September 8th, 2006:

This is just the way life is. You can’t have everything you want. Be grateful you have what you do have. Consider yourself lucky you haven’t been surprised with a pregancy. Consider yourself lucky that you have the luxury of deciding when to have children. Now you know why guys keep secrets. Suck it up. What’s wrong with WalMart? Everyone has to sacrifice. You have to give up something in order to get something better in return. It’ll make your wife happy. No, it’s not perfect. It’ll never be perfect. You’ll always want more. There will always be a reason to wait a little bit longer. Everyone else manages, you will too. Be grateful that your wife doesn’t have to work. Golf is fun. Think of how cute they’ll be. You can still take pictures. Once you have them, you’ll realize that nothing else matters. Dallas is a great place to raise children. I like Starbucks. So you’ll move closer to work, big deal. It sounds like a good job to me. You can always move if you want to, just find another job. I know! Get a transfer! You should find a church. Now you can trick-or-treat again! A lot of fathers don’t get to see their children much. Someone has to pay the bills. You’re making this harder than it is. I didn’t have my grandparents growing up either. Jess will take care of the kids.

I feel as though I’ve taken everything that I value in life and traded it in for a jump in the line at Super Walmart.

I feel like I’m being offered this great opportunity that I don’t really want. You know to live the American dream: 2.5 kids, beer for the big game, an improving golf swing, and some chick with fake tits and too much makeup to howl at at the office while my wife pads around the house barefoot cleaning up my dirty sweat socks and making me plate after plate of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

Yee fuckin’ haw.

I received “a comment”:http://revjim.net/2006/09/08/prophecy-fulfilled/#comment-16284 from a friend that I have great respect for, as a person, as a friend, and as a father. Instead of responding directly to him (as I do with most of the comments I get) I decided to respond publicly because I’m sure his thoughts are shared by many of you.

Life doesn’t end when you have kids and neither do your dreams.

I know this. Actually, technically, life begins when you have kids. And, if you get all metaphysical about it (which I do), your life, in essence, is extended through their memory and the life you’ve filled them with.

And you’re right, the “dreams I had”:http://revjim.net/2006/08/28/whats-really-lost/ don’t go away with children either. In fact more than half of the reasons behind those dreams have to do with raising children.

Here are some of the problems:

• If I’m going to have children, I want to spend time with them. Otherwise, why have them? Some of these dreams were an attempt to put me in a position where I would have more time at home.
• If I’m going to have children, I want to give them as much if not more than I had. Some of these dreams were an attempt to give them an environment where this was possible.
• If I’m going to have children, I want them to know their family. Some of these dreams were an attempt to get them closer to their family and closer to a community that might be as close as family.
• If I’m going to have children, I want them to be happy. And my happiness and the happiness of those that surround them plays a great role in how happy they will be. Some of these dreams were an attempt to make me happier with myself, my life, and where I am headed.

These problems are compounded by the fact that I am not really a risk taker. As soon as the family comes, I’ll be even less likely than I am not to take the some of the risks required to make those dreams come true. Furthermore, I will be unwilling to put a lot of time and effort into it because my day job sucks away all but a couple of hours a day of family time as it is. I’m not about to spend those few hours locked away somewhere working on fulfilling these dreams and doing so with even less time and support than I have now.

Fifty is the new thirty, man! With the way life spans are going, and if you maintain your activity level, you’ve got close to twice your current lifespan ahead of you. All the time you’ve already lived and you could potentially have twice that ahead of you…

And, by the time I’m 50 and the kids are out of the house, these dreams are no longer possible. It’s not like I’m going to have an opportunity to get all of this established the way I’d like and *then* have *more* kids at the age of *50*. Sure, life spans are getting longer but having children after 50 is pushing it.

You have a long way to go before the fat lady sings. :) And kids, family? That’s just a whole new set of experience to draw from to fuel your art. You have something special. It’s far from lost to time.

I’m not worried about my art, my photography, or my passions. I know that experience only lends to them and that children and a family will only make my work that much more real, and that much more relate-able, not to mention bring unseen levels personal joy and fulfillment. Regardless of where I am in life, what I do for a living, how old I am, or how many children (or grandchildren) I have, this need to create and share and express will not go away. And my talent and vision will only become more precise with time (well, at least until I get so old that I lose my senses). I understand and accept this.

But this isn’t about my art. This is about my dreams. And these dreams were founded in the desire to raise children.

A couple that we are very close to just let me know they are expecting a child. For more specific reasons that I would rather not discuss in public and, in some cases, do not yet have the liberty to talk about anyway, all the “things I mentioned losing”:http://revjim.net/2006/08/28/whats-really-lost/ just got a whole lot more real and meaningful.

While I am so happy and excited for those involved, I am utterly scared and quite depressed about what this means for me and my future family and at just how quick my prophecy came true.

How long will it be until I get the option to be a stay at home Dad? Yeah. Guess I better start buying weekly lottery tickets and learn to play golf in the meantime.