Balancing Dads

Hi, I'm Mike a dad of 2 e boys and I'm Paul a dad of two little ads. This is balancing dad's a podcast exploring how working dads can be present in the kids

Hey ball, how are you coping? I'm like I'm doing fine given the circumstances. I had a prepared story about my son. But I forgot it

this week. We're joined by Derek severs Derek. Thanks for coming on.

Did you tell thanks guys to those of you listening wondering why we're laughing awkwardly. We've actually just been talking for 20 minutes and then found out

It wasn't recording.

So what you're hearing is season to the intro again. Oh, yeah

dark. Can you tell us a little bit about your professional background first of all, and then we can get on to your child e background tell the sure.

So I was a musician ever since I was 14. All I wanted in life was to be a successful musician. I was massively sing.

You'll early focused on that. I didn't want anything to distract me, but in 2007, I wanted to sell my music online, but there was not a single business anywhere on the internet that would sell your music. If you were an independent musician because we just weren't worth it. We were not a good business model. So I just built my own little shopping cart. I had to get my own credit card merchant account which back in 2007 used to be really hard. There was no paper.

All there was no stripe. It was like a thousand dollars in setup fees. They actually had to send an inspector out to my location to make sure I was a valid business. I had to incorporate I had to set up a separate bank account, but it was all worth it because after three months and $1,000 in setup fees. I had a buy now button on my website and I could sell my CD on my site and when I was done with that my musician friends in New York City said whoa, dude

Can you sell my CD through that thing and I honestly hadn't considered it. It was really just for me but as a favor to some of my friends in New York on my band's website. I also sold their CD but then friends told friends and pretty soon. I had 20 strangers coming my way. So I gave it a name. I called it CD Baby. I put it on its own website and it just took off way more than I ever even wanted it to.

It quickly became the largest seller of independent music on the web with about a quarter million musicians and a few million customers and I had 85 employees in a warehouse and it was awful. It was too much responsibility made good money, but you know, I was wasn't in it for the money. So after 10 years of doing it I felt done and I sold the company in 2008 and since then I've just been a kind of writer.

Writer speaker pop philosopher kind of guy and internet hero. Oh really and that brings us up to present my internet hero

there was gushing in the previous 20 minutes

and so what happened so what happened next? So that was all pre pre kids. I guess every kid I didn't mention the CD Baby pain, but second time about that, you know, what's funny is that

After City baby, I found a guy I knew started a little Distribution Company called distro kid and I looked at us like oh, this is really cool. Like this is if I were to reduce Ed baby again now in this age, I would do it like this like it was just optimized strictly for digital distribution, right as a really cool service. So I sold my music or I put my own music through distro kid, and it was until like a year later. I went. Oh kid baby. I get it. I

Get that like I never made that connection before was it a director - to you, I think so awesome. Yeah. Oh, so you want to hear about kids stuff? Yes, so see I sold sold the company and I was feeling a little lost and feeling kind of ready to lift my head up and travel the world. So I ended up in Singapore. It wasn't a big intention to have a kid, but while in Singapore we had a kid and yeah, he was born in Singapore.

Or and I thought that he was just going to live in Singapore forever. Like my kids going to grow up in Singapore. How cool so did all the paperwork to make him a legal permanent resident of Singapore, which means that in the year 2030 he's going to serve two years in the Singapore Army and that all seemed like a pretty cool plan until he was about six months old and then I slowly realized what it meant to grow up in Singapore because there's not really a lot of

Teacher in Singapore. There's the nature is only kind of strictly contained little parks where you can always hear the traffic nearby and I think I didn't really realize till then that yeah to grow up in Singapore meant he was going to grow up in condos and shopping malls and not have the outside stuff and I realized how important it was to me to grow up in nature. I think it's just like a basic human need, you know, but especially for little kids. So yeah.

Yeah hands in the mud feet in the river climbing trees planning long grass blowing in the wind like to me that's an essential part of childhood. So we had a family discussion about where could we raised him in nature? And I thought well ideally New Zealand like that would be amazing. So I went through and found out what it would take to become a legal resident of sick of New Zealand and did nine months of paperwork and did it. So right before he turned one year old.

we moved to New Zealand for really the sole reason of raising a kid and I took a big life sabbatical we can talk about that later about the the John Lennon comparison took a big life sabbatical to be a mostly full-time dad from the age of 0 to 6 for him and just raised him entirely in nature, which I think has shaped his personality a lot were living in England now and when I see him compared to a lot of his

Peers here, there's just a huge difference because he grew up entertaining himself with sticks and seashells and stuff. But yeah, we can talk about that later. So yeah when he turned seven, I felt like getting him some more cultural input because New Zealand is almost perfect. Its isolation is wonderful for some things but it does lack a little cultural variety. So we wanted to move somewhere with a lot of cultural variety and

Picked England. So now we're living in Oxford England, but we'll probably move again in a few months, but that's where we are for now.

So how have you found you said like your kids really really different from the other his peers in England. So in what ways and how have you found almost like differences to Parenting and stuff like that between I guess the three countries he's been raised and you can throw in the US where you're originally from in there if you like as well.

It's I haven't been back to America in 10 years. So that's pretty far. Like I don't know how to compare him to American kids, but I'd love to talk about this with you guys about the nature versus nurture thing because Paul you have two kids now and I'm curious to hear about the the personality differences. So I've only got one. I don't know what to compare. But I read a book on happiness once I think it was by Sonia Lumber. Ski who's like a happy?

Researcher University and she said in all of her Decades of study. It's been shown over and over again that that happiness is 50% genetic and 50% everything else. Like some people just are born with a higher set point of happiness and that accounts for 50% of your happiness in life. So you could just be born happy and then make terrible miserable choices or whatever and you'll still be 50% happy whereas somebody

Osborn completely unhappy can do whatever it takes in life to learn how to be happy and they're still only going to be at 50% I just found this idea fascinating but I definitely lucked out with my kid that he is he won the happiness Lottery like even as a little crawling baby. He never cried never had a fit never has a tantrum in his life just got really really lucky so I had to preface this to say

that what I'm about to say with the differences of the kids around him, maybe because he grew up in New Zealand, but may not be who knows but

The way he grew up is with us almost entirely outside just round the going to say around the clock, but actually mean like around the calendar even in the middle of winter. We would just put on four layers and go out to the beach and play in the rocks and play in the tide pools. We'd play in the forests. We and he's just used to entertaining himself with moss and a stick like if you give him a sticker to in some Moss

He'll dig into some Deadwood and find some bugs and just play for hours. Whereas I feel like the other kids his age that I see him around now have grown up with devices in their hand and grown up playing video games and we he goes over to friends houses and tries to play and they just like want to show him how to play FIFA football or whatever it is. And he just looks at them like what? No, that's not

Saying it's you're pressing buttons is and they just have these Dead faces staring at a screen. He's like, come on. Let's go play and to him go play means let's go out. Let's do things. And yeah, that's a huge difference that I think he's learned to entertain himself using whatever he finds in the world God if we ever find when he finds a dumpster and I mean literally like a a dumpster of junk. This is like the massive jackpot him.

I'm like if we're driving somewhere and we see a dumpster. It's like pull over we'll spend the whole afternoon in the dumpster just like playing with things but he has no interest in playing with video games. Hmm interesting. I I feel like I'm one of the fifty percent

is like starts off happy here optimistic at least but

you make me feel like one of the other 50% I think you are too that is a little bit tragic we

It's a very difficult one because screens are everywhere. We have a little bit in the middle. Definitely more toward the video

game side of

things and Mike and I with guests have talked at length about screens and and all that but we are balance is that he gets a bit of screen time in the morning and then he basically spends the rest of the day pretending to be Transformers are pretending to be a farrier pretending to be nice some some character and bringing all his friends.

With him, but because we have a it's a city crash effectively or city Montessori. He doesn't heat. There's no space to roam. It's a really confine Garden area. It's maybe like 30 by 50 feet and that's their Garden area and it's enough but it's not it's not a great big field on the other hand when we lived in London. He did have that great big field and he did go exploring. So I certainly relate to what you're saying there. It was glorious to see him wandering off into the distance.

It's and digging holes and standing in Badger holes and and stomping on molehills. It isn't point. It's a completely different type of play. Yeah. So do you take them out of Dublin often enough? All right now, oh right. We're lucky to have a rather large park across the road from the back of our house. So we're in that virtually every day and it's a it's a reasonably good balance for how close to the city we are.

Our but no, I knew you're making me feel bad. I don't we should take him out. Well, so how do you find the difference between your two kids personalities massive date? Yeah, huge huge huge difference couldn't couldn't be more different even down to everything. You spoke even like it like the the number one just wouldn't sleep and Mike's going through this with his number two right now, but at eight months we were at

Wits and he was waking up every 45 minutes we couldn't do anything to get them to stay in this bed. And even now we were still like he's in a Corona crisis packed that he's going to try and he's going to try and weighed out the rest of the lockdown without calling in the middle of the night to sleep. Wow, and he'll get it. He'll get a toy at the end of it. But number two we put them into bed 6:37 depending on the day.

And he sleeps the night and incidentally all going all the way back to New Zealand were following this this guide called little ones. It's a sleep guide and we've been applying that to the number two, and we're like, we'll never know if it was because we didn't use that with number one that he was such a bad sleeper. It was absolutely nothing to do with like this this baby sleeps. He smiles. He Chuckles he's he's a total. He's just a he's like if you take your kids horse riding the the nervous kid gets.

Unlike the

really easy safe, like wide backed horse. This baby is like the the easy horse at the the riding stables. He's just he's parenting on easy mode. Whereas number one was just my goodness. He's still tough going but Mike use you've had that experience as well Avenue with

yeah. Fuck complete. Yeah, we had the Sleep reversed were yeah. We're number one who's now two and a half was just a bit of an Angel when it came to sleeping and number two. It's just been

A bit of a nightmare but I mean he's he's actually like since I guess a few months ago. He's got a lot lot better. So that's that's good. But yeah, but it is as you say like it is the interesting disorder would little differences you notice between the two of them. I mean this stuff where I think once you have a second that you almost just kind of assumed that that's just what children are like or that's just what your children are like and then number two ends up being completely the opposite and you're like, oh that's that's the thing I guess and

Yeah, it's funny scared of that.

I think I'm scared to have another kid. Like my first kid is so cool that I just think. Oh God. Any any other kid is going to be worse than this? I'm scared to have another and I think that's the thing you

realize the that they're almost I guess they say this about, you know happiness and life in general in that. You know, what's a comparison is the thief of Joy but even with your kids you kind of notice stuff that when you have to that your

Like, oh wow, like he

does stuff like and you know, if I didn't know

that he didn't have to do that because his brother doesn't do that. Then I would be like totally cool with it. But I know it's possible for him to just you know, not do that. Saw the annoying thing so it gets on your skin maybe a little bit more. I don't know it's utterly. Yeah, it's ridiculous. But yes,

definitely you don't get you you don't dip back into the bag and get the same thing. It's

Nice metaphor.

So okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna change the subject. It's funny. It's I'm used to kind of being interviewed where everything I say. I just wait to be prompted by the interviewer, but I hope you guys don't mind me. This is a great place great to be on your show. So

a month ago when the whole coronavirus thing was just hitting full force. I sent out an email to everybody on my mailing list saying like, how are you like are you okay because I care and I got thousands of replies and I'm read every single one and replied every single one and a bunch of people for whatever reason told me that they were having a baby now. We're just about to have a baby or just had a baby and to me I think this is a

Great time to have a baby because at least for the next few months and probably longer we're going to have to change our lifestyle to be much more internally focused like focusing inward instead of outward and exploration and I don't know about you guys. But like when I had a baby, I just wanted to stay in with him all the time. Like I didn't want to travel. I didn't want to work. I just wanted to like hang out with my kid. So for all the people that told me there.

Having a baby. I was just like hey, congratulations. What a cool time to have a baby. You could just kind of let the the world nudge you into this situation of just focusing inward. So what do you guys think about this? It certainly speaks to the theme that we're trying to push which is being more present as dads and certainly being forced into it is a net good thing in my book. I'm loving the the new socially accepted.

Crashing into it crashing a video call or whatever the regularly at work. There are kids on the calls in the video and there's no oh that's not professional or anything. I think it's wonderful. I think I'm huge advocate for kids being part of every part of our Lives rather than just the the seen and not heard or there's an appropriate time for kids thing. I would say out with that and that's one thing that I'm really appreciating about. The forced locked out is that it's fair game now because

There is no other

And it's interesting for me the variation from family to family. So while we've been finding it a bit tough, you know, it's not not the end of the world but it's you know, it's tougher than the normal situation would be and it's interesting because I was let's do a podcast the other day that was saying how good it's been for the person on the podcasts family because you know, they're having dinner together all of them every night and it's kind of funny that obviously for them the Assumption was the way there.

Work is they couldn't possibly have dinner together as a family every night. That's just impossible with their career and with me at least like having dinner together every night is that's normal that we do that kind of, you know, I guess six nights of the week. And the only reason that we don't own the other night is because you know, I'm trying to be conscientious with having co-workers with awful time zone matches and all that type of thing. And yeah, it's just I guess it's funny because it's so much of it seems to relate to how things were before and it does make you wonder how people are going to look.

Cat things afterwards.

Yeah, do you not think that having even a brand-new baby right now would be such extra stress added to an already stressful period I don't know Mike. What do you think? I guess it depends on your way of looking at the right. I am I correct directed to do. I see at some

point you are kind of vaguely into stoic philosophy. Is that is that a true statement?

Yeah. I mean, I don't subscribe to any isms. But when I when I read a book on stoicism

I went. Oh my God, like this is how I've already been living my life for 20 years. I thought I was the only weirdo that thinks this way. This is an old philosophy. So it wasn't like I said, I want to do stoicism. It was more like when I finally read it at the age of 43, I went. Oh my God, this is this is how I've been living. Yeah. I think I had a

similar experience where you know, there's a lot of stuff that kind of resonated with me in that and one of the little practices and stoicism that I've adopted that I quite like is you were talking earlier about it helps if you're installing

in a cold country is in the winter time going out and deliberately not wearing your warm coat. So you just go you whatever you're doing, you know say you're walking to the shops for 10 or 15 minutes and you just decide not to wear your coat and you will inevitably be very cold. But then the next time you put on that coat, you'll really appreciate that code for more than you have before and I was talking to my wife earlier today and we were saying like now is almost like it's the ultimate that for stoicism in some ways. We're like all the

of your life all the little things, you know, I guess for some parents kind of the nursery or daycare or whatever situation like or a lot of that stuff's all just been taken away and it really helps you to kind of think about like well what things are my kind of glad to be away from and what things are my like missing a bit and then just looking forward to you know, when things are back to normal I would imagine I at least will have at least a couple of months hopefully longer than that of being really appreciative for

all these things but I didn't get to do rather than just almost like yo-yoing back to being entitled and kind of not really thinking about

it. Hey, you're in Scotland. I think of it as Scandinavian summer, but that the effect that you're talking about like the way that Scandinavians are in the summer when they've had this, you know for months with no sun and then once May and June come about they just go crazy and just everybody goes outside and loves it.

Because they've been so cooped up and I just realized Scotland must have that effect to right. Yes similar. I mean, we're not quite

as cold, but suddenly we have the the shorter days and stuff like that. And yeah, I mean we were again saying to each other the other day that we're so lucky that the isolation is going to happening at a time where the weather is starting to get nicer again. We have a garden and like at least in the UK. They're still saying it's okay to kind of go out for exercise and stuff like that. So it's you know, it almost makes going

Outside a real nice tree particular when the weather is nice and comes back to I guess with what you were saying before about how it being such a kind of good way of with kids as well. Right is that you know, either weekend, I pretty much like rage built a playground in our garden. Like I just want to recite right. What can I get more or less immediately while kind of obviously not breaking any of the

And Asians, so we now have a seesaw and a swing and a trampoline and all that type of thing and it just helps so much with having a little Tuna off your old teachers like bounces off the walls. Otherwise, it helps so much from just to be able to go outside and jump up and down and run about and everything like that. I love it.

So Derek you've spoken about taking time off to be a full-time dad and you've written before about

out that thing of being present and in the moment with your kid, what's your what's your strategy now that he's a little bit older I guess in the corona context or outside the corona context. You're getting some work done. What's what's your balance? I have a very sharp line between on duty and off duty. So when he's with his mom, I'm

I just dive into work and I'm just a workaholic maniac and then as soon as it's my turn to be with him, I shut down everything like phone is off computers off. Everything's off. I'm unreachable and I just lose myself in his world. So that hasn't changed. It's been that way since he was born. We've always just kind of Taken turns right? I've always been a morning person so that it helps like I'll be on duty from 5 a.m. Until 9 a.m. You know so that she can sleep in.

And then he and I will go play from five to nine outside and then at 9 a.m. I hand them off and dive into work. So for me, I need that separation. I find it hard to concentrate if there's anybody else around I have to kind of get into a certain mode. Yeah, one of my favorite I'd say the single most important parenting lesson. I learned from experience if you were to ask me to name just one it.

Would be this thing of shutting shutting down myself in order to enter his world. I had to learn that the hard way. I think when he was still a baby when he was 2 like 9 10 11 months old. I remember that I would still sometimes like play with him but like look at my phone and I always feel really icky about it. I just like wait I was like, what am I doing? Like what in this phone could possibly be more important than my kid?

One so I just had a certain point maybe he was 10 or 11 months old. I just stopped and I just made it a new rule like he will never see me on a device or on a computer because I will just that's a different mode and I just won't do that around him. And so ever since then it's just been my mission whenever I'm on duty whenever I'm with him I shut down everything including like in my head like in my psyche. I have to pause my ambition.

Pause my my thoughts on whatever I'm working on and just let it all go a little bit like meditation. Like I'm I'm not really into meditation. But I've I've dabbled just enough to know what it is and it feels kind of similar, you know that in meditation, at least the way that it was taught to me a bit is that you have thoughts that enter your head like, oh I need to do such and such later today and you just

Let those thoughts go right back out again. And that's what I do when I'm with him. Like I just I try to just stay completely empty headed so that I can fully engage in his world, you know, so whatever game it is. He's playing whatever reality he's fabricating. I'm right there with him and that's my mission. Well make me feel really guilty again. I chime. I'm aware of

that and I definitely had that rule of no phones in the morning and I'm breaking it now with the number two because he's so easy and he just doesn't require as much attention. But yeah, and my business has been very much affected by covid-19 So lately I'm like, okay, we are taking our taking taking it out of my mind as extra challenge, right? So to be fair, you know, he um of the

Of us. I'm the one that like his his mom and I are split up like we live a few blocks away from each other. So she lives a few minutes down the road. So when I'm working he's with her and when he's with me, he's fully with me so that I have more of a kind of binary black and white kind of status of now I'm working now. I'm not so when I'm deep into work like that thing where I said that I emailed everybody on my list and like 7,000 people replied for those 12 days. I hardly saw him.

Him because I just had to tell her like sorry. This is I got answer all these. So here's the thing that happened in our house and was exasperated by the coronavirus and it was the notion of working in the same room as my wife and my kids and I was doing it to just be around but it created this hidden tension that I hadn't anticipated which

The notion that we needed to give Daddy time to work or space to work or quiet to work and I didn't need I didn't need that are asked for it, but it was just assumed because I guess Society assumes. Yeah, and and and Kira was really gracious about it, but she didn't she didn't she wasn't explicit in saying that what she was doing or she was having to alter her behavior to accommodate me and that wasn't my intention at all. So I very explicitly changed the rule that if I'm working.

In the house. I'm I'm open there's there's nothing at all that what could prevent an interruption like I can be interrupted from anything because and that's it's basically that's the real thing at no point is work. So sacred that I can't be interrupted by either Kira or either the kids and that's just the rule and that has sort of created this piece that there's no barrier. I can when I can get my work done and if I want if I work inside I'm

sharing the company and if either the kids needs my attention if I need to hold a baby for a few minutes totally fine. I'll stop what I'm doing. If I need to play a quick little game with the boy totally fine if I need to run up and and set something up totally fine. And that that's been my coping mechanism whilst trying to like trying to maintain the balance between I'm getting my work done which I am and and being present for the kids and that has helped plus I guess the ability to work after bedtime.

That's amazing Mike. How do you do that? Yeah. Yeah, I could well the funny thing is I do almost

exactly the opposite. So I've been work from home for I guess 10 years now and then we about I guess when eldest was maybe about one and a half we had like a kind of garage building like a separate kind of Outhouse in the garden, which the house had been a lot of the houses here. We live in this sort of what was initially at least a semi-detached.

Which Bungalow that's been extended up into the attic and then outwards as well and when the extended outwards you can't get into the garage anymore. So the garage is now useless for a car. So just sitting kind of holding gardening equipment bikes whatever and so we converted that into a like an actual like Standalone little office and natural are on like Cat6 and power and everything like that. So I've got my little office and home gym and stuff in there. And yeah, so it's been interesting kind of seeing the difference between

Being in the house and not being in the house. So when I was in the house, I think my wife find it a lot harder because if there was almost like if he was screaming or something like that, then I would almost like come through and kind of want to help because it's like it's hard to kind of particular when they're little it's kind of hard to ignore that particular when you feel like you can help we're as she would find that almost like

There's almost a like and I can understand. This is a kind of in somewhat implicit criticism there that almost like I was working I'm planning on working, but I'm going to come and help you because obviously there's a problem that needs me to kind of jump in. So now what we do which seems to work really well for us particularly during the coronavirus stuff where she's on maternity leave and is looking after the two of them is we basically like structure the times when I come back and forth. So I stay until they're all kind of

ID and changed in farad's and my wife had a shower anything like that in the morning and then I go over to work and then I come over again at lunch time and sort of kind of have a bit of a chat and can do stories or whatever then go back then come over later on so she can kind of go and walk the dog and have a bit of a break and then come back at dinner time. So but I literally have like all the times. I'll be like coming up to the house like in my calendar both for my wife's benefit. So she could she knows almost like and if one of them is being a pain that she can be like right Mike's gonna be

Be here in like 15 minutes 7 Minutes, whatever but then also for work stuff as well. So I don't get scheduled for meetings at those times because that means that you know, like my calendar is blocked off at that point. If someone tries to invite me to a meeting, it will say no Mike is busy and you know the busy maybe he is busy kind of watching the kids was wife walks the dog whatever but that that kind of systems worked worked pretty well, I think for us so far and it's it feels like it's a sort of

Nice happy medium and it might be just a pre-emptive. I thought I was hiding while Paul was speaking. I think some of this might be almost the difference in our roles and that I don't I'm not a manager. I'm just a engineer and I don't have any direct reports and stuff like that. So my work a lot of it is just like long periods of kind of focused work. Yeah, but but I can basically decide after 5:30 or random one-hour intervals during the day. I'm you know not going to work and that's fine because I can plan around it whereas, you know.

I don't my employer doesn't really demand much flexibility of my time for me from that perspective.

That's amazing. I don't it's really cool to have to discover what works for you. Right? Like there's no one answer. Sometimes people read a book or listen to a podcast to try to get an answer for what they should be doing. But it all just comes down to knowing your own tastes or preferences what works for you. Yeah, having a value system to base things because what you do is not necessarily what's important. It's why so

so I mentioned the John Lennon thing earlier I am and when I was a teenager, I remember I was a super into the Beatles as a teenager and I remember reading an interview it was after John Lennon had died, but where they said that in I guess with his first kid who was Julian it was like at the height of beatlemania, and he was just totally not there at all for Julian or his wife's the I think she had to

Kept a secret so that the fans wouldn't be upset. And so it was a really bad dad. He was just not there for Julian and the and apparently this song Hey Jude by Paul McCartney was written to Julian because Paul felt Bound for Julian was hey Jules originally. Yep. And so it said they said then when he had his second son Sean. He just decided to do the opposite like okay. I I'm I'm putting my whole career on hold for five years. I'm just

Being a big sabbatical he just told his agent like the answer is no to everything for the next five years. I'm going to be nothing but a dad and this is only like a few years after the Beatles broke up like he was still in Peak demand and he just said no to everything and was just a full-time dad and remember even as a teenager teenager thinking like, you know, if I ever have a kid, that's what I want to do, like just especially those crucial like zero to five kind of years. I guess I kind of think of age like, you know, maybe two

Is even more crucial but yeah just during those early years, like what a great thing to be able to be there so much instead of giving some excuse like well, I can't really be there because of work and I think like come on like the your kid is more important than than the income more than this and that and so at least for me. That's my that's my value system. It's like this idea of like save your money it is still my advice when people ask that people who don't have kids or thinking of having a kid and saying like, you know, I know that you have a kid, what's what are your

thoughts on all this

or do you have any advice for a potential father

and I always say yeah, here's my best advice is just make as much money as you can save your money and then when your kids born shortly afterwards, you just take a sabbatical just be a full-time Dad. It's great.

Thoughts, I think that's great.

Yeah, I really like that. I think there's something even in general the idea of kind of laying a bit of a foundation, you know, if you are planning kind of went to have kids and things like that like getting to a point where you can add the very least kind of maybe take your foot off the accelerator maybe a little bit on her career for a little while, then it's not a bad thing because I mean this is may be harsh but my viewpoint with Ty

Is sort of similar to what my viewpoint was with used to be with money and I remember I'd have friends and they would say oh, you know, like I would love to have an X whatever it is, you know, like the first iPhone or whatever it may be but I can't afford it and there's some people for whom that's the case where it's like, you know, they they're not like there's literally not enough coming in to be able to afford stuff like that. But then there's an awful lot of kind of I guess middle-class kind of folks in in the kind of reasonably paid jobs for whom

I can't afford it is more a statement about I have allocated where I want to spend my money on other things and I don't have enough space left and I guess I see the same thing with with time. I guess now that we're how can I have in kids? And in that stage in our life is that the things you find time for are very much how you prioritize things like for me? Like I got into kind of trying to keep a bit more fit and go into the gym and stuff like that before I had kids and I

If I was trying to start it now, I think I could see myself definitely being one of those people where I say, like look, I physically don't have the time because I would have filled all those other hours with with other stuff. And I I think that's the thing when you know, obviously if you're lucky enough to choose who your employer is and have a certain amount of flexibility in well, I guess you could even choose whether you want to fly for with your career or kind of, you know, maybe again foot off the accelerator a little bit but almost like that.

of am I going to work a 60-hour week to try and get promoted or am I going to work a 40-hour week to try and you know just tried water for a while as I spend a bit more time with my kid and I guess for most of us that is a choice we're making so yeah, it's going to interesting hearing you sit say that direct because it's definitely something where I feel like you've been able to go Fairly extreme on that in a really positive way in a way that I'm sure a lot of dads would kind of love to do but I feel like even if you can't