{"id":51428,"date":"2026-08-03T12:56:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51428"},"modified":"2026-08-07T12:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:56:07","slug":"dad-brog-174-a-brave-new-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51428","title":{"rendered":"Dad Brog (#174): A brave new world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-51431 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6955-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6955-1.jpg 560w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6955-1-300x192.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The house is empty and quiet and for the next 60-80 minutes, I can kind of do whatever I want.\u00a0 It\u2019s a jarring and weird feeling, and this is going to be the case, probably indefinitely, during the durations of the school year(s, to come).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Today is the first day of school where I live, and it\u2019s the first day of school where both of my kids are on the same morning schedule, and now go to work with mythical wife who teaches at said school.\u00a0 Prior to this day, both kids went to a preschool that was on a different schedule than mythical wife, or last year, where one was still in Pre-K, while the other began her elementary school journey and I basically had two morning routines, prepping and sending off one kid at time, on different schedules.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">But now, they are both going to the same school, on the same morning schedule, and I just have to do one morning routine, and then they\u2019re out the door and it\u2019s like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reels\/DVgM6ITga1P\/\">slamming into a wall<\/a> where it goes from fast-paced, eat, dress, brush, pack, shoes, go, go, go, to suddenly nothing.\u00a0 Calm.\u00a0 Quiet.\u00a0 Still.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">And I\u2019m still trying to process what I\u2019m going to do, and how I\u2019m going to try and capitalize on this gift of time that I\u2019m going to get every single school morning, presumably for a very long time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The thing is, I knew this was coming, and I have been giving it thought to what I was going to do, but it\u2019s one of those things where no matter of thinking, planning or theorizing was going to really compare to how things were going to go once the time finally came, and I\u2019m sitting here on day 1 of forever, doing one of the things I imagined I\u2019d do, which is to try to carve out some time to write, about the myriad of things and topics that I think about writing about, starting with, writing about this <a href=\"https:\/\/imagerenderer.com\/images\/rendered\/default\/print\/10.5\/14\/break\/images\/artworkimages\/medium\/2\/atlanta-braves-freddie-freeman-and-jason-heyward-february-28-2011-sports-illustrated-cover.jpg\">brave new world<\/a> of actually having a little bit of peace and quiet in the mornings now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">It\u2019s a little different from the summer mornings, where I kept my school year alarms all intact, waking up at 5:45 daily regardless of the fact that the kids didn\u2019t have any school to go to.\u00a0 I did it because I didn\u2019t want to fall out of routine and have to deal with the bodily regression of trying to adjust to the school year, but mostly because I liked having the peace and quiet in the early morning while everyone else was still asleep, and could more leisurely have a cup of coffee, knock out a daily Duolingo session, and do some writing before one or both of the kids would eventually awake and tear hell coming downstairs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">And frankly, such a routine is what I was thinking of doing now, except that the kids come first, and then I have that gap between when they go to school and I go to work, where I can do it.\u00a0 I pondered doing some exercise in that time, or even potentially going to the office early where I could hit the gym before I started my work day, but for the time being I\u2019m opting against such.\u00a0 Working out during lunch has been a great way to break up the monotony of work days and frankly I don\u2019t feel that 60-80 minutes is sufficient time for me to get in an adequate workout plus time to shower and refresh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">I also don\u2019t want to even put myself into a position where I could be remotely close to doing any modicum of work outside of work hours and that seems to be the point of writing this all out, so I can write out how I often contemplate the differences between work ethics of the generations of the workforce, but if there\u2019s one thing that the kids of today are better at, is understanding that in so many instances, giving more than what\u2019s necessary rarely pays off, and me rolling into the office 15 minutes earlier isn\u2019t going to make much of a difference in my day-to-day, except that I\u2019m taking 15 minutes away from myself where I could be doing something I want to do instead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">All that being said, coffee, Duolingo and brogging seems to be the obvious and inevitable daily agenda, as I embark on the <a href=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSc4xk1oHq18siIgXY1Iv78hM9bnvVBL3ZQDN8qWotTdFL-hKAQ8fC2jcQ&amp;s=10\">brave new world<\/a> of having some morning calm of the kids going to school, together, at least for the next four years.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The house is empty and quiet and for the next 60-80 minutes, I can kind of do whatever I want.\u00a0 It\u2019s a jarring and weird feeling, and this is going to be the case, probably indefinitely, during the durations of the school year(s, to come). Today is the first day of school where I live, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51428\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dad Brog (#174): A brave new world<\/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":[196,66,43,100,193,192,83,4],"class_list":["post-51428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-barves","tag-braves","tag-coffee","tag-comparison","tag-dad","tag-kids","tag-observations","tag-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51428","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=51428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51432,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51428\/revisions\/51432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}