[BayAreaSmayArea]

Having a kid kicked my ass in high gear as far as learning and monetizing that learning. I've been fortunate enough to have good jobs and arguable didn't "need" to do more but when I found out we were going to have a child every part of my body shifted into provider overdrive.

I started consulting, hustling, and expanding my knowledge and skillset as rapidly as I could. I started a consultancy on the side and nearly doubled my income over the course of a few months. Between that and my boy not being a very good sleeper I probably ran on an average of 4.5 hours rest a night for between 3-4 years (with once a week crashes of a long night of sleep on Fridays and Saturday afternoon nap).

It was tough, damn tough, but I made sure to spend quality time with him every night and most mornings, gave him nearly every bath during the first 2 years of his life, and got up with him every time he needed me in the night from midnight to 7am as that was my shift so the wife could sleep. During the same time I achieved an extremely high proficiency with ruby and later rails, learned to sell myself, came on as first engineer at a startup and dug deep into Elixir right around the time it hit 1.0, eventually launching a product written in it and learning a ridiculous amount about the BEAM in the process.

Theres less time to fart around with video games, and I don't have much in the way of hobbies, but little fulfillment was going to come from those areas anyway.

Its doable, and I'm alive and sane on the other side with a load of accomplishments to point to, a great relationship with my wife/son and reasonable assurance that my child(ren) will have everything they need to be successful.