There Is Hope

Kaiden will be one moth old this weekend. Time has seemed to fly by but I am loving every minute with my son. On the other hand, I'm a gamer and that part of my life has suffered terribly.

It may sound selfish but I have probably put in only about eight hours of gaming in the last month, mostly in Penny Arcade Adventures and my progress in GTAIV has come to a screeching halt. For a gamer who was regularly putting in three or four hours at a time with a 360 controller in my hands a few times a week, this has been traumatizing. I was starting to feel that my pastime was slipping out of reach as I took on my new role as Dad.

But Kaiden fell asleep early tonight and I was reading through some old articles that I had bookmarked a while back. One of those articles was from way back on May 11th called "All Grown Up: A Gamer Comes to Grips With Adulthood" and has rekindled my hope that gaming will eventually return to my life.

The newborn phase was exceptionally difficult, but before long Kaz got in tune with the patterns of life in his new family. He needed his diaper changed less often, didn’t want to eat on a constant basis, and actually started sleeping for more than an hour or two at a time. It seemed like when we weren’t looking, my wife and I suddenly had a little bit of room to breathe.

Obviously, it will never return to the same level it was, but it's encouraging to learn that there is hope. Plus, I will eventually share many moments gaming with my son as he gets older. That is, when I'm not teaching how to do a Cruyff soccer move or how to build a potato launcher.