[sershe]

The meta is that if you add something to your life, and you don't currently have a lot of time when you are just bored, something will have to suffer.

I was wondering why I was often stressed out even though my life was good and I mostly did the things I want to do. Years ago, I had 3 things in my life - work, rock climbing, and coding/reading/videogames ("geeking out"), and I was never stressed for time. Then I got married, so now spending time with my wife became another thing. For a few years, it just so happened by itself that I've been coding, reading or playing videogames very little - turns out I could only fit 3.2 things in my life, not 4, something had to give. That actually made me stressed out and I didn't understand why... When I did, becoming more organized and wasting less time upped it to maybe 3.5, so now I can read a book/code/geek out now and then. But, alas, not as much as I would want.

That's one of the main reasons I'll never have kids - there's just no way I can handle 5 things, and I don't think I'd want any of the remaining ones to suffer for the payoffs (well, maybe work, but not just yet). That is also why you cannot add game making to your life without sacrifice...

EDIT: fixed some grammar

[EarthLaunch]

Health is also a factor. Health issues can take up 1 of those 'thing' slots, another thing to spend time researching and working around. I've seen it happen unexpectedly to a friend, and it was a normal part of my life for a long time. Health can also include preventative things like exercise and diet, which require mental effort (research, willpower).

[quickthrower2]

It can take all of them up for some people.

[vlunkr]

I'm not going to tell you that you should have kids, but my experience is that I can still have time for "geeking out" if I do it with my kids. This is going to vary depending on their age, but currently they like to watch me play games, so I pick games based on what I think they will enjoy.

Similarly, it's fun to read a book around the same time as my wife, and then we can have a sort of "book club" discussion.

If I want to play something too scary for kids, I sacrifice sleep, so you win some you lose some lol.

[sershe]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that; sometimes that works, I do read with my wife, and we rock climb together a lot. However, sometimes you may have your own goals (climbing training like hangboarding is impossible to do together and not fun anyway), or things the other person doesn't do (like coding).

As far as kids go however, I feel like it's almost always a trap (it can sometimes happen with adults too, but with kids it's almost a given)... I know many people with hobbies from some tech stuff to extreme sports (like skiing), who "still play with Arduino" or "still ski" after having kids. Except before they used to do some hardcode backcountry stuff, and how with kids they go to a resort, fool around on an easy run, and then go have a beer while kids are taking a lesson. Technically, they are still skiing, but realistically they are not - they are just spending time with their kids. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between imho.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my point still stands - when you add something, you have to lose something; I feel like for kids, it's especially true.

[Sammi]

When you start valuing new things, then you automatically stop having time to value the things you valued before. So you stop valuing them. Because your values changed.

So let your values change. You'll be the richer in the end.

[sershe]

But do you want your values to change? An extreme example is drugs, if you start taking certain drugs your values will get replaced with wanting more of the drug. You-then might endorse that, you-now emphatically won't (I hope). In the GP, the key point is that you would have to sacrifice something... it's not surprising, it should be expected. The question is what, and whether you would want to.