It’s been more than two years since I worked for someone else in any real sense. Technically I was employed until 1 Sep 2020 but a fortunate confluence of circumstance had me essentially in a holding pattern (i.e. at home) through most of the year, and then all I had left to do were the administrative bits involved with closing out a career. After a couple years of being a full-time housedad, I figure this is a good time to reflect a bit on what life has been like.

To start with, I would never describe it as boring. I was told countless times that having no job sounds great and all, but after a few months of being home I’d be chompint at the bit to get back into the workforce. Yeah, that turned out not to be true at all. My days are much busier now than they were when I was working at Marine Corps Systems Command. I used to wonder what life must be like for people who don’t have to work for a living – what it must be like to wake up each day and set your own priorities, schedule your own time, commit or not commit to outside obligations, and put 100% of your efforts into building your own life. Now I’ve been able to experience that for a good while, and it was worth whatever I did to get here.

I’ve structured my days toward the immediate goal of reshaping the house to fit the specific needs of myself and the girls. It’s a project I’ve committed roughly one year to, and after 7-8 months I’ve managed to convert an empty front yard into a secure, privacy-fenced playground for the kids, the back porch into a shaded lounge area (the summer sun is unforgiving here), I’ve converted the living room into a mini-arcade/cafe, the outer shed into a workshop/gym, the unfinished basement into a music recording studio, and the basement into a legit bar/tavern with a smaller gym and library. I’m currently in the process of building a mini-boutique for the girls, and as springtime emerges, I will begin establishing my botanical garden.

The challenge of all this isn’t so much creating these little niceties, but doing it while “operating” the household. The kids are an absolute time-sponge; it is difficult to imagine how much time a couple of young children can consume until you’ve been in that position. They obviously absorb time actively (making their food, washing them, brushing teeth, laundry, etc), but that isn’t the real time-sink. The bulk of the time committed to them is in passive form.

This is the part of single-parenting you don’t see. This is what crushes you. This is the grim reaper of productivity in a parent’s life – passive time expenditures. And it’s not anyone’s fault; it’s just the nature of nurturing. If you took all the time I expend “parenting”, I would assess that 20% is spnt actively engaged, and 80% is spent passively engaged.

If you don’t know what I mean by this, you’ve never been a single parent. Do you ever need one item from the store, so you jump in your car, go get it, and come back home? Now a trip involves getting two kids to put their clothes on (sometimes under protest), getting them into their booster seats, getting them out of their seats safely in a public parkng lot, holding their halds walking across the lot, putting them in a cart which you probably wouldn’t have needed, explaining why we aren’t stopping at McDonalds on the way home, etc. It’s a 1-200% increase in time expenditure, at a minimum. Do you have a project you need to commit full attention to for more than 15-20 minutes? Forget about that. Even when the kids don’t need your direct attention, they need a guardian that is “on duty”, aware of their locations and activities at all times, available for emerging needs, emergencies, quarrel mediation, etc. If you aren’t paying attention, you’ll find kids crawling up the shelves to get whatever it is they wanted (because you weren’t around to get it for them).

So while you might not have been spending your time doing anything specifically for them, you also weren’t spending it doing anything for yourself, including projects, repairs, shopping, cleaning, etc. that you might have needed to get done. That’s time lost, just as surely as if you were punching a clock. That’s passive time consumption. That’s where most of the day goes.

None of this is a complaint, though. I wouldn’t change a thing (except maybe having another full-time parent available). Like most adult Americans, Lili has a busy life between school and work, so she pitches in where she can. But the nuts and bolts of day to day life are, for me, focused on parenting and shaping the future.

Once I’m done with all these building projects, I’ll transition into the next phase – enjoying what I have while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. For now, the retired life is busy busy busy, but easily the most rewarding years I’ve ever enjoyed during my time on this earth.