This Blog Life
Can I just share with you the exciting life of a journalist blogger? It’s way cool.
But you already know that, because we tell you when we’re heading off to conferences in Doha, or returning from other ones held in southern California resort hotels. You also know about all the book tour stops and speaking engagements, right? You get the picture. We’re important.
As for me, let’s see, where to start. Well, the morning is always the best time, when I make school lunches, serve Ms. Scape her coffee, and cajole my two little boys out the door. If it’s above 40 degrees and not raining, they like to (literally) jump on their scooters and give me my first adrenaline rush of the day, as I pant after them, yelling manically, “slow down!” at least 10 times during the five minutes it takes us to get to school, which is only a few blocks from our apartment. That never gets old.
On the way back, I sometimes stop off at the corner Starbucks, where one barista will have my “tall” coffee ready for me before I get to the head of the line. Kinda like that show where everybody knows your name. But I do miss the other barista who used to flirt with me. That always made me feel younger than I am, especially when I would show up sweaty and panting, scooters dangling in my arms. But she’s been gone a while; I think Ms. Scape had her secretly transferred to another Starbucks.
What comes after the coffee varies, depending on what far flung place I’m heading off to. Some days it’s to NYU, where I try to alternately entertain and educate a roomful of 20-somethings about journalism basics. Other days, I might grab lunch with an editor friend in Manhattan. One thing I don’t do is spend much time on Facebook or Twitter, because I’m deathly afraid of getting sucked into a vortex of endless updates and tweets and retweets that seem vital at that second, when instead I could be catching up on last week’s New Yorker.
I really don’t know where the day goes, until it’s time for me to pick up the boys from school. Then it’s homework and off to the playground where I relive the Darwinian, Lord of the Flies moments of my youth.
But nothing beats playing with my boys. Today, I pretended to be a basketball hoop (hunched over with arms extended in a circle). They took turns shooting a blue dodgeball through my arms and really seemed to enjoy thumping me on the head or watching the ball roll around the imaginary rim.
After that, we each scarfed down a packet of Phineas and Ferb gummy bears (Ms. scape wasn’t home yet). On warmer days, we’ll get Italian ices.
This is followed by dinner and board games (we’re on a Zingo kick), and sometimes a TV show (Phineas and Ferb or Good Luck, Charlie) or wild hilarious gyrations to their new favorite group, the Beatles. Then, it’s book reading time (Captain Underpants or Phineas and Ferb) and a torturously long good night ritual.
If I’m still sentient after this, I’ll grade papers, think of some big thoughts for the next day’s blog entry, or catch up on news. Mostly, I fall right out and dream about the really cool places all the other science bloggers are heading off to.
You sound like a good dude Keith, I appreciate the look.
Very much in the spirit of my day save that we home school so my rascals can hit the office at any second.
There is a ground truth to all that. Despite the clamour.
Keith, you most definitely sound like a cool and awesome dad, so I reckon Ms Scape is very wise in having any flirting baristas transferred :o)
My feeling is that the role of Ms. Scape is deliberately scaled down. Kind of like uncertainty in some climate blogs 😉
On a sadder note, I guess I’d be a much cooler dad if I didn’t have to work 11 hours every day to put some bread on the table. So would many other absentee fathers who are lucky to get back home on time for tucking in.
Sashka, I’ll make sure she gets her due in the acknowledgments of my book, whenever I get around to that.
Meanwhile, let me just say this: my two boys get their brains and their good looks not from me.
Sashka,
This post is nothing more than a snapshot in time. I wouldn’t have written it two years ago or four years ago.
Your situation is by far the more common one in society. Mine currently is part circumstantial, part deliberate. And of course, I gave the simplified, narrative version, for effect. I obviously have to travel to report stories and attend conferences for work reasons. But since my kids were born, traveling has been scaled back hugely. That’s a conscious decision.
I will say the one big decision my wife and I have made is to not live somewhere that require long commutes. All things being equal, even when we both were going into an office everyday (as she still does), we still are home virtually every night to have dinner with our kids and spend time with them before bed. I feel very fortunate to have that.
People often can’t control the demands of their jobs and the 10-11 hour days. But if I could make one suggestion to those looking to squeeze in extra family time, it would be to live closer to your work.
Keith
Meanwhile, let me just say this: my two boys get their brains and their good looks not from me
This doesn’t say anything about looks. But it does say something about brains: http://discovermagazine.com/2005/oct/sex
To me, commute is overrated. I commute an hour from Jersey while the next guy commutes 50 minutes from Brooklyn. Maybe I spend extra half an hour in transit but after 11 hours in the office it’s only a marginal difference. Younger boys walk to work from nearby towers but then again their studios are the size of my walk-in closet. Park Slope may be a desirable compromise but it comes at a price. There were other variables in the equation that seemed more important at the time, especially safety and schools. Since then the city grew safer and my views on public school education changed a lot so I could conceivably make a different decision today. It’s really a choice between apples an oranges, though.
But some people commute 1.5 hours from Princeton. It’s a serious sacrifice for the privilege of your kids attending the best schools in NJ. Hard to blame them, too.
Sashka, if it is any consolation then while Keith no doubt sounds like a great dad then much less will do as well. I reckon my dad was/is a pretty good dad and he sure as hell was never home to pick me up from school”¦ actually I am struggling to think of a time when he actually attended a school play but when I managed to catch myself in the leg with a fishing hook he would get it out, when I was heartbroken because the guy I liked moved school (I was 10 years old) he would take it seriously, when I smashed somebody else’s car into a couple of other cars he would pick me up from a police car without yelling, when I lost my passport (and myself) at the” Munich beer fest” he got me home and to this day when I have a big problem, be it professional or private, he is my first port of call. I guess what I am trying to say here is that what really matters is that “when the going gets tough the dad gets going” or put it another way if your children trust you to be there when they really need you then you not being there every single minute of the day matters less. The balance between career, children etc will always be a difficult one and what suits some people won’t suit others and we make our choices as we best can, doing what at the time seems right. I was trying, without luck, to find this article that I once got sent about how people are so busy with careers, children etc that they totally forget to have a relationship with each other so we can throw that one into the mix as well…….:o)