Babies and Bad Habits

I keep telling myself I want to do more, make more, develop something, finish this book, script, project, so that when my daughter is older I can show her that if Daddy can do all these things I can too. My daughter, Kendall, 5 pounds 8 ounces of bliss and beauty is now here and I cant find time to rest. It sounds selfish and all my friends, including those with young kids who have just went through it keep telling me to enjoy every moment and take time to rest, but I can’t. I don’t know how. Maybe I’m choosing not to. I’m very self aware and know that writing this is not only a way to get out frustration but I have spent way too much time on go-go-go to have to stop and smell the baby diapers. I love my daughter and having my mother and wife here to assist in making sure she is eating and sleeping feels like we are working well and functioning as a team. It’s not easy, but it feels better because I have a support system, however, when I try to take this time to sleep while the baby sleeps or rest while I have time my mind starts asking questions. A few of them are as follows:

What projects have you completed to showcase your skills with Linux, scripting, and applications
What hobbies will you introduce to your daughter when she is older?
Will your baby pick up on your bad habits?
Are these habits bad? Should you stop trying to compare yourself to everything and everyone is?

Talking my feelings out to my wife helps every time I get too into my head, but I think the 24 hour news cycle and constant attention I put into these social media applications are at an all time high right now. I think taking a hiatus might help. There are (articles like this)[https://steveadcock.us/24-hour-news-cycle] that discuss the destruction of the 24 hour news cycle. The top of the page states that the new cycle is hinged solely around profit. Whether it provides misinformation or advertisements, it continues to seep into my life and have me feel like I’m not doing enough. If these content creators, youtubers, podcasters, and even news channel anchormen and woman have multiple streams of income and every YouTube video explains how many streams of income I’ll need to be rich, will I be rich. Will I end up chasing money after already learning the importance of it and knowing that it won’t lead me to happiness personally? Who knows. What I do know right now is that I get into this space where I find a pocket of free time (which I am scheduling now with this newborn baby) and get lost trying to do a million things with the allotted time instead of just finding peace and freeing my mind by taking a nap or meditating. I think writing this is somewhat therapeutic in some way. It allows me to get my shit off and update my blog.

Quote: “Comparison is the thief of joy”

During my time in which I found God after leaving the church I was prompted to try the Daniel fast. The pastor of the church I was in had mentioned to take this 21 day fast and use it to fast from anything you need to remove from your life. Anything you think is causing problems or preventing you from spending time talking to God can be used for fasting, not just food. I decided to fast from social media for 21 days (started in 2016 or 2017). During that time I was using Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and had a Vine account that was slowly fading away because its popularity had it diminish to an app that had a bunch of copycats taking celebrity videos and failing at recreating them. The first time I did this I realized why I used these apps and resources and why I created them. Facebook was popular in 2009 when I graduated high school and became a tool to stay connected with high school friends and connect with family out of state. Instagram was a photo repository that I used to capture and share moments in my life and my travels. Twitter was created to follow the battle rappers I found on the back of a smack dvd my twin and I found while trying to spend money at a bodega in Brooklyn. Twitter then became a tool used to stay up to date with tech companies, and underground music artists that I loved. Snapchat, like Vine, was an in the moment app that I used to edit images with filters, share my travels and activity, and find out what my friends are doing.

As I started to do what felt like a “Detox” from these apps I started asking myself, should I keep using these? Snapchat and Vine didn’t make it past the detox. I realized that the media at the time (and still today) would mention how stir crazy these tech companies were to capture your attention to get ads in your face. Stealing your data to sell to advertisers so that if you post a picture about dogs or talk about dogs while the app is running it could then send that data back to its database, spit that out to advertisers and then have them send you dog food ads. This was something that a lot of people saw when Facebook purchased Instagram and began changing the user experience of the app to target ads to people aggressively. Facebook was important. My mom, twin, and older brother were living between Florida and New York and I used it to stay up to date and communicate if not through text or calls. Instagram was deleted shortly after the detox phase. It’s usage diminished after I took the time to sit without it. Twitter, which I still use as a micro-blogging platform, had become my handheld newspaper. Anytime I turned to the weather or news from the big 4 (CNN, ABC, NBC, or FOX) every person had a twitter account. Businesses, upcoming blockbuster movies, video games, music artist, were all on Twitter to promote news and information. Once I started following local newspapers like the Palm Beach Post I stopped searching for the newspapers thrown at the doorsteps once a week. I only noticed after my first detox that those newspapers weren’t being sent out on Sundays anymore (another blog for another time). Being able to use these apps and not feel like the apps are using me had revolutionized the way I saw how these companies sold their products. It changes my life for the better and helped me see what I was doing and find ways I can change my behavior in an effective manner. The Daniel fast also allowed me to pray in different ways. Most prayers as I grew up were requests and not compliments. If you were getting prayers as emails and they were all requests like “help me get through this” or “please help these people”, as a human you would grow tired of those emails. So I started praying differently and thanking God for where he has placed me

Quote: “Every moment in life is a learning experience”

Taking this time yearly always seems to help me meditate and get back to zero. Zero, is what I like to call my safe space. It’s a date with my conscience and a space where I start to appreciate my accolades and focus on what is important. Social media has a way of tipping the scales of reality and having you cooking stir fry while your dedicated your time to baking a cake. It may feel like “I’m still cooking” but in reality your time isn’t being spent accomplishing your goals you started with. Now that I have wrote this and spent time getting this out of my head, I think taking time to be self aware and learn to appreciate the things around you will be something I will teach my daughter. Talking our feelings out and using words to convey our emotions will be our time consuming daily tasks.

Our hobbies will consist of quality time and learning the quotes that always ring back in my mind when I start getting stuck and my thoughts start spinning.

We will do more laughing, make more loving moments, and develop motor skills to twist the night away. The only bad habits I want to teach are these motor skills on the dance floor!