Sunday Scaries: I can't get this age back

In 2016 I was living in Sydney - Dee Why to be precise - and I the office was a short walk from Central station.

I would work 8-5 so I could get home in time to see my boy before dinner and bed, he was 2 at the time. That commute was on average about 1 hour 20 minutes each way and I had done it for a few years by this point, using it as time to watch TV series (the highlight was doing The Wire, start to finish).

One day a colleague posted on Instagram at about 6:30, they were at the beach during daylight savings. They had started an hour later than me that day and I was still on the bus when I saw that post.

That was when I knew something had to change, I couldn't be scrambling to get home and only see my boy for an hour each day.

We moved to Melbourne the next year and my commute was much better - a 20 minute bike ride and my daughter was born so I could have much better balance. But then a year later I was travelling to Auckland for 1 week of every month for work and I didn't love that time away from them.

Then Covid hits and remote work starts. My son was 5 at this point and I felt like those 5 years were 5 months, it's a cliche I know but they do grow so quickly.

My daughter is now 5 and it feels like she's been a little baby for an actual 5 years. Recency bias I know but if I calculate the hours spent with her in those 5 years vs the 5 years with my son, I may have spent 4-5 x as many with my daughter.

I feel like I've had a great amount of quality time with her and missed too much of that time with my son.

I'm not here to argue about remote work vs in-office, there's enough of those to last us another 5 years.

But there is no argument for the importance of this time for parents. Maybe my kids will be asshole teenagers and I'll be happy for some time away from them but I will deal with that when it happens. Maybe I'll take up golf. Even worse, I might go full lycra and join a middle aged mens cycling group.

When they are this age and cute and you're one of the two most important person people in the world to them, you want to soak all of that up before it disappears.