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I am about to have a child. By “about to,” I mean in November. And by “I,” I mean I am valiantly making my wife snacks while she grows an energy-guzzling chupacabra inside her. Being a dad was not something I dared to dream of, but now that is upon me, I can’t help but feel giddy.
I also can’t help but make spreadsheets. My fatherly nesting instincts have manifested not in the selection of strollers or pastel-colored home decor, but in never-ending data analysis. There is a file on my personal hard drive packed with napkin math about raising a daughter in the great state of Massachusetts: stats about graduation rates, career tracks on which women are paid equal wages, high school placement rates to MIT (Harvard is for blowhards), and so on. I promise you the spreadsheet gets stranger tab by tab.
These trackers are all planets, circling around the gravity well of one central question: How can I give my child a happy life? It took me so incredibly long to find personal peace—a decade-plus of stumbling and suffering, of surviving cancer, of learning to let go of the grind. I hope my unhelpful math is an endearing and only slightly deranged attempt to help my daughter have the best possible life. God, please just let her be happy.
The creative state of being
In order to answer the question of how to give my daughter a good life, I sought clarity in essays about the nature of art. Creating great art is just as intrinsically motivated and messy as creating a life is, so perhaps art may have something to teach me.
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Evan Armstrong
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Evan, my sensitive friend. When I read this article I think of my friend, a spreadsheet diva, a ball-busting senior executive with big sense of humor and self, who had her first marriage and first child in her 30's. Everything was a spreadsheet, planner, control, control, control. Then came time for toilet training and the child was not interested in mom's schedule or what all the literature said. Potty time would come with the daughter was ready. That was the moment of the total pivot and dramatic shift from who that adult was to the person she became. The lack of spreadsheets and all she knew before totally humbled every fiber in her body. Everything changed. The career. The home life. The different future.
An excellent article. As a parent who has raised both a son and a daughter I am guessing that you will experience every emotion you can imagine and your daughter will turn out a work of art, whether or not she becomes an artist. You're off to a good start and there's nothing wrong, in my opinion, with a bit of research and knowledge capture, even though you may find that some of the spreadsheets go unused. I agree with you that "the humility to notice and adjust" is essential.
Evan, if she turns out anything like her mother or father, it will be an awesome adventure. Hang on for a wonderful ride.