Paternal Value Reduction By Primary Expression Of Core Valuation

BLOG fcn(on) Herr D offered to post a Father's Day piece. Here:


It's like this: being a father means always being lesser on purpose. When I was five, giving of yourself meant giving a hug when maybe you didn't want to. When I was eight, giving of yourself meant spending ten harried minutes drawing a card for a relative during commercials. When I was eighteen, giving of yourself meant spending my own money to buy a gift. 

And now I'm a dad. I work nights and miss out on spending time with the woman I'm happily married to because it's irresponsible to deliberately go bankrupt and neglect your children. I care for them during the day on half the prescribed amount of sleep because it's irresponsible to take my wife away from her job that doesn't pay enough either. 

But that's not all. If my littlest has a question every five minutes and my eldest needs me every OTHER five minutes, that's two and a half minutes on average I get uninterrupted. The average person can't really do anything well under those conditions without a lot of practice. But forget chores and trades and simple stuff. I'm an artist.

An artist, to do well at a piece, really should plan on spending way too long on something they don't know well enough learning just enough to make that worry line on the sculpture look right to everyone or that turn of phrase by a character sound right to people in the trade the artist doesn't have time to learn . . . workflow is one thing, but an artist needs superflow, which can mean way too long--as a dad, I'm not able to meet my former standard of work. 

Of course, that might matter to anyone but me if I were established instead of displaced. Right now, I'm the only one who feels like Mr. Incredible crammed into a Volvo. Fatherhood is that important. So, if you didn't call your dad, call him tomorrow when you're sure he'll be awake. He's a dad--belated means a lot more than never. His LIFE was belated from the time he internally vowed to be a good dad. He knows things don't work out to a schedule

. Happy Father's Day, everydad!

[tuning in, reads, one blue eye tears up slightly] Man. I wish I knew my dad. Our species doesn't usually do that raising stuff. Not in person, at least. We do telenannies and squidlingswap for educational purposes, to prevent biases dulling the thought processes. You posting this Shelob?

Yes.

Good. [exits] 

Thanks to Herr D, for guest blogging again. 
 BLOG fcn(off)