Today is Christmas Day for 2024. I almost wrote 2025, because I am losing track. My wife Is downstairs working from home. I have the day (and week) off, and am playing the Choir of King’s College through my iPad.

My wife got my a record that I had wanted for Christmas, and when I woke up at 5am, I put it on, and thought about life. I bought my wife earrings she wanted. She wore them last night when I gave them to her, but I will have to check if she is wearing them now.

This year there were two big events in life, the former being kind of big, and the latter being super big. The former is about my job. I changed jobs in December 2023, just before my 40th birthday, and 2024 was all about getting used to the job and all the many many new challenges it brought. It’s big for me, but would not be interesting unless you’re the type of person that enjoys what people write on LinkedIn. I’m not. More power to them all and all that.

The latter is that my wife is currently 20 weeks pregnant. I have consulted all the materials, and at 20 weeks pregnancy, you are fairly safe to be able to announce the pregnancy to the world. However, I have always been one to want to shout from the rooftops only when I am confident not many people are in earshot. Call it a quirk. Therefore, dear reader, I am posting a link to this blog onto the social media site Mastodon (famichiki). If you happen to have found this link from there, I wish that you do not congratulate me on Mastodon. That would increase the number of people that are within earshot. The number of people to actually click a link to a blog post about Christmas on Christmas, as I am sure you know, my fellow blog writer, is not many, and therefore this gives me the chance to share publicly, but with confidence that not many will hear.

I think my wife and I both thought that we would not have kids. We are both not exactly young, and it just wasn’t happening. However, one day it just did happen. Probably obvious to people who have kids, and perhaps also obvious to those who did not too, but it is quite amazing how it suddenly radically changed my worldview.

I have long been of the deep opinion “who gives a shit about this meaningless shit”. Human life and love and all that are super important of course, but who gives a shit about arguing about video games or Star Wars or how people are trying to find happiness. Who gives a shit if our collective actions create a world that is a shittier place. Let us suck on the teat of life until the chaos of the world throws us off. Or something like that. I just didn’t get worked up about things, and was happy that I had found peace in my small corner of life. Of course I thought many things in the world were horribly wrong, but the thought of getting into a sort of global online discourse with morons seemed like the least fun thing in my comfortable world.

Now I think about how am I going to create a structure for my child to see this world. I think about what is my identity and what is it that I want to show of myself. I think about the similarities and differences in my wife and I, and where there may be potential arguments where there were no reasons to have arguments before.

I think about how I don’t want any child of mine playing video games when they are young. Don’t I love video games? Yes, but reading and nature are more important. Shouldn’t I act on this myself? Why now that you mention it, yes, I guess I should have. It didn’t matter though. My wife watches dramas, I play video games, we both drink chuhais.

The future has suddenly became more meaningful as well. I wasn’t living with disregard for the future, but now suddenly all these thoughts about the best country to grow up, the best safest place to grow up, and what influence on it all I should try to exude come up.

I can come across as meek. I don’t mind this, and honestly think it has more often than not worked out in my favor. If people then misinterpret this as me being weak, then fuck it. Who cares if someone thinks that? I’m rocking out. But now, I wouldn’t want my child to think that about me. I need to think about more than who I am, but who that comes across as to others. I never really gave a shit what others think, but now what they think influences another. Did it influence my wife? Sure, but she married me knowing who I was, and always had (has?) the chance to not be with me if she didn’t like it. A child is stuck with me.

There’s a voice in me that says why didn’t care about any of this stuff beforehand? And honestly, I think that’s on me. I look at my older brother, who has never wanted kids, but is currently living the life he wants to live, and exuding who he wants to be. If his wife got pregnant, I doubt he would have any deep revelations.

So anyways, I am excited to shout my happy news from the rooftops from which not many are in earshot. If you are in earshot, thank you. Pregnancy is not easy on my wife, and I am trying my best to support her and spoil her. I look forward to growing up myself, and trying my best to be a good loving dad.