wouldn\u2019t want to have to go through now, that the effects of coronavirus are actually protecting us from having to deal with, ironically.<\/span><\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not ready for that just yet.\u00a0 Six weeks after birth feels ridiculous for me, much less any parent, to have to go back to work and forfeit the raising of their children to someone other than themselves.\u00a0 I\u2019m still at the stage where I can still stare wistfully at my child while she\u2019s sleeping and be awed and marveled at the notion that I helped create this beautiful tiny human being, and it\u2019s my pleasure and responsibility to know of the challenge of raising her, hopefully positively.<\/span><\/p>\n

It still hasn\u2019t entirely sunk in that when I look in the mirror, I\u2019m looking at a dad<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019m now a guy that can take part in Father\u2019s Days, and that the stereotype of me is that I\u2019m someone who makes bad jokes and wants power tools and grill and grill accessories all the time; I mean that\u2019s kind of how I\u2019d been living well before the presence of children, but now I get to make it official.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I am familiarizing myself with the notion of unconditional love, and the fact that it hit me like an atom bomb as soon as I laid eyes on my kid when she was brought into the world.\u00a0 Sure, I knew it before then, but seeing is believing, and I spent either an inordinate, or an ordinary for a new parent, amount of time watching her and absorbing as much of this love and care that I feel.\u00a0 Dirty diapers or cries that we haven\u2019t deciphered doesn\u2019t annoy or upset me, and nothing has changed in the fact that I want nothing more than to be a good dad.<\/span><\/p>\n

So ironically, I kind of have to be a little grateful that coronavirus has body slammed the world into its current state.\u00a0 I\u2019m getting a lot of house money time to be at home with my kid, and while mythical wife is still on maternity time before she too is under state-ordered lockdown, we are getting to soak in being new parents and spending all the time in the world with our baby.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is still being ravaged by it, no more worse that good \u2018ol \u2018Murica.\u00a0 I swear, it feels like that M. Night Shyamalan movie The Happening<\/em> where it was always beautiful and peaceful looking outside, but everyone was afraid to go outside because the plants were releasing a suicide toxin that was making people kill themselves.\u00a0 I bet any newborn parents of that fictional setting all survived the film, though.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re now well into the brave new world of pandemic ruining the planet, America \u201cascending\u201d to #1, as in, being the country that\u2019s most been most devastated by coronavirus and had the highest afflicted\/death toll in the world, and pretty much everyone in the world has been advised to stay inside, avoid other people, and … Continue reading New Father Brogging, #005<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[176,194,193,192,83],"class_list":["post-46875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-murica","tag-coronavirus","tag-dad","tag-kids","tag-observations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46876,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46875\/revisions\/46876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}